Zenger Wins Trial Again--252 Years Later

New York printer John Peter Zenger was found “not guilty” Friday--252 years after and 3,000 miles away from where he was first put on trial for criminal seditious libel in the landmark case establishing that truth is not libel.

The original trial, which also laid the foundation for freedom of the press in the United States, was reenacted in the Los Angeles County Courthouse by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. and the Los Angeles County Superior Court as part of the observance of the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution.

Zenger was accused of printing critical articles in his New York Weekly Journal that libeled British Crown Colony Gov. William Cosby by “suggesting he is not ruling well, is stealing from the people and is indeed enslaving his servants.”

Played for Laughs

Playing attorney Stephen F. Rohde’s script for laughs, as well as for historical significance, real-life judges and lawyers used the colorful noon-hour farce to twit each other and various politicians about current-day justice problems, such as trial delays, case backlogs and jail overcrowding.

Thanking participants, Bar association President Larry Feldman wryly complimented the local judges on “getting a case out of Department 1,” noting “it only took Peter 200 years to get justice.”

Like other plaintiffs’ trial lawyers, Feldman has frequently waited days or even months for his cases to be assigned to a trial courtroom from the civil master calendar in Department 1, where Friday’s trial was staged.

Assistant Presiding Judge Richard P. Byrne, who normally supervises that clogged master calendar courtroom and was robed and wigged Friday as New York Colonial Justice Lewis Morris, suggested that the audience of modern lawyers follow the Zenger trial attorneys’ speedy example.

He complimented the acting counsel “on the expeditious way we were able to conclude this trial within one hour.”

Byrne also urged reporters covering the event to note that judges had worked through the noon hour.

‘Lunch Court’

“We call this ‘Lunch Court,’ added Superior Court Judge Lawrence Waddington, winning laughter and applause in alluding to the battle between the local court and the Board of Supervisors over continuance of controversial night court sessions.

During the questioning of Gov. Cosby, played by attorney Rod Dexter, Byrne also chided Gov. George Deukmejian for delay in appointing replacements for judges who have retired from the local bench.

“As governor,” Byrne ad libbed, “you must know there are six vacancies on our court. May I ask when you expect to fill those vacancies?”

“Tomorrow!” vowed the sham governor, trying to promote Zenger’s conviction and imprisonment.

Waddington, peering over his spectacles as Colonial Chief Justice James Delancey, carefully quizzed Sheriff James Lynne, portrayed by attorney Greg Holladay, about how he had searched Zenger’s home and print shop and whether he clearly identified himself before arresting Zenger.

“I am getting tired of being reversed by the Court of Appeal!” stormed the judge-justice, alluding to modern judges’ frustration over search-and-seizure technicalities imposed by higher courts.

Presiding Judge Jack E. Goertzen, as Colonial Justice Frederick Philipse, asked the same witness a modern question, humorously raising another problem for his real court: “Sheriff, are your jails overcrowded?”

“Yes,” responded Holladay, “and we are suggesting a tax increase to overcome the problem.”

Charles S. Vogel, former Superior Court judge and Bar association president who portrayed Crown Atty. Gen. Richard Bradley, stoically argued that “there is no free speech to speak against the government” and “the greater the truth, the greater the libel.”

Objecting to any necessity even to question witnesses, Vogel threw another 20th-Century complaint into Rohde’s script: “We must get on with cases in this colony. There is a backlog.”

Practice Law

The one lawyer who would have never been permitted in an English court of 1735 got the best lines: Patricia Phillips, former Bar association president. As a woman, she would not have been allowed to practice law in Zenger’s day.

But as Andrew Hamilton, in the black robe, stock tie and curled, powdered wig of a male 18th-Century lawyer, Phillips was a crowd pleaser as she thundered: “It is truth that ought to govern the law of libel. . . . It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty.”

Jurors, who followed the decision by Zenger’s real New York jurors by shouting unanimously on cue “not guilty,” were members of the Bar association’s Bicentennial Committee.