University of California Berkeley This manuscript is open for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The Bancroft Library University of California/Berkeley Regional Oral History Office Earl Warren Oral History Project Arthur H. Sherry THE ALAMEDA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY^ OFFICE AND THE CALIFORNIA CRIME COMMISSION An Interview Conducted by Miriam Feingold and Amelia Fry Copy No. / !i) 1976 by The Regents of the University of California Arthur H. Sherry TABLE OF CONTENTS - Arthur H. Sherry PREFACE i INTERVIEW HISTORY iv BIOGRAPHY, Arthur H. Sherry ix I PERSONAL BACKGROUND 1 Family 1 Education 3 Law School 5 Early Legal Experience 11 II ALAMEDA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY S OFFICE 14 Joining the Office 14 Learning the Ropes 19 Work in the Oakland Office 24 In Charge of the Berkeley Office 28 The Role of the Inspectors 38 Administration of the Office 40 Relations with Other Law Enforcement Agencies 43 Relations with the Press 49 The Knowland Family 49 Methods of Criminal Procedure 53 Interrogations and Confessions 56 Coordination of Law Enforcement 63 Legislative Work 64 Graft and Gambling Cases 68 Labor Cases 76 Communist Activity and Criminal Syndicalism 84 Japanese Exclusion 86 III EVALUATION OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY S OFFICE 90 Earl Warren as District Attorney 90 The Office Under Ralph Hoyt 93 The Office Under J. Frank Coakley 96 IV THE SPECIAL CRIME STUDY COMMISSION ON ORGANIZED CRIME 99 Origins of the Commission 99 The Mendocino Prosecutions 106 The Commission at Work 110 Relations with the Legislature 115 The Role of Governor Warren 118 The Role of Attorney General Howser 122 The Mafia and Organized Crime in California 130 Organized Crime and Politics 133 The Impact of the Crime Commission 135 The Kefauver Committee and the Crime Commission 136 INDEX 140 PREFACE The Earl Warren Oral History Project, a five-year project of the Regional Oral History Office, was inaugurated in 1969 to produce tape-recorded interviews with persons prominent in the arenas of politics, governmental ad ministration, and criminal justice during the Warren Era in California. Focusing on the years 1925-1953, the interviews were designed not only to document the life of Chief Justice Warren but to gain new information on the social and political changes of a state in the throes of a depression, then a war, then a postwar boom. An effort was made to document the most significant events and trends by interviews with key participants who spoke from diverse vantage points. Most were queried on the one or two topics in which they were primarily in volved; a few interviewees with special continuity and breadth of experience were asked to discuss a multiplicity of subjects. While the cut-off date of the period studied was October, 1953--Earl Warren s departure for the United States Supreme Courtthere was no attempt to end an interview perfunctorily when the narrator s account had to go beyond that date in order to complete the topic. The interviews have stimulated the deposit of Warreniana in the form of papers from friends, aides, and the opposition; government documents; old movie newsreels; video tapes; and photographs. This Earl Warren collection is being added to The Bancroft Library s extensive holdings on twentieth century Cali fornia politics and history. The project has been financed by four outright grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by gifts from local donors which were matched by the Endowment. Contributors include the former law clerks of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Cortez Society, many long-time supporters of "the Chief," and friends and colleagues of some of the major memoirists in the project. The Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation have jointly sponsored the Northern California Negro Political History Series, a unit of the Earl Warren Project. Particular thanks are due the Friends of The Bancroft Library, who were instrumental in raising local funds for matching, who served as custodian for all such funds, and who then supplemented from their own treasury all local contributions on a one-dollar-for-every-three dollars basis. The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record auto biographical intervies with persons prominent in the history of California and the West. The Office is under the administrative supervision of James D. Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library. Amelia R. Fry, Director Earl Warren Oral History Project Willa K. Baum, Department Head Regional Oral History Office 1 March 1973 Regional Oral History Office 486 The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley ii EARL WARREN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Principal Investigators Ira M. Heyman Lawrence A. Harper Arthur H. Sherry Advisory Council Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Walton E. Bean Richard M. Buxbaum William R. Dennes Joseph P. Harris James D. Hart John D. Hicks* William J. Hill Robert Kenny Adrian A. Kragen Thomas Kuchel Eugene C. Lee Mary Ellen Leary James R. Leiby Helen McGregor Dean E. McHenry Sheldon H. Messinger Frank C. Newman Allan Nevins* Warren Olney, III Bruce Poyer Sho Sato Mortimer Schwartz Merrell F. Small John D. Weaver Project Interviewers Miriam Feingold Amelia R. Fry Joyce A. Henderson Rosemary Levenson Gabrielle Morris Special Interviewers Orville Armstrong Willa K. Baum Malca Chall June Hogan Frank Jones Alice G. King Elizabeth Kirby Harriet Nathan Suzanne Riess Ruth Teiser *Deceased during the term of the project. EARL WARREN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT (California, 1926-1953) Interviews Completed by January 1976 Single Interview Volumes A. Wayne Amerson, Northern California and Its Challenges to a^ Negro in the Mid-1900s . 1974 With an introduction by Henry Ziesenhenne Edwin L. Carty, Hunting, Politics, and the Fish and Game Commission. 1975 C.L. Dellums, International President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Civil Rights Leader. 1973 With an introduction by Tarea Pittman Mclntyre Faries, California Republicans. 1934-1953. 1973 Richard Graves, Theoretician, Advocate, and Candidate in California State Government, 1973 Emily H. Huntington, A Career in .Consumer Economics and Social Insurance. 1971 With an introduction by Charles A. Gulick, Professor of Economics, Emeritus Helen S. MacGregor, A Career in Public Service with Earl Warren. 1973 With an introduction by Earl Warren Richard Allen McGee, Participant in the Evolution of American Corrections: 1931-1973. 1975 With an introduction by Caleb Foote Donald McLaughlin, Careers in Mining Geology and Management, University Governance and Teaching. 1975 With an introduction by Charles Meyer Edgar James Patterson, Governor s Mansion Aide to Prison Counselor. 1975 With an introduction by Merrell F. Small Tarea Pittman, NAACP Official and Civil Rights Worker. 1974 With an introduction by C.L. Dellums Robert B. Powers, Law Enforcement, Race Relations; 1930-1960. 1971 With an introduction by Robert W. Kenny William Byron Rumford, Legislator for Fair Employment, Fair Housing, and Public Health. 1973 With an introduction by A, Wayne Amerson Arthur H. Sherry, The Alameda County District Attorney s Office and the California Crime Commission. 1976 Merrell F. Small, The Office of the Governor Under Earl Warren. 1972 Paul Schuster Taylor, California Social Scientist. Volume I, Education. Field Research, and Family. 1973 With an introduction by Lawrence I. Hewes, Fellow, Center for the Study of Democratic Institu tions, Santa Barbara Volumes II & III, California Water and Agricultural Labor. 1975 With introductions by Paul W. Gates and George M. Foster. Multi-Interview Volumes California State Finance in the 1940 s. 1974 With an introduction by Stanley Scott, Assistant Director, Institute of Governmental Studies Fred Links, An Overview of the Department of Finance. Ellis Groff , Some Details o Public Revenue and Expenditure in the 1940s George Killion, Observations on Culbert Olson, Earl Warren, and Money Matters in Public Affairs. A. Alan Post, Watchdog on State Spending. Paul Leake, Statement on the Board of Equalization. Earl Warren s Bakersfield. 1971 Maryann Ashe and Ruth Smith Henley, Earl Warren 8 Bakersfield. Omar Gavins, Coming of Age in Bakersfield. Francis Vaughan, School Days in Bakersfield. Ralph Kreiser, A Reporter Recollects the Warren Case . Manford Martin and Ernest McMillan, On Methias Warren. Earl Warren and Health Insurance; 1943-1949. 1971 Russel VanArsdale Lee, M.D., Pioneering in Prepaid Group Medicine. Byrl R. Salsman, Shepherding Health Insurance Bills Through the California Legislature . Gordon Claycombe, The Making of_ _a Legislative Committee Study. JohiW. Cline, M.D., California Medical Association Crusade Against Compulsory State Health Insurance. Earl Warren and the State Department of Mental Hygiene . 1973 Frank F. Tallman, M.D. , Dynami cs f Change in S tate Mental Institutions. Portia Bell Hume, M.D., Mother of_ Community Mental Health Services. Earl Warren and the State Department of Public Health. 1973 With an introduction by E.S. Rogers, M.D., Dean, UC School of Public Health, 1946-51. Malcolm H. Merrill, M.D., M.P.H., A Director Reminisces. Frank M. Stead, Environmental Pollution Control. Henry Ongerth, Recollections of the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering. Kent A. Zimmerman, M.D., Mental Health Concepts . Lawrence Arnstein, Public Heal th Advocates and Issues. The Governor and the Public, the Press, and the Legislature. 