Alexander

These are ten appeals from judgments and commitments in civil contempt, based upon refusals to answer questions put to appellants while witnesses in an investigation by a grand jury of the District Court for the Southern District of California. The refusals were based upon the claim that the answers would tend to incriminate them. A hearing was had before the district court for each appellant and the court ordered the questions answered. The refusals led to the judgments.

The questions asked may be briefly summarized as follows:

Appellants Bissey, Noble and Smith were asked substantially the following questions:

Appellants Alexander, Forest, Kasino-witz and Steinberg were asked substantially the following questions:

Appellant Dobbs was asked substantially the following questions:

Appellant Bock was asked the following questions:

Appellant Sherman was asked the following questions:

To eight of these appellants, Assistant Attorney General Goldschein made statements calculated to persuade them that their answers to such questions could not incriminate them. Typical is the following:

It is obvious that, whether or not the grand jury was investigating the witness “for- any…

I concur in the result reached but not in some of the things said in the opinion of Judge'Denman, in which two of the other *488 members of the court have joined. The Smith Act provides that under certain circumstances membership in, or affiliation with a group of the kind described in the Act is in itself one of the elements of a crime. I think, therefore, that the proof that indictments based on this very section of the Act charging violation by virtue of membership in the Communist party were pending in New York, was sufficient to make the showing of reasonable ground to apprehend danger under the rule in United States v. Burr, Fed.Cas. No. 14,692e, United States v. Mason, 244 U.S. 362 , 37 S.Ct. 621 , 61 L.Ed. 1198 , and United States v. Rosen, 2 Cir., 174 F.2d 187 , certiorari denied 338 U.S. 851 , 70 S.Ct. 87 . I believe that this is all that need be said to dispose of this case, and of the Kasinowitz and Doran cases, this day decided.

I am unable to perceive how any “peculiar selectivity” of the witnesses called, or that they all had the same attorneys, has any bearing on the decision. For aught that I know they may have employed the same attorneys because they were too…

181 F.2d 480 ALEXANDER v. UNITED STATES and nine other titles. No. 12081. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. February 4, 1950. As Amended February 7, 8, 1950. Margolis & McTernan and Esther Shandler, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellants. James M. Carter, U. S. Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., Max H. Goldschein, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., Frank De Nunzio and Vincent Russo, Sp. Assts. to Atty. Gen., for appellee. A. L. Wirin and Fred Okrand, Los Angeles, Cal., for American Civil Liberties Union as amicus curiæ. Daniel G. Marshall and Sam Houston Allen, Los Angeles, Cal., for Los Angeles & Hollywood-Beverly Hills Chapters National Lawyers' Guild, as amicus curiæ. J. Bruce Fratis, George Olshausen and Benjamin Dreyfus, San Francisco, Cal., for San Francisco Chapter, National Lawyers Guild, as amicus curiæ. Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, and MATHEWS, STEPHENS, HEALY, BONE and ORR, Circuit Judges. A rehearing in banc is hereby ordered. The parties have stipulated that the ten instant appeals be submitted on the briefs heretofore filed herein and the briefs and record in Doran v. United States, 9 Cir., 181 F.2d 489 , and Kasinowitz v. United States, 9 Cir., 181 F.2d…