Notebook of an Agitator: From the Wobblies to the Fight Against the Korean War and McCarthyism by James P. Cannon is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for June. Cannon, then Socialist Workers Party national secretary, was one of 18 party and Teamsters union leaders convicted in a 1941 frame-up trial for exposing the truth about the U.S. rulers’ drive to join the second imperialist world war over profits and power. Below is “Justice in the U.S.A.,” a Dec. 24, 1951, Militant article by Cannon. It tells how Leonard Hankins, victim of a cop frame-up, was freed after 19 years behind bars. That same cop was part of an ambush that killed two pickets during the historic 1934 truckers’ strike in Minneapolis. Copyright © 1993 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
A man named Leonard Hankins was freed from the Minnesota State Penitentiary in Stillwater, November 28, by order of the state pardon board, and his name and picture got a big play in the Minneapolis papers. The mere release of a convict, in itself, is not news. Prison traffic in the United States is quite brisk and on the increase; some are going in and others are coming out all the time, and nobody pays any particular attention. But Leonard Hankins got his name in the papers because of special circumstances in his case which impressed the news-minded editors as somewhat out of the ordinary and therefore of public interest. Three points, added together, made a story.
First, Mr. Hankins had been buried alive in prison for nearly 19 years. Second, it was acknowledged that he was not guilty of the crime of which he was convicted on February 6, 1933 and sentenced to a life term. Third — this was the real twist — it was publicly admitted by policemen involved in the case that he had been deliberately framed.
On December 3, said an AP dispatch, another man named Vance Hardy stepped out of Recorders Court at Detroit, a freeman after a directed verdict of acquittal in a new trial. He had been convicted of murder in 1924 and served 27 years in prison. New evidence and a new trial revealed his innocence and finally secured his freedom. His original conviction, it was reported, had been a case of mistaken identity.
In New York, the Times of November 15 reported the case of Nathan Kaplan, a 49-year-old salesman. “He was convicted,” said the Times, “and served seven and a half years for a crime committed by another.” Federal Judge Edwards R. Weinfeld, after a new hearing, said that the salesman was innocent and that a “grave miscarriage of justice had taken place.” This also was “a case of mistaken identity.”
But in the case of Leonard Hankins there had been no mistake whatever. He was convicted of murder after the Third Northwestern Bank robbery in 1932, staged by the Barker-Karpis gang, in which $112,000 was stolen and three people were killed.
The Minneapolis Star quotes Sig Couch, a retired Minneapolis detective, as explaining to the state pardon board that “the Police Department was ‘getting a lot of heat’ then because of unsolved crimes. We needed a goat and Hankins was it.” Couch also said that Hankins was beaten by the police after his arrest and that a police showup was “rigged” so that witnesses would point out Hankins from the line-up of men. He added: “Hankins was known as a card sharp, but not as a bank robber.”
John Albrecht, former Minneapolis police sergeant, who arrested Hankins two days after the holdup, collected $1,000 reward, but told the pardon board he never did believe Hankins was guilty. Hankin’s arrest, Albrecht said, was intended only “to get somebody convicted” in order to quiet public indignation over the holdup and slayings. Albrecht said the prosecution refused to call him as a witness during Hankins’ trial “because of my belief that he was innocent.” So he just kept the $1,000 reward and kept his mouth shut, and Hankins was railroaded to prison under a life sentence.
Hankins was a made-to-order victim for the frame-up. He was a professional card dealer and thus subject to a pinch at any time; he had a previous police record of several arrests. Worse than that, he was broke when arrested and couldn’t even hire a lawyer. The court had to appoint defense counsel. He didn’t have a chance.
But after 19 years of imprisonment, accumulated evidence of his innocence, gathered by a number of people who had been induced by his sister, Mrs. Della Lowery, to take an interest in the case, got him a hearing before the pardon board. And there, for some incomprehensible reason, a couple of former cops calmly admitted the frame-up. Under the circumstances there was not much for the pardon board to do but to free Leonard Hankins for whatever may be left of his life.
“I have died ten thousand deaths since I’ve been here,” the former prisoner told a reporter at the prison gate. “A man can’t help feeling bitter. But I’m not figuring to get even with anybody.” He said he just wanted to get back to his kinfolk in Kentucky. “Right now, I’d just like to sit myself under a big oak tree alongside the Treadwater River down at Dawson Springs, and just laze away.”
That seems like a reasonable ambition, all things considered. But just the same, he would probably be well advised to check the situation carefully even after he gets back to Dawson Springs, and make sure he isn’t found loafing under any oak tree in the neighborhood of an “unsolved crime.” The cops might figure he is just the man they need for a conviction to clear up the case.
There is an interesting footnote to the story of the framing of Leonard Hankins. Sergeant John Albrecht, the Minneapolis police officer who arrested Hankins and got the $1,000 reward, was the same sergeant who organized the police ambush of pickets on Third Street North in the July truck drivers’ strike of 1934. The cops opened fire on the unarmed strikers at close range. Henry Ness and John Belor were killed in the ambush and 48 other pickets were wounded, including Harry DeBoer, who served time with us in Sandstone Prison after our conviction in the Minneapolis Trial of 1941.
Naturally, nobody was punished for these atrocious crimes. Police in this country have a license to shoot strikers as well as to frame victims when they need convictions.