1973 Marguerite Gallagher, Administrative Procedures in Earl Warren s Office, 1938-1953. Verne Scoggins, Observations .on California Af f ai rs b_y_ Governor Earl Warren s Press Secretary. Beach Vasey, Governor Warren and the Legislature. The Japanese-American Relocation Revi ewe d . 1974 With an introduction by Mike M. Masaoka, Former National Secretary and Washington Representative, Japanese American Citizens League. Volume I Decision and Exodus (In process) Volume II The Internment Robert B. Cozzens, Assistant National Director of the War Relocation Authority. Dillon S. Myer, War Relocation Authority: The Director s Account. Ruth W. Kingman, The Fair Play Committee and Citizen Participation. Hisako Hibi, paintings of Tanforan and Topaz camps. Labor Looks at Earl Warren. 19 70 Germaine Bulcke, A Longshoreman s Observations. Joseph Chaudet, A Printer s View. Paul Heide, A Warehouseman s Reminis cences . U.S. Simonds, A Carpenter s Comments. Ernest H. Vernon, A Machinist s Recollections. Perspectives on the Alameda County District Attorney s Office. 19 72 With an introduction by Arthur H. Sherry, Professor of Law Volume I John F. Mullins, How Earl Warren Became District Attorney. Edith Balaban, Reminiscences about Nathan Harry Miller, Deputy District Attorney, Alameda County . Judge Oliver D. Hamlin, Reminiscences about the Alameda County District Attorney s Office in the 1920 s and 30 s . Mary Shaw, Perspectives of a Newspaperwoman. Willard W. Shea, Recollections .of Alameda County s First Public Defender. Volume II Richard Chamberlain, Reminiscences about the Alameda County District Attorney s Office . Lloyd Jester, Reminiscences of. an Inspector in the District Attorney s Office. Beverly Heinrichs, Reminiscences .of a. Secretary in the District Attorney s Office. Clarence Severin, Chief Clerk in the Alameda County District Attorney s Office. Homer R. Spence, Attorney, Legislator, and Judge. E.A. Daly, Alaroeda County Political Leader and Journalist. John Bruce, _A Reporter Remembers Earl Warren. Volume Til J. Frank Coakley, A Career in_ the Alameda Coun ty District Attorney s Of flee, Albert E. Hederman, Jr., From OTCice^ Boy to Assistant District Attorney. Lowell Jensen, Reflections of the Alameda County District At torncy . James H. Oakley, Early Life of ji Warren Assistant. Earl Warren and the Youth Authority. 1972 With an introduction by Allen F. Breed, Director, California Youth Authority Karl Holton, Developments in Juvenile Correctional Techniques. Kenyon Scudder, Beginnings of Therapeutic Correctional Facilities. Heman Stark, Juvenile Correctional Services and the Community. Kenneth Beam, Community Involvement in Delinquency Prevention. iv INTERVIEW HISTORY Arthur H. Sherry, professor of law and criminology at the University of California at Berkeley, was Interviewed for the Earl Warren Project of the Regional Oral History Office In order to capture his reminiscences of the Alameda County District Attorney s office In the 1930 s and 19^0 s and of the California Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime. Dates of Interview February 24- , 1971; Interviewer, Miriam Peingold Sessions : March 12, 1971? Interviewers, Miriam Feingold and Amelia Fry June 22, 1973; interviewer, Amelia Fry Conduct of the Interview: The interview sessions, each lasting about two hours, were held in Professor Sherry s office, School of Law building (Boalt Hall), Berkeley. Professor Sherry sat behind his large, tidy desk on which the microphone was placed. He listened intently to questions, or sometimes took his cue from the outline submitted before each session, then answered. His words flowed unhesitatingly, with an easy articulation that comes from a mind that can synthesize ideas rapidly. He followed the outline closely, frequently enriching his story with descriptions of cases and related events. Editing: Editing of the transcribed, taped interview was done by the interviewers. Minor rearrangements of material were made to maintain continuity of the discussion without interrupting its Informal quality. .Professor Sherry very carefully reviewed the edited text, correcting several minor points and adding explanatory comments. Narrative Account of the Since the Inception of the Earl Warren Project, Interview: Arthur Sherry, as a professor of law and criminology, has served as one of its advisors and principal investigators, and has given the Project staff invaluable assistance. One of his contributions is the Introduction he wrote to the three-volume collection of Project interviews on "Perspectives of the Alameda County District Attorney s Office." He was therefore well acquainted with the purposes of the Project and gladly consented to be Interviewed, Arthur Sherry s career Intersected Earl Warren s at several points. Their first and longest association was when Mr. Sherry served as a deputy district attorney In Warren s office. Later, in the 19^0* s, he served on Governor Warren s Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime. Professor Sherry begins the interview with a careful account of how his grandparents came to California. He himself was born In 1908 in Berkeley and began his education in the Berkeley public schools. He attended high school and college at St. Mary s. It was a visiting speaker at St. Mary s College who interested him in law by making law "sound just one of the most difficult, awful things you could ever think of," a description the young Sherry found hard to believe. He enrolled at Boalt Hall and graduated in 1932. Professor Sherry gives a vivid account of the problems that faced a young man Just out of law school during the Depression. He picked up odd Jobs in law whenever he could and, following the advice of an older colleague, eventually applied for a Job at the Alameda County District Attorney s office. There were seldom vacancies, but Earl Warren had Instituted a system of hiring deputies without pay until a spot opened up. In this way Arthur Sherry Joined the staff in 1933. In relating how he learned the office ropes, Pro fessor Sherry draws a detailed picture of personnel training, a process he himself later supervised when Ralph Hoyt was district attorney. In late 1933 i having completed his training, Sherry was transferred from the main office to the Oakland City Hall office. It was here that he stumbled into his first big case, an Insurance fraud case a type of case then common and saw his name for the first time in the headlines. As a result of his success with the insurance fraud case, Sherry was put in charge of the Berkeley prosecuting attorney s office. He gives a vivid account in the interview of his responsibilities vl there, which included maintaining good relations with a difficult police chief and visiting the scenes of crimes at any hour of the day or night to collect statements. Professor Sherry describes several of the more important cases he handled there. The descriptions of his work shed valuable light on the effectiveness of organization of the district attorney s office. He points out the educative value of the daily staff meetings, the important functions served by the inspectors, and the effect of Warren s procedural rules on the speed with which cases were tried. In commenting on procedures of criminal investiga tion, Professor Sherry notes that Warren s office was "a long way ahead of Miranda . " I Miranda v. Arizona re: right of accused to be Informed of his rights! Warren insisted that deputies inform suspects or their right to see an attorney arid their right to silence. Warren also did not approve of the use of hidden listening devices. During his later years in the district attorney s office, Sherry assumed the Job of legislative lobbyist in Sacramento, representing district attorneys statewide, a position previously held first by J. Frank Coakley, then Richard Chamberlain, then Cecil Mosbacher. Professor Sherry describes the highlights of the more Important cases during his years in the office. His comments range over graft and gambling cases, labor disputes, murder and kidnapping cases, and Japanese removal. In concluding his remarks on the district attorney s office, Professor Sherry briefly evaluates Earl Warren as district attorney and compares the administration of Warren with that of Ralph Hoyt and J. Prank Coakley. Turning his attention to the California Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime, Professor Sherry explains how it was first created in 19^7 under authorization by the Penal Code. Its main target was organized crime in Southern California. vii The Commission was part of Governor Earl Warren f s attempt to standardize and coordinate law enforce ment throughout the state. The Commission, headed by Admiral Standley, rapidly outgrew its designation as a study body, and found itself an operational agency instead. It opened its doors in early 19^-8, and soon thereafter, Professor Sherry relates, began receiving rumors that the attorney general s office, under Frederick N. Howser, was extorting money from gamblers. Confronted with this information, Howser failed to take action, resulting in a series of prosecutions of the gamblers and of Howser* s agents. Professor Sherry first entered the work of the Crime Commission in late 19^8, when he was persuaded