Five Years &$ 10,000

After a six-month trial in Los Angeles, 14 Pacific Coast chieftains last week were found guilty of advocating overthrow of the Government by force and violence.

Neither the defendants nor their lawyers attempted the kind of sustained courtroom didos which kept the New York trial of Red leaders in turmoil (TIME, Jan. 31, 1949 et seq.). One Government witness, an ex-Communist named Louis Rosser, spiced up the proceedings by recalling that the party had continually urged him to "move in" with a "well-developed Communist woman," and picked five for his consideration before he finally married one. The Government produced one startling witness, a grey-haired little old lady named Daisy Van Dorn, who had eavesdropped while running the elevator in a San Francisco Communist headquarters.

In general, however, the trial was dull and undramatic. The jury, all but buried under mountainous evidence at the end, took five days to come to a decision. But by week's end, the defendants were sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000. The Justice Department plans to try 34 more Red leaders, 21 in New York, seven in Hawaii, six in Pennsylvania.

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