Word: preston
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Unique in California history was last week's hearing. The justices huddled about Witness MacDonald. They denied him the benefit of counsel or the privilege of direct statement. Associate Justice John White Preston, a onetime U. S. District Attorney experienced in prosecuting radicals, acted as the court's special prosecutor to examine MacDonald. The little old man, who claimed he only wanted to "clear his conscience," cringed, trembled, wept under the ferocity of Justice Preston's interrogation...
...apparent purpose was to make MacDonald out a habitual liar who was perjuring himself now no less than he may have done at the Billings-Mooney trials. Time and again Preston would harshly ask: "Was that a lie?" "Weren't you lying when you said that?" When MacDonald became hopelessly rattled, Preston scornfully inquired: "You've told five different stories at five different times. How is the court to know which one to believe?" Meekly replied MacDonald: "You'll have to use your own judgment...
...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...
Thus began a terrific fire in Ohio's chief prison which Warden Preston E. Thomas was sure had been started by desperate inmates to effect a wholesale delivery. A second fire was kindled mysteriously in the Catholic chapel, a third flashed up in the woolen mills. Into the prison yard poured thousands of screaming, shouting, swearing prisoners, cowed by the flames, tempted to dash for freedom. Troops, state and federal, augmented the prison guard, pricked the crazy mob into sullen obedience with bayonets. Fire chiefs threatened to let the whole penitentiary burn down unless the warden would guarantee...