How Terrible Was Roger?

Labyrinthine beyond all final mapping are the convolutions of history. Nothing stays put. It was once settled, apparently, that Ivan the Terrible was terrible, until in 1945 Sergei Eisenstein's movie "proved"' that Ivan's epithet merely meant that he struck terror into the hearts of his father land's dastardly enemies. But if Ivan was only questionably terrible, what of Roger ("The Terrible") Touhy? Here, surely, was solid ground. A nation that could trust neither czarist nor Soviet historians must be able to trust the rewritemen on its own Chicago newspapers in the '20s.

Yet last week U.S. Federal District Judge John P. Barnes (who wears a beard) decided that Roger was not so terrible. The judge issued a writ of habeas corpus (with a 774-page opinion) freeing Roger from prison, where he had served only 21 years of a 99-year sentence. Judge Barnes said that Roger had been railroaded on a charge of kidnaping Jake ("The Barber") Factor, another character in the '20s' melodrama of crime, which either was or was not more real than a Slavic folk tale.

Vindicated, Roger, a meek little man, who, legend said, had once controlled the northwest Cook County beer traffic, came out from behind bars and went fishing. Wiseacres recalled doubts about Roger's terribleness; one claimed that his brother Thomas had really been Tommy ("The Terrible") Touhy, and the name was mistakenly hung on Roger by a rewriteman insufficiently instructed in the tribal traditions.

The State of Illinois, whose jury and judge had convicted and sentenced Roger in 1934, promptly and indignantly appealed against Judge Barnes's setting aside of the long-standing conviction. The U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with the State of Illinois, and Roger, terrible once more, crept back to his cell.

In conference at Chicago, the Association of [State] Chief Justices took Judge Barnes's decision as one more example of the growing tendency of federal courts to intervene in nonfederal cases. The chief justices passed a resolution demanding that lower federal courts refrain from issuing writs of habeas corpus for persons held under the jurisdiction of state courts.

So the question of who or what was terrible--Roger or law enforcement--is still to be answered.

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