Carol McClain: Dutch Schultz: The Malone Trial

Dutch Schultz (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After living as a free man for his Malone trial, Dutch Schultz was remanded to jail on July 23, 1935. For the first day, he had to endure the same food as the other prisoners. This included sardines, boiled potatoes and cabbage, tea or water--certainly not the fare we serve today. However, after the first day, Schultz could order out.

The jurors for Schultz's trial included many names still prominent in the area today:

Arthur Quinn from Malone--a farmer
Hollis Child from Malone--a farmer--his daughter stated her father said, "(t)he majority, seven jurors, felt that Judge Bryant brought the trial up here so he'd have a bunch of dumb farmers, and get what he wanted." (Adirondack Life, August 1991, p. 30).
Ralph E. Westcott from Malone--a farmer
Hugh F. McMahon from Malone--a farmer
L.P. Quinn from Tupper Lake--school superintendent
Charles Bruce from Santa Clara--a manager
Leon A. Chapin from Bangor--a farmer--and the foreman of the jury
John Ellsworth from Ft. Covington--a farmer--the last to hold out for acquittal
Arthur J. Riedel from Malone--a baker and related to the baseball commissioner
Hugh Maneeley from Malone--a farmer
Floyd Brown from Owls Head--a farmer
Frank Lobdell from Saranac Lake--a guide

His defense team:

James M. Noonan
J. Richard "Dixie" Davis--“whose task was made more tolerable by the presence of a very well-endowed, red-headed show-girl name Hope Dare, who became the center of attraction and distraction in the crowded courtroom during the trial” (Franklin County Historical Review, vol 12, 1975, page 24). He eventually married and then divorced her.
George Moore from Malone
Robert G. "Bud" Main from Malone

The prosecution:

Martin Conboy--a protege of Thomas Dewey who had vowed to get Schultz/in order to undo the travesty of his earlier trials.
John Burke Jr.

The judge was a former Malone resident: Judge Frederich H. Bryant

For a while, it appeared this jury would be deadlocked. At 7:30 p.m., Aug. 1 as word leaked out of a 9-3 decision for acquittal. Later, only one juror held out against acquittal, John Ellsworth. After 28 hours and 20 minutes, the jury came back with a not-guilty verdict.

Judge Bryant “who was visibly astonished, disappointed and thoroughly exasperated. In fact, he practically ‘lost his cool.’ ‘Your verdict,’ he declared, ‘Is such that it shakes the confidence of law-abiding citizens in integrity and truth. It will be apparent to all who followed the evidence in this case that you have reached a verdict not on the evidence but on some other reason. You will go home with the satisfaction, if it is indeed a satisfaction, that you have rendered a blow against law enforcement and given aid and encouragement to people who would flout the law. In all probability they will commend you. I cannot!’” (Franklin County Review, vol 12, pg. 27).

In the answer to last week's quiz, the Rev. John R. Williams, the pastor of the First Congregational Church, made the national news as he spoke out against Schultz. He said, “the tendency of certain humans to desert spiritual for material gains” (p. 25 Franklin Historical Review, vol 12, 1975), he found it deplorable “that men in high places would fawn over gangsters and that communities would hail them with rejoicing because their arrival meant money.” (Kill the Dutchman, p. 245)

Quiz: How did Schultz's win turn out to be his loss?

Next week: the fallout from the trial