For instance, guns are easy to buy in second-hand stores. There is no law requiring a license to keep a gun in a home. That forbidding the carrying of one in a car is a dead letter. It is a felony to carry a concealed weapon on the person without a license, but there are few arrests and fewer convictions for this, because the District courts and prosecutor feel it is no offense to carry an unloaded weapon, even if a clip of cartridges is in the same pocket. An expert could load the gun without removing it from his pocket.
The fantastic interpretation of laws by the U. S. Attorney and the federal courts has handcuffed the cops in their efforts to clean the town.
Not long ago a Negro was arrested for kicking and assaulting another man in a bus station. Though police found an unlicensed pistol on the prisoner’s person, and bullets in another pocket, the U. S. Attorney refused to prosecute for either the assault or concealed weapon. When queried, a representative of his office said it was obvious the colored man was a nice guy, because he didn’t load his gun and shoot his victim, who lay helpless on the floor. The prisoner had a record. When asked at a later date whether, in view of all the circumstances since developed, the D.A.’s office would prosecute, the spokesman said, “No. No judge will convict a colored man here for a minor offense like that.”
The federal judges are lenient because they are federal judges. Of the 308 with life appointments throughout the United States, 224 are Democrats. During the first 17 years of the Roosevelt-Truman administrations, 289 judges were given such appointments, of whom 272 were Democrats. The same ratio shows up in the District of Columbia. The Democratic judges are the choices and flunkies of corrupt city machines or of unions, left-wingers and fellow-travelers’ organizations. The city bosses’ men are lenient to law-breakers because their masters order them to be so. The radicals’ nominees seldom throw the book at a defendant, because Commies, pinkos and phony progressives hate cops, refer to them as cossacks.
A captain of the Metropolitan Police told us that even honest Washington coppers seldom make arrests any more, because they know what will happen when they get in court. The judge will harass, bullyrag and humiliate them. It is not unusual for a District jurist to castigate the policemen, call them liars and framers, then discharge the prisoners without hearing defense evidence. When the defendant is a Negro, the cops know they are going to get a going-over from the bench.
In 1937, after four years of Democratic administration, 90 percent of all major crimes went unpunished. Since then, largely through the efforts of Flynn’s Washington Criminal Justice Association, and more recently of counsel Fischbach’s revelations, about which more later, judges have been afraid to be too raw, and are giving stiffer sentences and holding prisoners in higher bail.
However, out of 811 of those indicted for major offenses in the last report period who did not enter pleas of guilty, only 281, about one third, were found guilty. Of those found guilty, the largest number received light sentences, far less than the maximum authorized by law. Even among those who pleaded guilty, more than 20 percent were permitted to assume lesser offenses.
An example of the penalties meted out for serious offenses is seen in those convicted of first- and second-degree murder: of 22, only three got sentences of 15 years to life; one drew 80 months to 20 years; all the 18 others got less than 20 years, with terms tapering down to one of three-to-nine on a first-degree murder, and one of one-to-four on a second-degree murder. None got the chair.
Disposition records on cleaning up major crimes are made to look good through an ingenious invention known as “Willie Pye” arrests. Whenever anyone is pinched in Washington and decides to take a plea, the cops induce him to admit every other unsolved crime of the same nature which is still open on the books. If the accused agrees to take the rap for these unsolved felonies, thus getting the police off the hook, they do not present further evidence to the grand jury, and the felon is not tried for the other offenses. Thus many complaints are charged off and police take official credit for solving crimes where no solution has eventuated.
The practice grew to such an extent about a decade ago that a public stench arose. After a conference between law enforcement officials and prosecutors, it was agreed to end it. But it goes right on and the evidence of it appears every year in tabulations of “cleared by other means.” There were 667 so disposed of in 1949.