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In court on March 27
The grand jury added to the picture of the disorder as composed of minor actions by sending all four of the men whose cases were presented to it on this day to the Court of Special Sessions, charged with misdemeanors not felonies. All had faced charges of riot, Leon Mauraine, David Smith, and John Kennedy Jones also charged with malicious mischief for breaking windows, and John King with assault. Only the Hearst newspapers, the New York Evening Journal and New York American, and the New York Times, reported the hearings, but without names as the grand jury hearings were closed.
The four men who appeared in the Harlem court appeared to present a countervailing picture. Three were sent to the grand jury on riot charges. One, Raymond Easley, had already been indicted by the grand jury as a result of Dodge’s investigation. He was the last subject of that investigation to appear in court, although only one of the two newspapers that reported the hearing mentioned him. However, the outcomes of the three men's prosecutions would follow the same pattern as the hearings that occurred on same day: James Pringle and Claude Jones would be sent to the Court of Special Sessions, and Easley’s indictment would be dismissed. The magistrate continued the investigation of two other men, Leroy Brown and William Ford. Both would later be sent to the grand jury, and like the others, to the Court of Special Sessions. The magistrate sent the final man, Harry Gordon, directly to the Court of Special Sessions. Two days of additional police investigations had failed to produce enough evidence to send him to the grand jury. With Gordon’s ILD lawyer in attendance, the magistrate would have had little scope to overlook the deficiencies in the evidence. Gordon would not face trial for another seven months, the last of those arrested in the disorder to appear in court. In the interim, he would testify in a public hearing of the MCCH and describe being beaten both when he was arrested and while in custody. His testimony persuaded the chairman of those hearings, Arthur Garfield Hays, but not the judges in the Court of Special Sessions. They convicted him; the sentence they imposed is unknown. He was one of only two men known to have been convicted of an assault during the disorder — although there is no evidence that outcome was reported in the press.
Rather than building toward the prosecution of individuals who played major roles in the disorder, the legal response to the disorder saw serious charges become misdemeanors and frequently the even lesser offense of disorderly conduct. Those arrested by police proved not to be responsible for much of the violence and damage. Instead, they had been among the crowds drawn to the streets and into encounters with police. The extent of the violence of the disorder consequently was not brought into focus in the criminal courts. Only later, in the civil courts, would some of the scale of the damage, if not the violence and injuries, become part of the legal record.
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- "Riot Looting Brings a New Indictment," New York Times, March 29, 1935, 9.
- "One More Indicted in Harlem Riot," New York Evening Journal, March 29, 1935, 3.
- "1 More Indicted in Harlem Riots," New York American, March 29, 1935, 11.
- "Boy, Cause of Riot, Put on Probation," New York Times, March 28, 1935, 44.
- "Lino Rivera Put on Probation as Slug-Passer," New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1935, 21.
- "3 Admit Harlem Riot Robberies," Daily News, March 28, 1935, 16.
- "Guilty of Using Slug in Tube," New York Post, March 27, 1935, 4.
- "Mayor's Committee Under Fire," New York Amsterdam News, March 30, 1935, 1.