The Government Beaten

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 3, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 43.

The Government Beaten.

The Panama libel suit which Mr. Roosevelt's administration brought against Delavan Smith and Charles R. Williams, proprietors of the Indianapolis News, summoning them to appear in the District of Columbia and answer to a charge of criminal libel, was decided October 12 by Judge A. B. Anderson of the United States Court. The indictment was that these men had committed a criminal libel in publishing articles alleging there was a corrupt profit of $28,000,000 in the sale of the Panama Canal to the United States. Judge Anderson closed his argument by saying that “men have read the history of our institutions to little purpose who do not view with apprehension the success of such a proceeding as this; to the end that citizens could be dragged from their homes to the District of Columbia, the seat of Government, for trial under the circumstances of this case. The defendants are discharged.”

He regretted that his time was so filled that he could not spend more time and write at greater length upon such an important decision. The judge held that if a newspaper were guilty, a thing that he questioned in the case under consideration, there was but one crime, not many crimes. That crime was not where each individual paper circulated, but it was where the entire edition was published; consequently, the District of Columbia, the city of Washington, or any other locality where the newspaper circulated, had no jurisdiction over the defendants. They must be tried where their office of publication is located. What will be done by the Government now, we do not know. If wisdom prevails, the case will be dropped forever. At least, so it seems to many.