Waiting for Lepke

Two years ago the State of New York stood ready to execute a hammered-down, jug-eared little blackmailer, labor racketeer and murderer called Lepke (Yiddish affectionate variant of Louis) Buchalter.

But Lepke was safely locked up in Manhattan's Federal House of Detention on a 14-year dope-peddling sentence. Last week he was still there, alive & well. Still alive also were two Lepke triggermen named Capone (no kin to Al) and Weiss, who were scheduled to die with him. Waiting for Lepke, his henchmen have languished in Sing Sing's death house since December 1941.

In the two years, Convict Buchalter had become politically significant. A minor desperado had grown into the first tangible issue between potential 1944 Presidential Candidates Tom Dewey and Franklin Roosevelt.

Whose Lepke? To put Lepke in New York's official hands, the U.S. Government must issue a conditional pardon. On three occasions, says the Kings County attorney, he has formally asked Washington to hand Lepke over. But Lepke was not delivered. Smoking good cigars, his shoes highly polished, his manner debonair, he was photographed from time to time on his way to & from Supreme Court appeals, etc. The Justice Department says primly that New York's Governor has never asked for the prisoner except indirectly, "through the newspapers."

When Governor Dewey had to postpone the Lepke execution for the third time, his temper reached a shrewdly timed boiling point. In a statement that landed Lepke in big-time politics, the Governor wrote: "I have twice respited the executions of Capone and Weiss because I will not consider their cases while the principal defendant [Lepke] is protected from punishment by the failure of the President of the United States to grant the customary conditional pardon."

Whose Move? For the first time, the G.O.P.'s Dewey attracted the official notice of the New Deal High Command. In a haughty reply, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle found Tom Dewey's "implications . . . totally unwarranted. . . . When you advise me that the State of New York is ready to carry out the death sentence ... I shall promptly take up the matter of commutation with the President."

Dark rumors began to circulate that perhaps the Administration hesitated to turn its unpleasant little prisoner over to New York because Lepke "knew too much." Was it possible that Governor Dewey might allow Lepke to "sing," unchallenged, on certain New Dealish labor leaders with whom he had once done business?

To some observers it appeared that the Administration was casually trying to brush off a mere Republican State Governor who persisted in being tiresome about a trivial matter. But the outraged Governor continued to badger and challenge the Federal Government for his full, undiluted, sovereign State's rights. Each side stood stubbornly and firmly on its dignity. But Tom Dewey, who cut his political eyeteeth on just such gang-busting as the Lepke case, seemed to be standing on the firmer legal ground. The next move was up to Washington--and what seemed to be at stake was something bigger than the life or death of murky-skinned, mouse-eyed Murderer Lepke.

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