Guilt at Gastonia

Murder or something like it was the prelude. When Chief of Police Orville O. F. Aderholt fell before a blaze of shotguns, his body riddled, his life oozing, Gastonia, N. C. howled for his killer's

PROSECUTOR CARPENTER "I'm a Sunday-school man," blood (TIME, June 17). When the defense succeeded in moving the trial of the 16 defendants--young union textile workers including six Communists from the North --from hysterical Gastonia to calmer Charlotte, the mob subsided. Radical Labor, muttering that here was another Sacco-Vanzetti case, had less to say. Melodrama was the introduction. A bulky something was wheeled in before the jury. The covering was whipped off to reveal a wax dummy of the slaughtered man, staring, pallid. Madness brought an interval. When a juryman, brooding long on hell and damnation, broke down and was carried yelling to a padded cell, Judge Victor Maurice Barnhill declared a mistrial. Mildness seemed the new motive. When the Aderholt trial reopened with 12 sane jurors, the prosecution had lessened the indictments to second-degree, had quashed all charges against nine defendants. Liberals and conservatives again pointed a proud finger to Judge Barnhill, unruffled, scrupulously ruling. But the approving fingers soon wavered. When Judge Barnhill, following a North Carolina statute of 1777, ordered a witness's disbelief in a punishing God admitted in evidence to lessen the force of her testimony, liberals cried out in dismay. The witness was Mrs. Clarence Miller, young wife of one of the defendants. Said Judge Barnhill: "If I believed that life ends with death and that there is no punishment after death, I would be less apt to tell the truth." Chief Justice William Howard Taft, highest-ranking U. S. jurist, is a Unitarian. Unitarians do not believe in purgatory. But under Judge Barnhill's ruling, the Chief Justice would stand impeached as a witness in North Carolina.

Martyrdom was missing. Defendant Fred Erwin Beal, Gastonia strike organizer, principal defendant, supposed Communist, when it came his turn to speak, weaseled. Loudly had the Communist press hailed him as a hero. Faced with a possible sentence, Defendant Beal, 33, pale, broad, fleshy, in a low voice denied his Communist principles, did not advocate revolution, had no objection to policemen, however violent in line of duty. The defense counsel wanted no martyrs.

Myopic, thought the defense, was the testimony of Mrs. Clarence Miller. Smiling at the lawyers' horrified faces, she blithely admitted Communist beliefs. Communist teachings. The defense lawyers hurriedly changed plans, did not put her prisoner-husband on the stand. The prosecution was jubilant. Mrs, Miller had given the show away.

Monkey Business marked the finale. When Judge Barnhill turned to learned counsel and said, "Gentlemen, the jury is with you," twelve hours of legal oratory exploded, reverberated, droned.

Prosecution Lawyer Clyde R. Hoey, brother-in-law of North Carolina's Governor Oliver Max Gardner and perfect likeness of Author Train's famed "Mr. Tutt," called Defendant Fred Erwin Beal a coward. (Defendant Beal had testified that he was lying on the floor of the union shack when Chief Aderholt was shot.)

Melodramatic, Martyred, Myopic and Monkeylike was Prosecution Lawyer John G. Carpenter. He held Widow Aderholt's hand, knelt before the jury, lay down on the floor and writhed (acting out Aderholt's death). He lost his boutonniere, got another, lost that too. He shouted at the jury: "Men. do your duty; do your duty, men, and in the name of God and justice render a verdict that will be emblazoned across the sky of America as an eternal sign that justice has been done." He asserted that the union headquarters in Gastonia had been "not a cross-section of hell, but a whole section of hell! There was immorality there. Yes, immorality! Hugging and kissing in public. I'm oldfashioned. I'm a Sunday school man." Lawyer Carpenter told the jury he was defending Gastonia. "where the dove of peace hovers around the vine-clad door and the kindly light of the autumn sun kisses the curly hair of happy children." Lawyer Carpenter called the mill-owners, his employers, "a holy gang, a God-serving gang." He recited a poem to Mother, shook hands with Communist Press Agent Liston Oak, sat down.

Verdict. After receiving a go-page charge from Judge Barnhill the jury retired. In an hour it came back, pronounced "guilty" upon Defendant Beal and his six codefendants.

Judge Barnhill sentenced Beal and the three other northern defendants to serve from 17 to 20 years in State's Prison. The Southerners, considered less culpable, received smaller terms. The defense planned an appeal.