Mrs. Fall's Story

Millions of U. S. cinemagoers looked and listened last fortnight as a grey-haired woman pleaded piteously on the screen for her family's good name. No movie mother whose son had gone wrong was she, but Mrs. Albert Bacon Fall, wife of the man whom a Washington jury convicted last month of committing the first felony ever proved on a member of a U. S. President's Cabinet. Shortly after Mr. Fall was sentenced to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine--the amount of the bribe he took from Oilman Edward Laurence Doheny for arranging the Elk Hills oil lease in 1922 while serving as Secretary of the Interior--Mrs. Fall posed and spoke for Fox Movietone News. The film contained "news" which had escaped or been rejected by the newspapers. Mrs. Fall declared: "The jury . . . stood on the second ballot nine for acquittal, two for conviction. The twelfth and last man who came over to the eleven for conviction, three days later came to me in tears begging forgiveness. He had not slept, had walked the floor since his terrible mistake, praying God to forgive his terrible weakness."

When it became known that the basis of Fall's appeal would be alleged "forcing" of the verdict by Jury Foreman Thomas E. Norris, as exemplified by the Movietone juror story, newspapermen interviewed Mrs. Fall last week at El Paso, Tex. Elaborating on her Movietone revelation, she said: "The verdict was returned not out of the conviction of twelve men and women, but of only three, who forced the others to accede to their decision. . . . Daniel Weisbach told me that during the jury deliberation he paced the floor in agony of mind and heart, trying to stop his ears to the flood of arguments advanced by those who wanted a verdict of guilty. Finally he had to join in, but like the majority of the other jurors, only with the understanding that there would be a recommendation for mercy. . . . He voted for conviction because he was worried about his wife who was an expectant mother. . . . He told me the jury room was very cold and he was very ill and spitting blood. . . . When the time came for the jury to report, he told me his resolution failed, but the others rallied and bullied him into leaving the jury room. He told me he wanted to give an affidavit of his reactions during the trial. . . . Later he said he had been instructed not to talk. Who issued those instructions, I don't know."

Newsgatherers soon sought out Juror Weisbach in Washington. He accused Mrs. Fall of falsehood. He had not asked her for "forgiveness," he said. He had not said that Thomas E. Norris, foreman of the jury, "forced" the verdict. He would not discuss the case further.