by Governor Earl Warren and Warren Olney, the Crime Commission s counsel, to leave his post at the DA s office and become special prosecutor in Mendoclno, California, in a slot machine racket protections prosecution of one of Howser s agents. The trial, "the Watergate of its time," as Professor Sherry describes it, lasted thirty days, and resulted in conviction. Professor Sherry describes Howser* s indignant reaction, and his effort to sabotage the trial. Shortly thereafter, in 194-9 , Professor Sherry relates, Warren Olney invited him to join the staff of the Commission, a position he accepted and held for almost two years. He describes the Commission s efforts to encourage local law enforcement agencies to prosecute law breakers uncovered by the Commission, and discusses how that body actually functioned. He also describes the resistance encountered in the state legislature to legislative attempts to curb gambling. In describing the Commission s Job, Professor Sherry relates several of his adventures, including the accidental discovery of Howser s "bag man;" plugging the leak from the Commission to the pressj and uncovering falsification of records. In assessing Howser s role in the crime commission, he describes Howser s background as a defense attorney vlll for underworld Interests and relates the appre hension with which the law enforcement community viewed Howser s election. Professor Sherry relates how Howser recruited his organization, how it func tioned, and how his deputies were retrained once he was out of office. In discussing the Mafia and organized crime in California, Professor Sherry asserts that the Mafia is a fiction, and that organized crime is primarily controlled by individual groups with little relation to each other. He describes the Mickey Cohen and Dragna organzations in Southern California, noting that they resorted on occasion to "typical Mafia-type retaliation" murders. Organized crime does, however, have an influence on elections, he says, although its exact Impact Is unknown because of the lack of campaign contri bution disclosure laws In the past. In assessing the Impact of the Crime Commission, Professor Sherry relates that large scale gambling is now virtually unknown in California. Slot machines and rackets are gone, and off-track betting is now a relatively small operation. More important, gaming operators are small-time and unorganized. In concluding his remarks, Professor Sherry describes the cooperation extended by the California Crime Commission to the Kefauver Committee, investigating organized crime nationwide. A copy of the Final Report of the Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime, 1950, Is filed with the copy of this interview in The Bancroft Library. Miriam Peingold, Interviewer 7 August 1973 Regional Oral History Office 466 The Bancroft Library University of California at Berkeley Arthur H. Sherry Principal Investigator BIOGRAPHY Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley A.B. 1929, St. Mary s College LL.B. 1932, University of California, Berkeley Admitted to practice, California, 1932 U.S. Supreme Court, 1952 FCC, 1952 Deputy District Attorney, Alameda County, California, 1933-41 Assistant District Attorney, Alameda County, California, 1946-49 Assistant Counsel, California Crime Study Commission, 1949-51 Chief Assistant Attorney General California, 1951-53, 1959 Professor, University of California School of Law and School of Criminology, since 1953. Acting Dean, School of Criminology, 1960-61 Author, Manual Law of Arrest . 1957 Plan for Survey of Administration of Criminal Justice (with John A. Pettis, Jr.) 1955 Member: American Society of Criminology, American Academy of Forensic Sciences Project Director, American Bar Foundation Survey of Administration of Criminal Justice, 1953-57 U.S.A. F., 1942-1945 Chairman, California Advisory Committee on Criminal Statistics, since 1954 Member, A.L.I. Model Penal Code Advisory Committee, 1956-62 ABF Special Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice, since 1958 Project Director, Revision of California Penal Code, since 1964 Arthur Harnett Sherry The Tribune PIEDMONT - A Mass will be said Thursday for Arthur Har nett Sherry, former University of California, Berkeley, profes sor of law and criminology and Alameda County deputy district attorney, who died yesterday. He was 76. Sherry, a lifelong resident of the Bay Area who lived in Pied mont, died at Merritt Hospital of complications from a stroke he suffered five weeks ago. He had been in a coma since then. A graduate of St. Mary s Col lege in Moraga in 1929 and the University of California at Berkeley s Boa It Hall School of Law in 1932, Sherry served a long and distinguished career that spanned more than 50 years. His friends included Chief Jus tice Earl Warren and former California Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown. Sherry was a deputy district attorney for Alameda County in the 1930s and 1940s. From 1948 to 1951, he served as special prosecutor and assist ant counsel to the California Special Study Commission on Organized Crime. Sherry also served as special prosecutor in an important or ganized crime case of the era, a slot-machine protection racket in Mendocino County that in volved agents of the lieutenant governor. He later became a member of the organized crime commis sion. Sherry joined the UC faculty in 1953. Adrian Kragen, a UC Berkeley professor and long-time friend of Sherry, remembered his col league as an expert on criminal law and the judicial system. In 1964, Sherry was appointed by a joint legislative committee to draft a new penal code. It was the most comprehensive over haul of the state s criminal laws since its enactment in 1872. Sherry, in 1964, foresaw at tacks on the modern standards of the insanity defense. "He was committed to the in tegrity of the legal system," Kragen said. "He wanted things done the straight way." After his retirement in 1976, Sherry published memoirs of his work with Warren. Sherry is survived by his wife Mary Ellen Leary, former po litical editor of the San Francis co News and the West Coast cor respondent for The Economist Arthur H. Sherry Distinguished legal career Sherry of Sacramento, Judith Sherry de Carbonel of Orinda and Virginia Bellitini of San Ra fael. Donations in Sherry s memory may be sent to scholarship funds of St. Mary s College scholarship or Boalt Hall. The Mass will be said at 10 a.m. at St. Francis De Sales Ca thedral in Oakland. Oakland Tribune June 30, 1986 San Francisco Chronicle June 30, 1986 Arthur H. Sherry Arthur H. Sherry, retired Uni versity of California law professor and prominent prosecuting attor ney, died yesterday at Merritt Hos pital in Oakland from complications after a stroke. Mr. Sherry, who was 78 and lived in Piedmont, taught for many years at both UC law schools, Boalt Hall in Berkeley and Hastings in San Francisco. He was married to Mary Ellen Leary Sherry, a prominent San Francisco journalist and political editor of the old San Francisco News. After graduation from Boalt Hall in 1932, Mr. Sherry joined the Alameda County district attorney s office, then headed by Earl Warren, I who would become California gov ernor, then chief justice of the Unit ed States. Mr. Sherry later was an assis tant state attorney general and chief criminal deputy under Attor ney General Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr., who also became gover nor. In 1953, he was named by the American Bar Association as execu tive director of a national study on the administration of criminal jus tice. In addition to his wife, Mr. Sherry is survived by three daugh ters, Suzanne Sherry of Sacramen to, Judith deCarbonel of Lafayette and Virginia Bellettini of San Ra fael, and by six grandchildren. A rosary will be recited at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Bay View Cha pel, 2414 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated Thursday at St. Francis de Sales Cathedral, 635 22nd Street, Oakland. The family prefers donations to the St. Mary s College Scholarship Fund and Boalt Hall Scholarship Fund. n _! >! r\t I PERSONAL BACKGROUND [Interview I, February 24, 1971. Interviewed by Miriam Felngold.] Family MF: Why don t you begin by telllmg me a bit about your family and where they came from? Sherry: Gee, that s a long story. Well, my grandfather, Bernard Sherry, was born in Rochester, New York, and was married there. My oldest uncle, his first child, was bom there. Then he came around to San Francisco as a ship s carpenter. He was a wheelwright in Rochester, which of course is making wooden wheels for wagons and that kind of thing. He worked for a while as a teamster on the waterfront in San Francisco. Then together with some other men, he started the first soda cracker factory that San Francisco ever had. MF: What years are we talking about? Sherry: We must be talking, so far as I can tell we haven t got any accurate family records but this has to be 1868, 18?0, somewhere in that neighborhood. After he had made good, then he sent for my grand mother and their oldest child, John. By that time they had that rather precarious railroad service across the Isthmus of Panama, so she sailed down to Cristobal and then across to Panama by the railroad that existed then and then by vessel up the coast to San Francisco. After that, my father and a number of other children were bom to the family. That s the Sherry family. Sherry: Now, my