Monday, Mar. 24, 1930

Judge of Judges

In the House of Representatives last week, New York's short, swart, voluble Congressman Fiorello Henry LaGuardia arose and began: "It is again my unpleasant duty to bring charges against a Federal judge. . . ." It was Mr. LaGuardia's third such speech in three years. Newsgatherers conferred among themselves about the advisability of bestowing upon him some such title as Watch-Dog of the Judiciary.

In 1927, Mr. LaGuardia accused U. S. Judge Frank Cooper of the Northern New York District of dry entrapments. Judge Cooper was censured by the House Judiciary Committee. Last year Mr. La-Guardia led his colleagues to impeach U. S. Judge Francis Asbury Winslow of Manhattan for misconduct in bankruptcy cases. Judge Winslow resigned under fire. At present Mr. LaGuardia is actively pressing impeachment charges against U. S. District Judge Grover M. Moskowitz of Brooklyn.

"Shocked and surprised" was U. S. Judge Harry Bennett Anderson of the western district of Tennessee to learn that he too was now an object of attack in the House. Representative LaGuardia, acting on complaints of Memphis citizens, queried the Department of Justice on Judge Anderson's record as to narcotic law violators admitted to low bail, only to default and disappear; as to his connection or that of his family, through loans, with the failure of American Savings Bank and Trust Company of Memphis.

Congressman LaGuardia keeps more than the U. S. Judiciary under his alert little eye. Last year, as the Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City, he charged "a loathsome scandal" in the city judiciary, accused a Tammany judge, Magistrate Albert H. Vitale, of having borrowed money from Arnold Rothstein, murdered gambler. Last week Magistrate Vitale found himself removed from the bench because the LaGuardia charge was true.

After the city campaign, Judge Vitale was guest of honor at a dinner attended by policemen and known criminals. The diners were held up by a gang of masked bandits who later returned loot to the judge's friends (TIME, Jan. 6). The New York Bar Association investigated Vitale's conduct and found, as LaGuardia had charged, that he had negotiated a $20,000 unsecured loan from Rothstein to bolster up a sagging margin account. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court last week heard the charge against Vitale, listened to his defense that the Rothstein loan was "a pure matter of business," found him guilty of conduct tending to "bring his court into public disrepute and suspicion, and undermine the integrity of justice."

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