This all-service Ford is chairman of the Criminal Law Committee of the District Bar Association.
Another lawyer who frequently appears in court for arrested hustlers is Ed Buckley.
Fifth Street, between Indiana and D, is called “The Fifth Street Lawyers’ Association,” because so many bondsmen, shysters and good lawyers have offices there.
We asked a friend to name the real sure shot mouthpiece who could spring you if you were arrested for murder and knew you were guilty.
He said William Leahy was the best trial lawyer in town and one of the most respected. James Laughlin, who himself was once arrested but not prosecuted after a reversal, is another successful practitioner.
Others who do considerable criminal defense work are Denny Hughes, Sol Littenberg and Milton Ehrlich.
Another interesting criminal lawyer is Robert I. Miller, who shot and killed a St. Elizabeth’s Hospital psychiatrist whom he suspected of playing with Mrs. Miller. The shooting took place at about noon one day, in the heart of the shopping section at 11th and G Streets. He was represented by H. Mason Welch, who sob-storied the jury into an acquittal on the “unwritten law.”
Miller is not the smartest lawyer in town, but he does a tremendous business defending Negroes and other superstitious criminals who engage him sometimes just to sit at the trial table for good luck, because he beat his own case. Miller, an ostentatious person, often wipes his glasses with a $100 bill while addressing a jury. He claimed close friendship to Roosevelt and Garner and decorates his office with photos of them. He ran a Republicans-for-Roosevelt club.
Some lawyers win their cases through merit, others through a fix. Still others, who weren’t envied by their colleagues, had to do it the hard way when a certain former bachelor-lady judge, who shall be nameless, rendered her verdicts in favor of clients of the mouthpieces whose persuasion grew between covers not on law books. She was an awful tomato, and many attorneys preferred to lose their cases.
Judge Hitz, the humorist of the local bench, got off a dilly when he discovered the plaintiff in a matrimonial action was still living with her husband, the whole divorce proceedings being a sham to swindle creditors. Said the judge, in dismissing the action, “You can’t litigate by day and fornicate by night.”
31. THE BOSSES
The last orthodox political boss of Washington was Alexander Robey Shepherd. When he finished with the city treasury, Congress voted to end home rule and took back the government.
From the time of its incorporation as a city, in 1802, Washington was run by elected mayors and aldermen. In 1871, in President Grant’s administration, it was turned into a territory, similar to Alaska or Hawaii, with delegates in Congress and a large measure of home rule. Shepherd was a pal of General Grant, who had numerous smelly friends.
Shepherd’s stewardship was modern in every respect. He went in for a New Deal on a big scale. The town was torn up while Shepherd paved streets, installed sewers--sometimes two sets to one avenue--went in for slum clearance, built squares, parks, circles, gas-mains and sidewalks. Shepherd began life as a plumber, and showed partiality for anything with pipes.
Shepherd had built up a small Tammany to keep his boys in power. Votes were bartered, crimes were fixed, laws were perverted. When the end came, Shepherd skipped and hid out until the statute of limitations ran out. When he returned they greeted him with a brass band, like New York did Jimmy Walker, and built him a statue.
The Congress was more interested in the welfare of the District of Columbia 75 years ago than it is now. Unable to stomach the stench, it decided to exercise its Constitutional right to govern the District, and substituted the present commission-form of government in place of home rule and local suffrage.
Under the present setup, the executive is a three-man commission, appointed by the President for a three-year term. One must be from the Corps of Engineers of the Army. On the law books, these commissioners have no more power than a New York City Borough President They can do practically nothing without approval from Congress. But by virtue of the apathy that prevails in Washington, these men have become little czars. Congress, by statute, has empowered the commissioners to make building and plumbing regulations and to create and enforce all reasonable police and other city rules. But they do not levy taxes or make appropriations. That is done by Congress. And that’s the District’s chief squawk.
Every buck collected in Washington goes into the general funds of the U.S. Treasury; not earmarked for the District. All payments come out of the same general fund. The result is that, while Congress pays up to ten percent of the cost of local government, the citizens bear the other 90 percent. But 52 percent of all the property is tax-exempt. The government owns more than 40 percent, the rest belongs to embassies, tax-free organizations like the Red Cross, etc. So the residents complain that the rich U.S. government is riding along on a free pass, leaving local property to bear the cost of supporting the huge Federal establishment.
The present commissioners are John Russell Young, president of the Board; Guy Mason, and Brigadier General Gordon R. Young, the engineer commissioner. Mason’s term expired in February, 1951, but he is permitted to serve until another is appointed or he be reappointed.
Under them, the commissioners have a large staff of special assistants, private secretaries, administrative assistants and others who have access to their offices. We are just telling you this in case you are thinking of making a fix, for one of these persons is the guy to see.
One of the three commissioners is noted for his ability to bollix everything up after a big, bad night--which is almost every night. Even his enemies consider inebriation a valid excuse for his befuddled condition. A Congressman investigating the Commission said, “After all, the poor guy always has a hangover. You can’t blame him for what he does when he feels awful.”
Under the commissioners are such usual municipal executive officers as assessors, auditors, tax collectors, license commissioners and bureaus of public welfare, recreation, traffic, police, fire, health, corrections; and--oh, yes--the corporation counsel.
The observer who takes a gander at the judicial branch of the District government sometimes wonders if he followed Lewis Carroll’s Alice down into the rabbit hole.
The judicial powers are exercised by the District courts, which sit not only for federal cases, but for felonious breaches of the local law, too; and by municipal courts, judges of which are appointed for six years. They have jurisdiction over minor suits and unimportant law and ordinance violations.
Members of the federal judiciary for the District of Columbia need not be local residents. They may be appointed from anywhere in the country. Usually these plums go to deserving Democrats from elsewhere. At this writing there are 12 District judges and 10 municipal court judges, in addition to justices of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Municipal Court of Appeals, and the Juvenile Court.
The District courts serve a two-fold function. They act both as federal courts and as superior state courts, handling civil and criminal matters. No judges of either court are elected by the local citizens or by their representatives. They have no interest in the community. They do not partake of a legacy of local common law and custom.
If any courts should be impartial, those of the District might be. But they are not. Some of the judges are venal, inefficient party hacks or militant propagandists for left-wing philosophies.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has the most overworked office in the land. He not only functions as a local district attorney and as United States attorney, but triples in brass with a job corresponding to a state attorney general. But his budget and the number of assistants allotted him are on a per capita population basis, as though he had to prosecute only federal cases in any city the size of Washington.
In the prosecution of some minor cases in municipal court alone has he any assistance. The city Corporation Counsel’s office handles those. To demonstrate again what can happen when a bureaucracy turns dictator--the criminal division of his office has no law library. It does not have a secretary.
If he or his assistants want to check a law or a decision they have to buy their own books. He is given no fund to keep records, so no records are kept. It is almost impossible for him to find out the disposition of cases. He has only five low-paid assistants assigned to municipal criminal courts, and these are so overworked, sometimes they have to prosecute cases on an average of one every three minutes. Under District law, defendants are permitted jury trials in all cases where the penalty is in excess of ninety days or a $300 fine. It is no wonder the Corporation Counsel is usually willing to take a plea of disorderly conduct, instead. The maximum penalty for that is $25, no jail.