April 1, 1915
NO DANGER IN BOMB, NEW DEFENSE PLEA
Call Cathedral Officials to Prove Police Gave Assurances Against Damage.
COURT BARS FALSE WHISKER
Refuses to have Detective Make Up Before Jury--Prosecutor Train on Stand.
Subpoenas were issued yesterday for dignitaries of the Catholic Church to be witnesses for the defense of Carmine Carbone and Frank Abarno, the anarchists on trial before Judge Nott in General Sessions for trying to blow up St. Patrick's Cathedral on March 2.
Attorney Simon Pollock, for the defense, abandoned all effort to escape admission that a bomb was carried into the Cathedral and lighted there by one of the defendants. But he said the defense would show that the bomb was no more powerful than a big firecracker, that the police staged the whole affair as a bit of "play-acting," and that the Cathedral officials had been told that the bomb amounted to nothing, or they would not have allowed the Cathedral to be invade by a "horde of detectives bent on staging there the play of capturing a bomb maker."
During the testimony of Detective George D. Bernitz, who was in the Cathedral made up as an old man, Mr. Pollock tried to have Judge Nott order him to appear before the jury in the identical disguise he wore in the Cathedral. Mr. Pollock summoned the false hair, beard, and old-man clothes that helped Bernitz play his part, shook them at the jurors, and demanded that the detective put them on.
Maintains Court's Dignity.
There was a titter through the room and Judge Nott protested that such procedure would promote laughter and needlessly lower the dignity of the trial. he demanded to know why the lawyer insisted that Bernitz put on his disguise.
"Because, your Honor," said Mr. Pollock, "I want to show that this whole business was a bit of play acting in which the police, made up like vaudeville actors, had a full equipment of leading mean, stage hands, supes, and even an audience selected from among the Church officials who had been told that an anarchist was to be arrested in the cathedral.
Judge Nott decided that the defense could make its case clear enough by showing the disguise to the jurors.
The detective defended his disguise and its purpose. "Of course, I understand the sacredness of the Cathedral," he said in answer to a question, "and, as insinuated by the lawyer, I am not a Catholic. Yet I think that going to the cathedral disguised was part of the performance of a duty of great value to the people. Here was an anarchist with a bomb he wanted to light. If any able-bodied person should approach him his first act, naturally, would be one of concealment. But if an invalid--an old, limping man--should approach he would go right on with his work.
Saw Bomb Lighted.
"I approached in the only way I could to 'cover,' Abarno, and when he glanced at me and saw my feebleness and my gray hair he leaned over his bomb again and touched a lighted cigar to it. Then, of course, I caught him in my arms and tossed him to the detectives disguised as scrubwomen.
"I threw him into their arms because I had to take care of the lighted bomb. I picked up the bomb. I picked up the bomb, snuffed out the light and cut off a section of the fuse to keep in evidence."
From D.E. Roelkey, a Health Department chemist, the defense gained the admission that the mixture of antimony, sulphur, potash, and brown sugar in the bomb was one of the weakest of explosives. He testified to elaborate tests he made and said: "I found this explosive almost exactly equal in power to black powder."
Lawyer Pollock held up the bombs and asked the jurors to see that they were wrapped around them and an explosive inside that would not surpass in power an ordinary fire cracker. Mr. Pollock continued throughout the day to belittle the bombs and to try to prove that they would not have endangered anybody's life if they had exploded in the cathedral.
Train Takes Stand.
Assistant District Attorney Arthur Train, in charge of the prosecution, took the stand to tell about the bombs and the confessions made in his presence. He had not intended to be a witness, but he found that a police stenographer who took the interview could not read his notes with sufficient clearness to testify.
Mr. Train did not object to the effort of the defense to show that the bombs were not dangerous. He said Abarno tried to convert him to anarchism, and argued that he had no intention of harming any one, but did want to damage the cathedral as a protest against the service of the church to the rich.
Mr. Train got into the record the views expressed by Abarno to him, and also the contents of anarchistic documents, which, he said, had been well studied and absorbed by Abarno and Carbone before either of them met Detective Polignani.
From comments of Mr. Train both as a witness and as prosecutor it appeared that he meant to rest his case on the "state of mind" of the defendants as demonstrated by speeches they made, copies of which he was able to produce, and by literature which they handed to their friends with expressions of approval.
Mr. Pollock brought out in the cross examination of Mr. Train that there was no one within thirty feet of Abarno when he lighted the bomb, except detectives. Mr. Pollock held up before the jurors a bottle filled with powder that has been removed from Abarno's bomb.
Bomb Scare in Court.
"You all know," he said, "that this would merely fizzle like a fizzling firecracker if I should light it. And you know that if I threw it on the floor it would not go off and would not harm any of you if it did."
He made a move as if to throw the bottle on the floor and two court attendants ran to rescue the bottle.
At the noon recess and again at the close of the afternoon session Detective Polignani was hissed by anarchist women in the corridor, among them "Sweet Marie" Ganz and Louise Berger, a half-sister of Carl Hanson, one of the men blown up with Arthur Caron while making a bomb last 4th of July.
The trial will be resumed at 10:30 o'clock today.
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