Justice Upheld

In Knoxville, Tenn., one day last week, grey-haired, 67-year-old Ed McNew appeared in court, handed over a check for $118, and set out for the county workhouse, under guard. The crime for which he was about to pay was two years old, began one summer night in 1938, when Ed McNew was sitting quietly in front of his office on a Knoxville street.

A professional bondsman, softspoken, paunchy Ed McNew was quite an elusive figure to Knoxville citizens. For months before his crime the press had denounced his influence with judges and police, had tried in vain to get his picture. Then one night a Knoxville Journal photographer, lean, bald Howard Jones, cruised by Ed McNew's office, flashed a bulb, sped away with a snapshot.

Still boiling mad was Ed McNew when, two days later, he started across the street toward the courthouse to answer a charge of drunken driving. Suddenly, from behind a corner, out popped Photographer Jones again and leveled his camera. That was too much for Ed McNew. He grabbed at his hip pocket, hauled out a pistol, took aim with both hands, and blazed away. Photographer Jones dodged back behind the wall--but not until he had snapped another picture of Ed McNew. One of the most remarkable newsphotos ever taken, staring straight into the muzzle of a gun, it was evidence enough, thought Howard Jones's editors, to convict Bondsman McNew of assault with intent to kill.

Four months later, when the case came up, Ed McNew was wheeled into court on a stretcher. Swallowing copious drafts of a colored liquid out of a medicine bottle, he wept, swore that the sight of Jones's camera had caused him to suffer a "mental explosion," won an acquittal. Outraged, the Knoxville Journal reprinted Photographer Jones's damning picture, with the scornful legend scrawled across it: "Not guilty!"

Still to be heard was another charge against Ed McNew: carrying a concealed weapon. Tried on this charge last year, he was convicted, sentenced to pay a fine, serve 60 days in the workhouse. Fortnight ago the Supreme Court of Tennessee handed down an opinion upholding the verdict. When Ed McNew marched off to serve his sentence, Photographer Jones was not present. Fired by the Journal a few months after he got his famed picture, Howard Jones was in Washington last week, covering Capitol Hill for Acme Newspictures.

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