grandmother on my mother s side was Irish- bom and emigrated to New Zealand. Her name was Honorah Burke. In New Zealand she met William Harnett. We do not know how he got there, but he came from Ireland, and there is some reason to believe in the family that he came across the plains to California and then on to New Zealand. In any event, they met there and had an elopement from Wellington to Benlcia, California, on a sailing vessel, and arrived here. My mother thereafter was born in Benicla. The house is still there. I think it s on Third Street, where this all happened. Then my grandfather expanded his business Interests and ultimately became associated with a man named Manuel Preitas In dairy products, butter manufacturing and that sort of thing in San Francisco and my uncles my father and his two brothers kind of drifted into that business. Ultimately it became Sherry Brothers and continued operation until it was killed off by the depression In 1930 or 31i around in there. My mother was born in Benicla. She went to what was then called San Francisco or State Normal School, which has now become San Francisco State University. I think she was one of its earliest graduates. She went Into school teaching and taught up on the Mendocino coast and In Sacramento, and met my father on a blind date after a baseball game in Benicla. He was a baseball player for a semi-pro league in those days. She and my father first settled in San Francisco and then came to Berkeley after the fire and earthquake, where I was born In 1908 on Grove Street. So I m Berkeley- bom , which makes me somewhat unusual as a native Calif omian. MF: What kind of education did your father have? Sherry: My father went through high school and some business college. He was terribly Interested in baseball. A number of his chums went on and became major league stars, but my grandfather got hold of him one time and asked him what he was going to do, play baseball or try to make a career In business, so he opted to go into the business and then went to business college. He didn t have any academic college education at all. After the business closed down, my father went Into the real estate business here on the East Bay. Sherry: MF: Sherry: Except for the war years, when he wound up as a production supervisor for Bethlehem Steel Company building ships during the war, he was in real estate until his retirement. Is he still alive? Oh no. No, he died in 1953. in *61. My mother is dead too, Education MF: So now we have you born. Sherry: Yes. The first school I went to was the Emerson School, which is Just down south of the campus. Then, after first grade, the John Muir school opened and I started there in the second grade, and went through grammar school, and then high school at St. Mary s College High School it was called in those days. After finishing there I went on and graduated from St. Mary s College with the class of 1929. MF: Didn t former district attorney J. Frank Coakley go there too? Sherry: Yes. He went there, but he s been almost everywhere. He went there, he went to Stanford, he went to University of California law school. I knew his brother Tom, who has Just retired from the court of appeal. He was Just a year ahead of me at St. Mary s College, and then at Boalt Hall later we were contemporaries. He had stayed out a year before he came to study law. MF: You knew him when he was playing in the band? Sherry: Oh yes, I should say. He stayed out the year because he got a contract to play in the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood . MF: That s quite an honor! Sherry: So he took a year out to do that and then decided he better return to law school. But then he played hal the band going all the time he was going to law school, and then afterwards when he was admitted to the bar he began his practice by representing sherry i MPt Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: Sherry: doing mainly the legal work as counsel for enter tainers of one kind or another. He was very successful, and went into a general law practice thereafter. Did you have any brothers or sisters? I have one brother. He also graduated from St. Mary s College, but he didn t do any graduate work. He was very Interested in travel and that kind of thing. He started to work for a travel bureau here in Berkeley, and then joined the Luce Publications before the war. I guess he was assigned a time in the San Francisco office. After his wartime service in the Navy he came back again and worked for the Luce Publications again. He recently retired as one of the executive persons of Time Life International. He spent most of his career overseas, In France, Central Europe, and. then his last assignment was in Mexico City for Central and South America operations. He s now retired and in New York, and thinking of moving out to Mexico City again. It s too expensive in New York. ("Laughter] I can think of a few other things it s too much of In New York too! What did you say his name was? Noel. Getting back to your own education, what were you primarily Interested in in school? You mean in undergraduate work? Well, I guess I never liked the idea of a major and at St. Mary s it was a pretty wide open curriculum. We could pick and choose pretty much. So I would say the concentration was largely in philosophy and history. Those were my chief Interests and, outside of law, remained so. Do you remember any of your teachers particularly? Oh, I think I could remember all of them, almost all of them. The names won t mean much because they were Christian Brothers and they used religious names. Brother Leo was a great scholar in literature, Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: particularly English literature, and something of a philosopher in those days.* He was a very, very distinguished teacher and an inspiring one in English. By God, after about two or three months in his general class as a freshman, I got all inspired and a friend of mine and I went out together and had a competition trying to read all of the Victorian novelists, all Dickens, all Thackeray, all Swift. And we did. How long did that take you? Oh, it took a year or so I guess. But we kept at it. We didn t read anything else. So he was quite a teacher. Then I had a lay teacher on the faculty then, James L. Haggerty, who was quite a distinguished man in his day here in the field of philosophy. The others were "Brother so-and-so" and that sort of thing, but those two, Leo and Haggerty, were the two great stars on the faculty, in those days. If I remember correctly, Mr. Coakley talked about Brother Leo also. Sherry: Oh yes. Yes. He was a very, very outstanding guy. Law School MF: Then what interested you in law? Sherry t Well, it s hard to say. I actually didn t have much idea of what to do at all. My class was the class of 1929. The depression broke that year, in October, but my parents, having been overjoyed that I finally made it through college, sent me off to Europe and I had a *He retired from the Christian Brothers and the chancellorship of St. Mary s in the mid nineteen thirties to a literary career under the family name, Dr. Francis Meethan. Sherry: three or four month summer tour, third class trip In Europe, the kind of thing that youngsters today do In very large numbers, as you probably know. We were Just over there In 19&9 and gosh, It was Just swarming with college kids. But It wasn t so usual In those days. MF: Oh yes. Your parents must have had enough money to Sherry: Well, you know, It really didn t take very much. I remember that my father gave me a thousand dollars. He said he would invest that much in It, and I came home and gave him two hundred dollars back, and I had a wonderful time. The most expensive thing was the railroad trip from here across to New York to board the vessel. You could travel there was a book, a popular book, like these Fielding s Guides and the Five- Dollars-a-Day in Europe, then called Through Europe on Two Dollars a Day two dollars in American currency, because of the unsettled conditions following World War I there, from which Europe didn t recover for a long , long while. Your money would buy an awful lot of foreign money. You could pay your travel expenses and your living expenses inside of two dollars a day with ease. Very simple. MF: What sort of places would you stay? Sherry: Oh, we d stay at pensions, generally that type of place, or small hotels, and travel third class on the railroad, which was very inexpensive. Of course, that s still a bargain to travel. MF: Yes, that must have been quite an important part of your education. Sherry: So, when I came I had been thinking of what to do. I didn t want to work in the sense of working in business. I d done a lot of summertime work, everything from lumber camps to service stations and that kind of thing. We had had a kind of vocational series of lectures in our senior year, in which graduates of the school would come back from the various professions and businesses and that kind of thing, and talk to the class about a career in business, or a profession, or whatever it might be. One 01 them was a lawyer, and about all he did was to say, "It s a very, very difficult Sherry: subject. Only a very few people can do It, and it s awfully tough and very demanding, and it takes ten years before you can even earn a living at it when you get out into practice." He made law sound Just one of the most rugged, difficult, awful