Niebuhr Requests Clemency for Scales

Reinhold Niebuhr, visiting professor of Theology, is a principal signer of a petition asking President Kennedy to pardon Junius Scales, a former North Carolina Communist serving a six-year prison sentence for violation of the Smith Act.

The petition calls Scales' conviction "unique in American history" and characterizes his sentence as "grossly excessive." It points out that Scales quit the Communist party in 1957, more than four years before he entered Lewisburg Penitentiary last October.

"We believe this is not the way to handle the problem of the ex-Communist," the petition asserts. "We wish to welcome them to the democratic community, not send them to jail."

David Riesman '31, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, and H. Stuart Hughes, professor of History, have signed a statement endorsing the clemency petition. Mark DeWolfe Howe, '23 professor of Law, has also written to the Attorney-General on Scales' behalf.

As chairman of the Communist party in the Carolinas, Scales was convicted in April, 1955, under section 7 of the Smith Act, which makes it a crime to be a "knowing member" of an organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Federal Judge Albert V. Bryan imposed a six year prison term.

In October, 1957, the Supreme Court reversed the verdict because Scales' counsel had been denied access to FRI reports. Earlier, in February, 1957, Scales had quit the Communist Party following the Hungarian uprising and Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin.

Nevertheless, the Justice Department moved for a retrial, and Scales was convicted again by Judge Bryan in February, 1953. The Supreme Court upheld this conviction by a 5-4 decision last June.

On the same day the high court threw out the conviction of James F. Noto, an active Communist organizer in New York, by establishing stiff new rules for proving "knowing membership" in subversive organizations. Because of these new standards the Justice Department has abandoned its cases against several active Communists.

Yesterday Niebuhr said he signed the petition not only because of Scales' personal plight, but also because he opposes the Smith Act itself. "To make advocacy a crime and membership tantamount to advocacy is a violation of the First Amendment," he contended.

Riesman criticized the Smith Act for "leading to the corruption of debate." "I think the few Communists in this country are less damaging than the effort to root them out," he maintained. The Scales conviction, he said, shows a "tremendous vindictiveness." "There aren't that many Communists to go around," Riesman continued, "and quite a few agencies compete for those who are left."

Hughes declared that "all anti-Communist prosecution makes no sense" because American Communists have never presented "a clear and present danger of establishing a dictatorship in this country."

Besides Niebuhr, the principal signers of the petition are Norman Thomas, President Robert F. Goheen of Princeton, and Grenville Clark '02.