Trial by Jury

Last fall, a jury of eleven men and one woman acquitted Buffalo's ex-Police Commissioner James W. Higgins, Erie County's ex-Democratic Chairman Frank J. Carr, two police lieutenants and three lesser defendants of conspiring to protect gamblers. By last week the subsequent disclosures of what went on in the jury quarters at the Hotel Statler had done more to shock honest citizens of Buffalo than all the town's recent municipal scandals.

> After Higgins & Co. were acquitted, an eighth defendant pleaded guilty to the same charges. Hauled back to account for themselves before Supreme Court Justice Albert Conway, four jurors were fined $250 apiece, jailed for 30 days. Their offense: announcing that they were for acquittal before all the testimony was in.

> "A big, stout man" took a room on the corridor where the jurors were quartered at the Statler, held open house. One of ten deputy sheriffs supposedly guarding the jurors heard them talk about a "fixer" in their midst, did nothing about it.

> Juror No. 6 was brunette, gap-toothed Mrs. Angeline Muscarella, 29, who had three women deputies watching over her. Deputy Sheriff Alfred Warner also had Mrs. Muscarella in hand. A Buffalo policeman later testified: "He [Warner] said that he had had improper relations with Mrs. Muscarella during the time he was guarding the jury."

"Did he say how often . . . ?"

"Three times."

Outraged Justice Conway fined Al Warner $500, jailed him for 60 days. Sheriff William Pollack, after much delay, fired Deputy Warner, two of the women assigned to Mrs. Muscarella, and the deputy who did nothing about the "fixer." Unhappily for Sheriff Pollack, public indignation was not appeased. "In the interest of law and order in Erie County," the Buffalo Evening News last week proposed that the New York Legislature let Erie County elect no more sheriffs, perhaps substitute a non-political employe under Civil Service. Buffalo and Erie County have come a long way since 1872. Their sheriff then was Grover Cleveland, who later was to be called the only U. S. President who ever hanged a man.*

*At 12:05 p.m., on Friday, Sept. 6, 1872, Sheriff Grover Cleveland hanged matricidal Patrick Morrissey, 29. One of the sheriff's deputies braced himself with brandy, offered to spring the trap. "No," said Grover Cleveland, "I have to do it myself. I am the sheriff and that's part of the sheriff's duties."

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