things you could ever think of, and I just didn t believe him. So I thought, "Well, you know that s an idea." I began to think about studying law, and the idea of going to graduate school and law fit together quite well. I could have gone to Harvard if I d wanted to. I remember coming back from Europe in the fall, and I went up to Cambridge and got in there. I was traveling then all alone. Before then one of my school chums had been with me most of the time. I got in there by the side of Langdell Hall there one cool, kind of dark, afternoon In August, and I took one look at the place and walked down to the nearest telegraph office and told my mother to enroll me in Boalt. Cambridge was dark and forbidding, and I didn t know anyone there. I guess I was homesick at that time. So I came back and started here and finished here in 32. MF: Were you Interested then in any particular kind of law? Sherry: No. I became very Interested In it once I got started In it and discovered what it was all about. There isn t much opportunity even now to do any kind of specialization in law, nor is it wise. There is so much that you have to know in law school that it s necessary to cover as wide a spectrum as you can, particularly since you don t know what your opportunities are going to be. MF: Yes, that s true. Sherry: There isn t any point really to endeavor to specialize to the extent that you can in law school, let s say In tax law, or family law, or whatever It might be, because when the opportunity turns up, the one that you want to take may be In some other kind of an area, a different kind of practice. You just narrow your opportunities by specializing, I think. Of course, there are some students who are unusual , who because of prior experience or I don t know what inspiration, whatever it may be know exactly what they want to do and pursue it with a kind of single- Sherry: minded purpose, and they get there. But they re unusual, most unusual. MP: Do you remember any or the professors here? Sherry: Sure. All of them. MF: Which ones particularly struck you? Sherry: Well, Orin Kip McMurray was dean of course at that time, and Max Radin was here, and Ballantine, and Langmald, and "Captain Kidd" [Alexander Marsden Kidd] of course was teaching the criminal law course. MP: I didn t realize he taught here. Sherry: Oh yes, he was one of the oldest men on the faculty. Then when I came back to the school, he was still here but he was retired at that time. He wasn t teaching. Warren Perrier, Barbara Armstrong, who was still around taught me what was then called community property law. We didn t use the name "family lam" at that point. It was called community property law. It was & kind of community property, family law course. Roger Traynor taught I had two courses from him. George Costigan was the teacher in contracts. He was excellent of course. MF: Who taught criminal law? Sherry t Kidd. He was the only one. That s about it. It was a twelve-man faculty, something like that, at that time, to a student body of maybe three hundred or so. It was an entirely different kind of experience than now, because then they followed the Harvard pattern, which was a very rugged kind of a procedure that grew out of the fact that Just about anybody who had a degree, a college degree, was eligible for admission, so classes were admitted that were fairly large. They were almost twice as large as the classes that graduated. There would be a tremendous attrition usually at the end of the first year. My class started I think with about 150 students and we graduated something like sixty-two or sixty-three, about that number. It was simply a "sink or swim" Sherry: proposition. Nobody took you by the hand or gave you Introductory courses to law or anything of that sort, or even showed you how to write a brief. I never talked to a professor after class, except in circumstances where I was In trouble over something, that was the only time you talked to a teacher. There wasn t any of this "one to one" teaching that we have today at all. You just went through this institution and if you passed your examinations, okay, and if you didn t, out you went . That was all . MF: Did they use the case method? Sherry: Yes, a very, very rigid, very tough case law method of teaching. Much more emphasis on case method than now. Since those days there has been a good deal of criticism of the case system. At thai; time it was a fresh new kina of thing. The idea of not reading law out of textbooks, that kind of thing, but dealing actually with the decisions of the courts was considered to be a very innovative kind of thing. All the teachers, all the faculty had been recruited from the best law schools in the country in those days the university could go out and buy who it wanted. There wasn t any problem about money at all. In a very short time they created an extremely strong faculty at Boalt Hall. By the same token, they were all people of about the same age level, and some years later, why they almost all retired or died, you know, at the same time, which was quite a blow to the school. They were a good strong faculty. They were very, very bright, very strong teachers. But emphasis was on case method, and you briefed your cases and responded in class to them. That s aoout all you ever talked about. MF: Was there anything like internship work that you could do in a law office? Sherry: No. No. Nothing at all. It wasn t even thought about. It wasn t even considered. By that time of course, depression had hit and times were very tough. The students who were graduating 10 Sherry: ahead of me were coming back with stories about difficul ties In getting Jobs In law offices big firms were discharging people by the dozens you know. There were lawyers who were practicing out of their homes so they could keep up the payments, or practicing you know in the streets actually, or hanging around courtrooms and looking for court appointments and that kind of thing. In law school it was harder and harder for students to get work, any kind of work. My father had always insisted that except when I was in school I pay my own way, so, you know, when summer vacation came I was expected to go out and go to work at something, and so I did. I did a lot of things. It was a great exper- inece. MF: What kind of things did you do? Sherry: Well, I began working on summer vacations for Standard Oil service stations it was called then, back I guess In about 1926 or 27 that s a long, long time ago in a service station down at Shafter and College as an air and water boy. I was in high school, and you wore a brown overall kind of thing, a Jumper business, and all you could do was to inflate tires or put water in radiators, you know, wipe- the-wlndshi eld thing. That was your bit. $75 a month. Good money. I would work in summers after that; I worked up so that I was senior salesman, all that kind of thing, operating stations, all in this area. In my two law school summer vacations I went to sea. That was Just wonderful. MFi As a seaman? Sherry: Yes. Ordinary seaman. I sailed here first on the S.S. President Johnson , which went around the world in three months and twenty- one days. Each semester was three months and twenty-one days, and summer session, inter- session, was three months and twenty-one days, so if you caught it right you know, you could use every day. That was a lot of fun. After the first trip, that s one of the reasons I took a course in admiralty, which I liked very much, when I got back. One of my classmates was the great Melvin Belli. 11 MF: Oh yes! Sherry: Because he went to sea too. MF: So you graduated from law school In 1932? Sherry: The class of 1932. Yes. Early Legal Experience MF: After graduating from law school what did you do? Sherry: Well, I began studying for the bar. That was the big thing that you did in those days. They had only one bar review course and that was Bernard Witklns* course, Wltkins 1 bar review course. But I, In common with several of us, Instead of taking the review course, we bought "Wltklns Summary," as It was called. That was a mimeographed survey or summary of California law, and four or five of us studied that on our own. We d read It and read all of the cases and talk about the thing. We couldn t afford the bar review course anyway. We didn t think it was necessary. I still don t think it is, as a matter of fact. I think this way is Just as good as any other. But it worked anyway, and then we had a lucky break. The father of one of the young men, one of my classmates who has since died, was doing some political campaigning. How he got into I don t know, but he was involved in the campaign that enacted the Constitutional amendment to permit horseracing in California, and we served in that campaign . I guess I got about a month s work out of that thing, $5 a day. That was very good indeed. Then of course the bar examination was in August. I guess we were admitted and got the good news in October sometime. It was while I was campaigning actually that I got the news. The letter was there. Then, you know, what do you do? My father was acquainted with lots of lawyers. Judge Atheam was a 12 Sherry: next door neighbor of Atheam, Farmer, Chandler and Devlin. Athearn was a former corporation commissioner and actually had been a teacher at San Francisco Normal School when my mother was there. She had known him from that far back, and Mrs. Athearn also had been a teacher, so