Sentence for Contempt

In St. Louis three weeks ago, a cartoonist and two editors of the Post-Dispatch were ordered to defend themselves against a citation for contempt of court because they criticized the dismissal of an extortion suit against a State Representative (TIME, March 25). Last week Circuit Judge Thomas J. Rowe slapped a $2,000 fine on the Post-Dispatch, dismissed the citation against Managing Editor Benjamin Harrison Reese, but hit Editorial Editor Ralph Coghlan with a fine of $200 and 20 days in jail, Cartoonist Daniel Robert Fitzpatrick with $100 fine and ten days.

Off went Coghlan and Fitzpatrick in a sheriff's custody but were soon released on a writ of habeas corpus pending review of their case by the State Supreme Court. A silent spectator of these maneuvers was scholarly Irving Dilliard, editorial writer for the Post-Dispatch. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard last year (TIME, April 8), Dilliard is an authority on the Supreme Court, a good friend of Justice Felix Frankfurter.

What Judge Rowe did not know, and no one else told him, was that the two editorials for which Editor Coghlan may go to jail (and which he approved) were actually written by Irving Dilliard.

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