The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
“Mere passive knowledge of the criminal activities of other persons
is not sufficient to establish a conspiracy,” he instructed. “Some
participation, coöperation, must be shown to establish the connection
of any defendant, and by evidence of fact and circumstances independent
of the declarations of other people,—that is, by evidence of the
defendants’ own acts. Until such evidence is introduced, the defendants
are not bound by the declaration or statements of others. But after it
is shown he is a member of the conspiracy, he is so bound, providing
the acts are in furtherance of the common purpose.”
The court also instructed that if any defendants entered the conspiracy
after it started, knowing its purpose, they were equally guilty as
if they had been of those who originally conspired, but he tempered
this by suggesting that they might all have been guilty of minor
conspiracies in different places, and he stated that if these were not
related to a common purpose, they were not guilty under the indictment.
He also announced that they might all be guilty of the acts of violence
set forth in the indictment, and yet, if these were not related to a
common conspiracy, they were not guilty in the charge in the case.
Both sides professed satisfaction with the instructions. The sentences
of the Court sent Haywood and fourteen others, his principal aids, to
the penitentiary for twenty years. Thirty-three men got ten years,
the same number got five years; twelve men got a year and a day, two
men got off with two days in jail, and two had their cases continued.
There was well nigh a train load of them that started for Leavenworth
federal penitentiary the next day. The Department of Justice could not
find handcuffs enough in the city of Chicago to accommodate all the
prisoners on that train!
The total time covered by these I. W. W. sentences amounts to eight
hundred and seven years and twenty days. The world is deprived of that
much-too-independent work in a time when the world needs honest labor.
Haywood’s boast that there are 100,000 uncaught and unrepentant I. W.
W.’s in the United States alone is all the proof needed of the nature
of the men thus put away.
These men, like most under-cover criminals, were cowards. Haywood’s
face went white when he heard sentence passed on him. The prisoners,
but lately sneering and arrogant, now sat overwhelmed. Their friends
and adherents also were stunned. The court room was filled with armed
U. S. Marshals and A. P. L. men, all unknown and all ready for trouble.
There was no trouble. Dead silence was in the room. All bail was
cancelled, of course, and the march to jail began.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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