as neighbors we were fairly close. But that, or any of my father s golfing companions and the rest of It, didn t do me any good. Times were just tough, and very few people were getting placed. Ths Law Review fellows for the most part did get Jobs but it was a long pull before everybody settled. Ultimately those of us who went through it, most of them got along and have done very, very well Indeed in the practice of law. Folger Emerson, now Judge Emerson, was in the class ahead of mine, and Folger had the same kind of problem. He d been out a year and had not been able to get anyplace at all. He had latched onto the Legal Aid Society Office, the Alameda County Legal Aid, which was then and for many years under the direction of a lawyer as an adjunct to his private practice. Sam Wagener is still active in Alameda County Law, a very, very distinguished guy. He was president of the State Ear, and has been on the board of directors of the State Bar for a long while. Folger was there, and I ran into him one day, bumming around looking for something to do. I d been doing some legal work in connection with the winding up of my father s business in San Francisco, mostly trying to collect bills and that kind of thing. He- suggested I go. At least I d have a place to hang my hat and the use of a telephone, and occasional secre tarial assistance, and a magnificent general practice, with no money. I did that, and if we could pick up any private practice that was fine. The secretary would do whatever typing we needed. We made our own arrangements for paying her extra for that kind of work. It turned out to be a very good opportunity because I joined the local bar, the county bar right away. I believe I ve been a member of that bar since 1933 now. That s a long while. Through that, I got an opportunity, mostly at 13 Sherry: meetings, of meeting the lawyers. It wasn t a very large bar four or five hundred lawyers at that time from all over the county. It was a good way of getting acquainted. II THE ALAMEDA COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY S OFFICE Joining the Office Sherry i Then quite fortuitously, I guess it must have been in the late fall of 32, or it might have been the early part of 1933, we had some kind of litigation, a case that Folger and I were working on . A lawyer in town named Ralph Coffee, who was a friend of my fathers , was representing one of the parties. I had to serve a notice on him. It was a very nominal kind of thing. I called at his office and gave him this thing. He started chatting, you know, what-am-I doing kind of thing. He said, "Why don t you Join the D.A. s office? Earl Warren s looking for guys out of law school, "that sort of thing. Well, I had been tramping around to law offices in San Francisco and Alameda County, Just hours and hours you know, during all of this time. Partners would always be very pleasant. They d give me time and talk. They d be as encouraging as they can, show you the library, introduce you to the other, partners and say how terrible it was, they wished they could give us a Job right now, "Why, if we only had a desk here, you could sit down, but no, no pay" and that kind of thing. So, there I was, when he said that, "Why don t you go down and see Earl Warren or write him a letter or something like that." I said, "Well, gee, I ve been around an awful lot of places. That s a nice idea." I was Just kind of noncommittal. He said, "Well, ask him about It." I don t know, I think he phoned me sometime later and snld, "You go ahead and write that letter to Earl 15 Sherry: Warren about yourself and what you want to do and that sort of thing." I said, "Yes." I was still anticipating that the same kind of thing would happen. So I pro crastinated. I didn t. Other things were bothering me. At one of the bar association meetings Coffee was there. He got up and came across the room and said, "Why the hell haven t you sent that letter in to Earl? He s been asking for it." Well, what that means is he d been lobbying me down there. So I did write the letter, and of course nothing happened. Until I came back to the office one time and the secretary was there, Jumping up and down, and said, "Mrs. Biedsoe, the district attorney s secretary, wants you to call her." So I called, and she said, "Can you come down to the office tomorrow afternoon or whatever it was at about four or five o clock?" something like that I said, "Sure, I ll be there." So, that was it. I went down and of course are there pictures around of the old courthouse at all at Fifth and Broadway? Have you got any of those in the archives? MF: I haven t seen any, no. Sherry: Well, that was a remarkable old wooden, typical kind of classic federal public building, architecture style, of that day, down at Fifth and Broadway, which was then a terrible neighborhood, where Jack London square is now. There were these big concrete aggregate places and barges came up the estuary. It was all very heavy industrial, with these two railroad tracks running through. So the town was really right on the edge of this old decayed part of town. It was one of the oldest parts of town. The courthouse was an old building, and It had ramshackle additions put on to It to accomodate courtrooms. I think originally It might have had four courtrooms, two downstairs and two on the upstairs level. But in any event it was an old wooden building, and you went up a high flight of steps from the sidewalk, way up high. It had a sub-basement, and was about twenty feet high I guess off the ground, and then into this brown linoleum floor hallway and a flight of steps going up to the second floor again. It was an enormous climb to get up to the second floor. 16 Sherry: The district attorney s office occupied the north side of the building, which had been two courtrooms and had been converted into offices. They were the most shabbily built and contrived places you ever saw In your life. One of them, for example, was built on In addition to Earl Warren s one big office and his secretary s office. tfe used to have a funny name for it, called the bird s neso or something like that. Between one addition to the building and the old wing of the building next door, was kind of a space about, oh, twenty feet wide, two walls up. What they did was build a platform from one to the other, like a bridge you see, and enclose it, a room, hanging in air like that, you know? It was the craziest thing you ever saw. Well, that was Earl Warren s private retreat when he wanted to get away he d go out in that silly little thing. If there had been an earthquake you know, those walls would have gone right down. It would have just dropped right to the bottom. He had what had been a courtroom as his office. Mrs. Bledsoe was in the receptionist s area, which I think had been a jury room at one time. Then you d walk Into the office which was enormous, you know, courtroom size, with a very very high ceiling and a great big open space with nondescript chairs, all around the walls. These I found out later were for the staff meetings which were held there. The man was there seated at a comer at the far end of the room, which reminded me later on of the stories about Mussolini and the similar kind of a set-up I suppose for different purposes. Anyway that was quite a march across the room. He was very friendly, as usual, and exerted his great charm. We had a very pleasant conversation. What he was doing at that time was Just sizing me up. I got into the personnel recruitment business for that office thereafter, and I know how it was done. He knew about all he really needed to know about me, except to talk to me. That was what he wanted to do. He explained what the rigors of the situation were, that he was limited by a salary ordinance which specified each position, you see, and the compensation for it. He could only appoint people to vacancies as they occurred. He says, "Not very many vacancies occur here these days . " Sherry: MF: Sherry: And they didn t. That was a good place to stay. You could have private practice; there was no restriction against it. But it was very tightly controlled. You could never do any private practice on office time at all . It was all on your own on Saturdays or evenings or that kind of thing. Even if it were Saturdays or evenings, if there was something else more important, like a trial you had for the office, you devoted all of your time to the office thing. The Income from private practice for most of us there was a very slight amount. It didn t amount to very much. Well, he explained all that kind of thing, and then told me about his business of appointing deputies to serve at his pleasure without compensation, and indicating that there were a couple of others there in that status at that time. So I might have an opportunity to have one of those appointments. Would I be interested in that? I said I would be, and that was all. I walked out, and it was quite an experience, but gee whiz, you know, "I ll never hear from him again!" I almost forgot about it completely. It was out of my mind, when once again the telephone rang. Mrs. Bledsoe: "Can you report for an appointment to the office for an appointment as deputy district attorney?", I guess on a Monday morning or something. "By gosh! Boy, I am a deputy district attorney!" [Laughter] That was quite a thing. At least, although no money, you know, a title, an officer of the govern ment and all that kind