Judges into Cell

Three judges of the Mexican Supreme Court went to jail last week. In the jail, at Mexico City, they crowded into a large cell with Assassin Jose de Leon Toral, self-confessed slayer of President-Elect Alvaro Obregon (TIME, July 30).

For two hours Assassin Toral and his lawyers explained to the Supreme Court Judges why they should set aside the verdict of Death pronounced upon Toral by a lower court (TIME, Nov. 19).

The appeal was heard in a cell to give Assassin Toral every protection from a howling mob outside the jail which wanted to lynch him. At the expiration of the hearing, the three Supreme Court Judges majestically departed giving no indication of whether or not they would permit Toral's case to be retried.

The discovery and capture by police last week, of one Manuel Trejo y Morales, who gave Toral the pistol wherewith he slew Obregon, was widely rumored to open up a possibility that the Assassin will be retried in an effort to show that he and Trejo were the instruments of a general Roman Catholic plot against the life of General Obregon.