Jersey Justice: The Story of the Trenton Six

Notes

A note about names and titles: The transcripts and contemporary material use a variety of spellings for the names of the many participants in this series of events. Police and civilian titles also vary depending upon date and source. I have used the spellings and titles that seemed to have been used most frequently in the sources. short titles used in notes Reuben Papers: William Reuben Papers, Special Collections Library, Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Reuben typescript: William Reuben, Trenton Six typescript, Tamiment 289, Box 14, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York City. SCNJ : Supreme Court of New Jersey, State Law Library, State Library, 185 W. State Street, Trenton. These are original copies, in bound volumes, of the proceedings of the New Jersey Supreme Court, kept in the basement of the State Law Library. (The actual decisions are separate and are in the regular library upstairs.) The volumes are numbered, titled Supreme Court of New Jersey, and inside give the case name and then the particulars of the case. They are not court trial transcripts. Trenton Six transcripts are included because they were added as an appendix. The courts only keep transcripts a certain number of years; the rules have changed over time, but it is not very long, so the only reason the transcripts existed at all for these sixty-year-old trials is because they were appendices for the two appeals and thus entered a permanent record. Without the transcripts, I would have lost my most important primary source. chapter 1 — the crime and the trenton six 1. “Elderly Couple Beaten in Holdup By 3 Thugs At Second-Hand Store,” Trenton Evening Times, January 27, 1948; “Victim Dies of Beating, Four Sought,” Trenton Evening Times, January 28, 1948. 2. Reuben typescript, 3; SCNJ, 196:364a. 3. Reuben typescript, 4–6. 4. SCNJ 32:3173a; Reuben typescript, 8. 5. Reuben typescript, 9 and 10. 223 NOTES 6. Editorial, “The Idle Death Chair,” Trenton Evening Times, January 29, 1948. 7. Jon Blackwell, Notorious New Jersey (New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, Rutgers University Press, 2007), 295. 8. Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 179–183. 9. Frederick Drimmer, Until You Are Dead: The Book of Executions in America (New York: Windsor Publishing, 1992), 61–63. 10. Harry Camisa and Jim Franklin, Inside Out: Fifty Years Behind the Walls of New Jersey’s Trenton State Prison (Adelphia, NJ: Windsor Press and Publishing, 2003), 53. 11. Ibid., 55. 12. Ibid., 54. 13. Ibid., 56. 14. The Espy File, Executions in the U.S. 1608–2002, Executions by State, New Jersey, found on the Web site of the Death Penalty Information Center, deathpenaltyinfo.org (accessed May 5, 2006). 15. Editorial, “The Idle Death Chair.” 16. Reuben typescript, 1d. 17. “Crime Squad Starts Patrol,” Trenton Evening Times, February 3, 1948. 18. Elwood Dean, The Story of the Trenton Six (New York: New Century, 1949), 4–5; Trentonian, February 5, 1948. 19. Reuben typescript, 1c. 20. Ibid., 21. 21. John T. Cumbler, A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 149. 22. Reuben typescript, 1c; Cumbler, Social History, 154–155. 23. William Dwyer, “This Is the Task: Findings of the Trenton, New Jersey, Human Relations Self-Survey” (community project aided by the Race Relations Department of Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1953), 4–5. 24. Reuben typescript, 3c; Cumbler, Social History, 156. 25. Gerald Horne, Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1988), 131. 26. “Slain Man’s Wife Clears First Suspect,” Trenton Evening Times, January 29, 1948. 27. Research Notes: Personalities 2, Box 1, Reuben Papers. 28. “Bordentown Woman Claims She Was Wife of Murdered Storeman Here, Seeks Estate,” Trenton Evening Times, February 4, 1948. 29. Reuben typescript, 1c–8c. 30. SCNJ 31:1220a–1223a. 31. Trenton Profile, Reuben typescript, 5. 32. All material about the six defendants comes from trial testimony and their interviews with journalist William Reuben. 33. Reuben typescript, 9e–11e. 34. Box 2, Folder 1, Reuben Papers. 35. Reuben typescript, 105–106. 36. Ibid., 15. 37. Ibid., 23–24. 38. Ibid., 25–26. 39. Ibid., 15–17. 40. Ibid., 17–18. 41. Ibid., 19–21. 42. Ibid., 27–28. 43. Editorial, Trenton Evening Times, February 11, 1948. 44. Ibid., 183. 224 notes to pages 2–14 [18.224.39.74] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 19...