of thing. I was 1 pretty young at this point, twenty-three or twenty-four I guess. But I went down, and into the office again and he told me, "Congratulations. You re on the thing, and you re going to report to Ralph Hoyt." He was chief assistant subsequently judge of the superior court. Ralph headed up the civil side of the court, performed the functions that the county counsel does. But he also ran the personnel. He was very good at that. Warren didn t bother about that much. I didn t realize that, that that was Hoyt s responsibility, Yes. He was the one who looked after the hired help, Sherry: and saw to it that people s promotions were not over looked and that the pay raises were taken care of, and all of these kinds of things. MF: He d break new people in, too? Sherry: Oh yes. He was in charge of what was a very, very elaborate training program they had at that time. You know, you talk about all these loyalty oaths ejid all the forms you sign these days when you take public employment. At that time the district attorney handed me a certificate, a fancily printed thing about a four by six piece of paper, which said, "I have appointed so-and-so deputy district attorney to serve at my pleasure without compensation. Earl Warren, District Attorney." He told me, "You take this and go across the street to the Hall of Records and find the county clerk over there to swear you in." Well, gosh, I was bewildered. "What does all of this mean?" I d been in the Hall or Records. That s where the Welfare Building now is. It was an old Victorian brick building, an enormous rabbit warren oi a place. The county clerk s office was, as you came in, it was right near a great big U-shaped counter, and you walked into the middle of it. It was always filled with people: lawyers filing papers and people inquiring about marriage certificates, and people registering to vote. A very busy scene. The county clerk was a man named Wade, a very fine man. MF: Oh, yes. Sherry: Chick Wade they called him. I got to know him very, very well. He became a very good friend. He was a big, imposing looking man with much charm and personality, I came walking in the door with this thing in my hand, and he knew precisely what I was there for. He said, "Stand back, everybody! Stand back! We re going to swear in a public servant for Alameda County!" All these people stand back, you know, and look in awe and wonder. I came up, and he said, "Now, Arthur, hold up your right hand." Not a friend or anything, you know, Just people. 19 Sherry: That was the greatest thrill of my life. "I swear to support and defend the constitution," etc. He shook my hand and said, "Congratulations." Gee, I walked out on ten feet of cloud. [Laughter] I ll never forget it . MF: Do you still have that certificate? Sherry: It s on file down there someplace. MF: I see. You handed it in. Sherry: Yes. He kept it. He puts it in the file. So that was that, and right away I was to report to Mr. Hoyt. Do you want me to go on, on that training program? MF: Yes I ao. In fact, I was just going to ask you about that. I m very interested in that. Learning the Ropes Sherry: Well, that s the nert thing that you got. You reported to Ralph and Ralph outlined what was going to happen . He said I was going to have a reading program, and at the end of the reading program I would get a research problem to see if I could solve it, if I had really learned at Boalt Hall how to do this legal research stuff and that kind of thing. Then he said, "There after if everything is going along all right, you ll be appointed as a junior to go with one of the regular trial staff people for a while. You ll begin to see what the trial work is all about." There were about three or four mimeographed pages. Let me see what it required you to read. First of all you were required to read the code, the annotated code. Kerr s Cyclopedic Code, that s what it was called. This was a very, very good code, a penal code. It was very good. It s still today the best code I know of to go back if you want to find historical history of code sections. It was very good on that. As a matter of fact, that s the best history there is if you want to find out anything, say, prior to i860 or something like that. Oh, prior to 1900, or 1906. That s the best source of materials. Well, in any 20 Sherry: event reading a penal code that s quite a Job. Not the most exciting thing in the world. MF: fLaughter] I can imagine. Sherry: So I manfully went all the way through that, and then there were other things to read. Wellman s Art of Cross-Examination , and you know some of these more or less standard "how to do it" books and that kind of thing. MF: Did you have to read any books on evidence? Sherry: No. Presumably I was acquainted in the law of evidence. You never learn anything by reading about it. You have to evidence is something you can learn the theory of in law school, but its utility, its use, you learn by doing. It f s like studying to be a cook by reading a cookbook. You can read it and get all the theory in your head, but you ve got to light the fire sometime. You re not going to learn until you do. I think that reading assignment took about a month. It seemed to me interminable. I think I kind of rebelled and finally went in and saw him and said, "I ve gone as far as I can go on that reading; I ve been through the code and I ve read all of the other things, and re-read them. I read most of them already before I came here." He thought I was a little bit rash, and said, "Oh, you re ready for your problem then I guess." I said, "I guess." So he handed me a legal problem having to do with a very obscure thing involving a tax and bond issue problem in relation to a school district and the legality of the situation and everything. A very, very obscure narrow kind of a question. Well, I didn t know anything about school dtetrlcts or bond issues or anything else. None of that was taught in law school. We didn t have any state and local government law courses as we do now. I just went to work on the darn thing and within a fairly short time I had found the case on which the problem was based, and discovered by reading the case that there wasn t any real solution to this. There waan t any precedent there, you know, all that kind of thing. So I wrote a memorandum on the thing: "It s absolutely unique. None of the authorities indicate 21 Sherry: that this problem has arisen In any other Jurisdiction," and I was able to do all, you know, the whole thing, and say, "It s got to be resolved ab inl tio , right from the start." I gave a suggestion and I said, "I think maybe this Is the way you solve It In relation to If this problem now recurs." Well apparently this was kind of a masterpiece, because it was an actual problem in the office, and it just baffled everybody. You know, it was one rhere was just no answer to. But at least my suggestions were no worse than the suggestions of the rest of the staff, so Ralph laughed and said, "Well that s pretty good. Now let s go down and see Bob Hunter and get latched on to one of the fellows and start going to work." MF: What was Bob Hunter s Sherry: Bob Hunter was the deputy district attorney. He was chief assistant In the Coakley administration but he was on the civil side. He had been doing the criminal, but he was doing mostly civil work at tciat time, and working with Hoyt on civil stuff. He did most of the work for the sheriff s office, representing the sheriff on all of the creditors remedy situations and attachments, and all that kind of business, advising as to the legality of the work that the sheriff s civil department was doing. I started in and began going down In the Superior Court there in trials all kinds of trials MK: Both civil and criminal? Sherry: No. It was all criminal. Leonard Meltzer, who is since deceased, was in charge what they then called a calendar man. He was a kind of director of criminal work in the office. Charles Wehr and Warren Olney were doing almost all the homicide stuff. George Perkins his speciality was In frauds, corporate securities particularly, which were very, very prevalent in California in those days, because the law was most Inadequate in controlling In those depression days when "get rich quick" schemes were springing up on every corner. 