Body & Limbs

Tampa, cigarmaking gateway to Florida's west coast, has a reputation for lawlessness and corruption entirely out of proportion to its population (100,000). There one chilly November night nearly two years ago a police squad burst into a private home without benefit of warrants, seized the leaders of a tiny group of reformers, whisked them off to police headquarters where they were booked for "Communism." They were released with alacrity. Three of them were then escorted to waiting automobiles, driven into the country, flogged, tarred, feathered and left in a swamp. One of them, Joseph A. Shoemaker, partially paralyzed, so mutilated that one leg had to be amputated, died nine days later.

Political Tampa had little expectation that the murderers would ever be punished. Backed by a potent roster of labor and liberal groups, Socialist Norman Thomas nevertheless set up a "Committee for the Defense of Civil Rights in Tampa." Eleven men, including the police chief, were indicted. Presently the desk sergeant on duty the night of the floggings fell, jumped or was pushed to his death from the window of a Tampa hospital. A onetime justice of the peace also at police headquarters that night died suddenly and mysteriously. A Tampa Ku Klux Klansman implicated in the case was declared a suicide, though his wife called it murder.

The first trial, held under a change of venue in the little town of Bartow about 48 miles east of Tampa, was a broad education to Northern reporters, particularly representatives of the radical Press. Wires were tapped, rooms searched, frame-up attempted. At least one had the novel experience of being shadowed in his leisure moments by the defendants, who were free on bail. Presiding Judge was Robert T. Dewell, a corpulent Yaleman (Class of 1911), who was overwhelmed with appeals for impartiality from fellow Yalemen in the North. Five defendants were convicted and sentenced for kidnapping.

On appeal the Florida State Supreme Court threw out the convictions on the ground that evidence on a conspiracy count had been admitted after the conspiracy count was dropped. A second trial, this time on charges of second-degree murder, opened in Bartow last fortnight. Following the dictates of the higher court Judge Dewell ruled out all evidence leading up to the time the victims were released at the police station. Thus the prosecution had to build its case on the recollections of the two survivors, Eugene F. Poulnot, head of the Florida Workers' Alliance, and Samuel R. Rogers, a onetime physician who now practices tree surgery.

All except the defense were bewildered when Judge Dewell unexpectedly recessed the court because somebody hurt in an automobile accident was calling for the court stenographer. "No gentleman can object to this act of mercy," the judge pontificated. Still more bewildering was Judge Dewell's refusal to admit testimony that one of the defendant cops struck Shoemaker on the head with the butt of his pistol. The indictment, he pointed out, mentioned only injuries to "body and limbs." The defense did not bother to present a case. Granting a motion by the defense, Judge Dewell last week directed the completely bewildered six-man jury to return an acquittal on the ground that the State had failed to establish the "actual or constructive presence" of any defendants at the scene of the murder.

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