Word: hoffner
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...local reporting, where time was not a factor and the "resourcefulness" of the reporter led to "constructive results," New York World-Telegram and Sun Reporter Edward J. Mowery, 47. Mowery's dogged work to free an ex-dime store clerk named Louis Hoffner, who had been unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment on a murder conviction, won Hoffner a complete pardon (TIME...
...Search. First he tracked down members of the jury, found that they were so confused by the judge's charge that a majority first voted to free Hoffner, then reinterpreted the charge and voted to convict him. Mowery also found that a cab driver, who testified at the trial that he had seen Hoffner in Brooklyn eleven miles away at the time of the murder, had been threatened by detectives with losing his license. Another witness, who also saw Hoffner in Brooklyn, was never called to testify...
Mowery tried to get into Dannemora prison to see Hoffner himself, but prison officials, angered by Mowery's World-Telly stories, refused him. So Mowery got in by tagging along with the assistant D.A. and posing as his aide. Then prison officials cut off all mail between Mowery and Hoffner. Mowery got around the ban by inserting his questions in letters that others sent to Hoffner. Reporter Mowery wrote more than 60 stories about the case, formed a Hoffner Committee and collected thousands of signatures on a petition for a new trial. But he was still short one crucial...
...Clincher. Four months later he got it. Hoffner's conviction rested on the testimony of a waiter. He was the only one who had identified Hoffner as the killer. Mowery discovered that the first time the waiter tried to pick Hoffner out of the lineup, he failed. Pressed by defense lawyers to explain why he missed Hoffner the first time, the witness said he had not seen him in profile, as he had viewed the killer. But Mowery checked into the line-up record, proved that the witness had seen Hoffner's profile, and even...
...having the state turn down all appeals, Mowery went again to the district attorney's office with the complete evidence. Last week, across the top of Page One in the World-Telegram and Sun, was a banner headline on Mowery's triumph: JUSTICE AFTER 12 LONG YEARS. HOFFNER LIFE TERM SET ASIDE. In setting aside the conviction, Judge Peter T. Farrell said: "Had the information [that we now have] been made known before, the course of justice might . . . have been completely different...