Word: fickert
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Dates: during 1930-1930
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...them there, that, in fact, he was not sure if he had really witnessed the bombing at all, so muddled were truth and falsehood in his clouded brain. He charged that the San Francisco police had coached him to identify Mooney and Billings as the bombers, that Charles M. Fickert, the prosecuting attorney, had influenced his testimony, had promised him a "large slice" of the $17,500 reward in return for damning evidence...
Throughout the ordeal, however, MacDonald stuck to the main outline of his recantation. He claimed that police Captain Charles Goff had forced his identification of Billings and Mooney in the city prison, that District Attorney Fickert had put "a whole pack of lies" into his head which he repeated to the trial juries. Said he: "Fickert told me if I would stand by the identification of Billings and Mooney I'd get the biggest slice of the reward." Asked Justice Preston mockingly: "You swore this at the time God was judging you to be a liar" MacDonald only wept...
...Fickert coldly watched his onetime prime witness across the chamber. Justice Preston asked MacDonald: "Do you still feel in Fickert's clutches?" Replied MacDonald pitifully: "I do. I'm in a daze right...
...witness declared that he had heard MacDonald describe the bombing and the two men with the suitcase two hours after the explosion. The hearing unexpectedly broadened out when Miss Estelle Smith, onetime dental nurse, drug addict and witness against Billings at his trial, revised her testimony, charged that Prosecutor Fickert had pressed her into perjury. Incidentally she set up an alibi for Billings by declaring he was in her office, a mile from the explosion scene, just a few minutes before the bomb went off. She swore he carried a suitcase in which was, not bombs, but a supply...