Trial's End

After a trial whose fairness drew praise even from the Negro press, an Army court-martial last week decided that the crime of murder had not been committed in the brawl between Negro G.I.s and paroled Italian prisoners at Fort Lawton last August (TIME, Aug. 28). But of the three Negroes charged with murder, two were found guilty of manslaughter and the third of rioting. Of 40 other Negroes charged with rioting, 25 were found guilty.

The rioting had begun when the Negroes, provoked by special privileges shown the Italians, stormed one of their barracks with "knives, clubs, trench shovels, axes, stones." After MPs restored order, Italian Guglielmo Olivotto was found hanged by the neck and dead; 26 other Italians and three G.I. interpreters had to be hospitalized.

The court-martial, one of the Army's largest, meted out stiff punishment to the two found guilty of manslaughter--25 years at hard labor for Corporal Luther Larkin, 23, of Helena, Ark.; 15 years at hard labor for Private William G. Jones, 21, of Decatur, Ill. Sergeant Arthur J. Hurks, 21, of Houston, Tex., cleared of a murder charge but adjudged one of the riot ringleaders, got twelve years at hard labor. The others (except one who was ill and as yet unsentenced) got terms ranging from six months to ten years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.