Word: lucania
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Many a racketeer last week viewed with alarm a reversion to horse-&-buggy justice when a Manhattan jury pointed Charles ("Lucky") Lucania and eight of his lieutenants toward stiff jail sentences by convicting them, not on an oblique income tax-evasion charge but directly for doing illicit business...
...Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey questioned them on the details of their occupation (TIME, May 25). No old-fashioned vice trial was this. The prosecutor had been appointed at the request of New York's Governor Lehman, not to wipe out an ancient profession but to abolish rackets. Lucania and his prosperous executives had terrorized a large section of the city's dealers in flesh, had put prostitution on a chain-store basis...
...long trial through which sleek Businessman Lucania sat with reptilian calm, his high-powered lawyers launched into a 13-hour summation for the defense, attacking the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses, declaring that strumpets had been taken on wild parties by the state in order to induce them to testify. Mr. Dewey contented himself with a seven-hour answer. Urging the jury not to spare Lucania, he declared: "Unless you are willing to convict the top man you might as well acquit everyone...
...Saturday night when the jury of business and professional men retired to consider the case. Rather than lock up the jurymen, Justice McCook went to sleep in his chambers. Lucania and his friends lay down in their cells. Their wives went home. Just after 5 the next morning the judge was roused from his sleep. Lucania & friends shuffled into court in wrinkled clothes. Prosecutor Dewey, on the other hand, bounced in with a fresh shave...
...feared was Lucania, declared tall, handsome young Prosecutor Dewey, that the bondsmen promptly quit their business. Independent bookers were either driven out of the city at gun point or forced to join the syndicate...