On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Bill Freind wrote:
 
> It seems to me that regardless of whether Pound was or was not legally guilty
> of treason, a conviction would have been almost certain: legal niceties don't
> usually hold much water in the aftermath of a war. Does anyone know of
> individuals who faced similar charges and were acquited?
>
        My point is almost the opposite.  I think we are presumptuous, as
historians, when we assume that any American jury in 1945-46 would have
convicted Pound just because the country was so exercised about Fascism at
that point.  The state still had to carry a very high burden or proof; its
case was shaky in certain fundamental respects; defense counsel was
adequate, possibly more than adequate, and might well have fallen back on
a plausible insanity defense.  The strength of the state's case together
with its burden of proof is always intimately connected with jury
attitudes.
 
        Apart from these legal points, the country itself was divided in
various ways on Pound's guilt/reprehensibility.  Recall that when Random
House proposed to delete Pound from a forthcoming reissue of a poetry
anthology because of his Fascist sympathies, the firm received mail pretty
evenly divided between support and opposition, and decided to retain Pound
with a disclaimer note.  There were also strong pro-free speech feelings
in the country at a time when treason tribunals throughout the world were
handing down judgments and sentences that sometimes seemed grossly unfair.
 
        In sum, my research suggests that a 1945-46 jury pool drawn from
Washington, D.C., would not necessarily have voted summarily to convict.
 
                Bob Spoo