United States v. Hiss

107 F. Supp. 128, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3751
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedJuly 22, 1952
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 107 F. Supp. 128 (United States v. Hiss) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Hiss, 107 F. Supp. 128, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3751 (S.D.N.Y. 1952).

Opinion

GODDARD, District Judge.

Motion by defendant for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 18 U.S.C.A. was filed in the United States District Court for this District on January 24, 1952. The time for filing supplemental affidavits, and for the argument, was extended at request of both counsel to June 4, 1952.

The defendant, Alger Hiss, was indicted by the Grand Jury on December 15, 1948 on two counts of perjury allegedly committed in December, 1948 before the Grand Jury impanelled and sworn in the United States District Court for this District. The first count charged him with perjury when he testified under oath that he had never, nor had his wife in his presence, turned over any documents of the State Department or of any other Government organization, or copies of such documents, to Whit-taker Chambers or to any other unauthorized person. The second count charged him with perjury when he testified that he thought he could definitely say that he did not see Chambers after January 1, 1937.

Hiss pleaded not guilty to each count of the indictment on December 16, 1948. He had two trials — the first, before a Judge of this court, lasted from May 31, 1949 to July 8, 1949 and resulted in a disagreement of the jury. The trial before me began on November 17, 1949 and lasted until January 21, 1950 and the jury found the defendant guilty on both counts. He was sentenced on January 29, 1950 to five years on each count of the indictment, the sentences to run concurrently. The conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for this Circuit on December 7, 1950. 185 F.2d 822. A petition for rehearing was denied by the Court of Appeals on January 3, 1951, and the Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for a writ of certiorari on March 12, 1951. 340 U.S. 948, 71 S.Ct. 532, 95 L.Ed. 683. The defendant surrendered to the United States Marshal on March 22, 1951 and was committed.

The Government argues that this motion was not made within two years as required by Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The notice of motion was served and filed on January 24, 1952 for hearing on February 4, 1952. Whether March 16, 1951 — the date of the mandate of affirmance by the Court of Appeals — or January 25, 1950' — -the date when the judgment of conviction and sentence was entered, be regarded as the date of “final judgment”, I think the motion should *130 be treated as being timely. See Marion v. United States, 9 Cir., 171 F.2d 185. Moreover, it is highly desirable that the merit or lack of merit of the matters presented by a motion of the character of the one at bar should be carefully and fully considered without being restricted by any technical defect in the timing of the motion.

Counsel for Hiss now asserts that the Woodstock typewriter No. 230,099 (Defendant’s Exhibit UUU), offered in evidence by Hiss at the trial, is not the Hiss machine but is a forgery made to duplicate the work of the Hiss typewriter and used by Chambers to type the Baltimore Documents produced by him. In an effort to substantiate this charge defendant has submitted the affidavits of the following:

Martin Tytell, a typewriter engineer, in his affidavit states that in 1950 he was asked by the attorney for Hiss “ * * * if it would be possible to construct a typewriter whose product would so nearly match the product of another typewriter in type defects, alignment and all other respects that a document expert comparing typed samples from the two machines would be led to believe that they had all been typed on the same machine. I told him that I thought this was entirely possible, particularly if I could have access to the machine which he wanted duplicated. He said he was more interested in finding out whether a duplicate machine could be constructed solely on the basis of samples taken from the machine to be duplicated. I said I believed this could be done, and undertook to try it. I have constructed a machine which I believe meets Mr. Lane’s [defense counsel] specifications. Neither I nor any of my associates in the work have had any access whatsoever to the original machine during the course, of the experiment. The duplicate machine has taken longer to construct than I originally expected. This is due in part to the fact that it was many months before a qualified impartial document examiner could be found who was able and willing to examine my results as I went along and check me on my progress”. Evelyn S. Ehrlich, an alleged document expert, was consulted in December 1951 and the first samples were sent to her on December 14, 1951. Other samples were sent to her on December 31, 1951, and on January 7, 1952, as the construction of the typewriter progressed, which indicates that it had taken Tytell upwards of one year to construct his alleged duplicate machine. Mrs. Ehrlich, who describes herself as a detector of spurious prints, compared the work of Tytell with samples typed on No. 230,099. In her first affidavit she says — “When I examined them I was struck by the extraordinary degree of similarity which had been achieved in the typeface of these two machines. However, when I examined the samples more carefully under a microscope (magnification 30X) I found a few consistent details of difference which appeared to make it possible to separate these samples into two groups”. Of the second set of samples given her on December 31, 1951, she says she reached the same conclusion. “Again I felt that I had successfully differentiated the typing of the two machines, but only on the basis of a few specific characteristics”. After these experiments, “* * * Mr. Lane informed me which specimens were typed by one machine and which from the other (confirming the conclusions I had already reached), * * * ”. Concerning the testimony of Mr. Feehan, the Government expert from the laboratory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], she says “Mr. Feehan took ten separate characters appearing both in the Baltimore Documents and in the Hiss standards and pointed out similar deviations [from the normal] in the two groups of documents. On this evidence he concluded that a single machine had been used. It is my opinion that Mr. Lane’s two machines contain many more similar deviations [from the normal] than the ten which Mr. Feehan described to justify his testimony at the trial”. She made a comparison of specimens of No. 230,099 with photocopies of some of the Baltimore Documents and photocopies of the Hiss standards. She had difficulty working from the copies and she will only say “ * * * that it is entirely possible that the so-called Hiss machine now in Mr. Lane’s possession is not the machine *131 which was used to type the Hiss standard”. [Standard No. 46-B]

In her second affidavit, on comparing the original Baltimore Documents, the original Hiss standards (Nos. 34, 37, 39 and 46-B, and Defendant’s Exhibit TT), and the work of No.

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Bluebook (online)
107 F. Supp. 128, 1952 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3751, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-hiss-nysd-1952.