22 Sherry: There were some magnificent frauds and scandals. It was a very, very active field all through the 1930 *s until shortly before the outbreak of World War II. At chat time legislation had caught up with the situation and brought It pretty much to a halt . I tried cases with Frank Coakley and Leonard Meltzer. These were the trial guys at that time. It was a lot of fun . Office routine, as it then existed, was to have a meeting of the so-called "outside" deputies, that Is to say the deputies who were working in Oakland In the prosecuting attorney s office there, and the Berkeley office and the Hayward office. That s all there were. There were Just the three. There was an office In Alameda, but that was covered either from the courthouse or no, that was covered by the man who had the county run, Stanley Smallwood. He would start out every day he lived in the lower end of the county, but he had a county car, and he would bat around that lovely country down there from Llvermore to Pleasanton, to Hayward, San Leandro you know, kind of a traveling guy meeting the people at these old Justice s courts. It was Just country down there in those days. He covered Alameda too. He would hit Alameda on Thursday before he came into the meeting, you see, on Thursday afternoon. So we would meet then in the Chief s office this great big office with chairs all around, you see, to accomodate us fine. He would call for reports what s going on here, what s going on there, how s Judge So- and-So, and that kind of thing. The result of this was that we got to know exactly what he was thinking about things, and we got to know what each other was thinking, and we got to know what was going on at this level around the county. This is where things are going on, where people are getting gypped or where robberies are happening or where some body is starting a gambling racket or whatever, and it was a good exchange of intelligence. But also, it was a critique of what we were doing, and if a complaint had been lodged with the Chief about something, why we would explore that right there. Boy, 23 Sherry: if you hadn t handled that problem right, he d Just get so mad he d pound the desk you knowt "Harry, you should know better than to do that!!!" [Laughter] He d Just let himself go with his own people there completely. Those meetings would go on they were scheduled for ^:00. They would usually begin about 4-: 30 or so, and they d run sometimes to 700 or 730 at night before we were through with them. Then on Saturday morning there was a meeting of the entire office, at 8:00. This was held in what passed for a library in the old office there. It was rather small, but everybody could get into it. All of this is all civil and criminal the whole shooting match. One of the deputies would be assigned in rotation to have read the advance sheets, the advance reports of court decisions in California courts and then to recite what the case was and what the opinion was, and that sort, of thing. They didn t have time to read them themselves. Then we would talk about the cases and the decisions and how they would affect us. MF: Did you find that valuable? Sherry: Oh yes! That was tremendous well, that wasn t so valuable as the reactions of Earl Warren and my colleagues. I always read them myself anyway. I didn t like getting it secondhand from somebody. I didn t care much about that, but then the discussions that came the formulation of policy. He would tell us what he was doing, and the problems that he saw, governmental problems, state and local, as well as the operations in the office. Those meetings generally would drag on until about lOtOO, about two hours, sometimes a little longer. Then, if that was a Saturday when there was a football game in Berkeley, why people would begin leaking out of the place. They could figure out pretty well when the Chief would leave too because he d be going to the same place. So a few would stay to keep the office open until 12:00. But the big thing was the office meeting. MF: How were cases assigned? Sherry: Well, that I think I can attack that, or reach that better by telling you about personnel assignment at Sherry: that time, and what happened to me In that respect. The practice was to go through the training period, the reading and the working of the research problem period, and then to go to court with the other lawyers. You would be with them when they were preparing their cases, so you d know how to prepare a case for trial and the techniques, how to conduct witness interviews and draft a trial brief. You d Just learn that by doing, by watching and by observing, and then one day you would be "Well, go ahead and examine the witness. You ve talked to him before, you know." So then you d begin to learn how to examine a witness In court and then the day comes for trial and you are asked to make the opening statement. You know. That kind of thing. Ultimately you re really on the rails as a Junior when you have the privilege of making the opening argument at the beginning of a case, with the senior guy making the closing argument. When you ve gone through that process, you would get to the point where you would do all the direct examina tion of the witnesses, and the senior guy would take care of the cross-examination. Then you d finally get to the point where you would do the whole blooming thing, except making the final argument, depending on how well you were getting along with it. But during that stage, all of that stage, you re in a subordinate learning in an apprentice sort of capacity. Work in the Oakland Office Sherry: Well, this lasted let s see, until about 1933 I guess about, oh, In the late fall of 1933* or sometime or another. The next step was assignment out to one of the prosecuting attorney s offices where you d go to work at the misdemeanor level and learn how to conduct preliminary hearings on everything from failure to provide to truancy to shoplifting the whole mess. I was sent up to the Oakland prosecuting attorneys office. I was told I was being changed now, I was 25 Sherry: going to go up to the Oakland office, which was like being pushed out of home by your parents when you ve grown up. At that time the Oakland office was in the City Hall, where it remained until quite recently when they built the new building down there. The man in charge was Joe Murphy, Joseph Murphy, who was quite a guy. Joe had been a newspaperman. During the war he was In the U.S. Air Corps. In my younger days I regarded anybody who could fly an airplane with awe and wonder. They were really some thing. Joe had been a flyer in World War I, although he had never gotten overseas, but he d done a lot of flying. Then after the war was over he didn t fly thereafter. He went to work for AP, Associated Press. I think at one time he had the night desk In Oakland. He was going to law school, at night. No, he had the daytime desk; he went to law school at night. In any event he got acquainted with Warren as a result of this . newspaper work, and Warren said, "Well, if you ever pass the bar, you can have a Job in the office." He did that not only with Joe, but that happened to two or three others In the office. In any event Joe got the Job. He was very briefly in the main office on the trial staff, but he was in charge of the prosecuting attorney s office there In Oakland, which consisted, I think, of five of us. There was Joe, and Lawrence Fletcher, who was also on the wlthout-compensatlon list at that times Harry Stiles, an older man who had come into the office I think somewhat late In life, and went off back to somewhere I don t know. And Owen Hotle, "Oxie," who went up to private practice In Santa Rosa. I understand he s retired now. And I. We were the whole shooting match. There under Murphy s tutelage I learned how to put on preliminary hearings. It s not a very difficult thing to learn. I learned all the business of relation ships with the police department and, you know you get so you re part of them city government, all the rest of the things, city attorney s office. We had relations with and worked together with in some aspects. Then the constant push, push, push. That was a very busy kind of Job. We would have thousands of people a month you know coming in and out of the office with all kinds of petty complaints, and here 26 Sherry: MF: Sherry: would be four or five of us to handle the whole thing. That was a terrific experience. Then I began trying Jury trials. My first jury trial work was done there. This was a very very active, very demanding part of the time . I never paid much attention to the fact that my father was giving me five dollars a week so I could keep going buy my streetcar fare and lunches. [Laughter] Such little private practice as I could pick up didn t amount to much. Then, one day let s see, this has to be In 1934 Olive Bledsoe again telephoned and said, "The Chief wants to see you. There s something he wants to talk to you about." That s all. A summons of that kind was not something that you d take very lightly. So I went down wondering what s wrong now. [Laughter] What terrible things have you done? I was ushered into the office, and he says, "I think you ve been working for nothing long enough. Here s your new commission. 11 Gosh, I looked at Itt "Deputy District Attorney. $200 a month." Well this happened because we had lost a couple of deputies. Paul St. Sure had left the office. He had been in the office up to that time. After Paul St. Sure, Adrien Hynes was the next man to go. When Adrien Hynes left, that opened up the bottom slot. I think Paul St. Sure s removal put Larry Fletcher In, because he was ahead of me, and then Adrien Hynes and I was in the slot at that time. Gee, $200 a month. By gosh. In two months time, I bought myself a car and got married, all at once. That $2400 a year, by gosh, I had more fun on it. I think I saved more of it than I have ever since. Then in 19 I guess this was In 1933 t still in the Oakland office, I stumbled into an insurance fraud case. An elderly man came in with this very gaudy Insurance policy that said, "Western Pacific Life" or some such ambiguous kind of a name, and he said, "You know, I paid that fellow $60 for this policy" -- It was purported to be a health and accident insurance kind of a policy with a beautiful- looking certificate and all that but he said, "but you know, I Just can t believe it. I ve been turned down by insurance people all over the place, and this guy came and he gavs me this big pitch, no examination, no nothing, 27 Sherry: $60 down and you pay about $5 or $10 a month," some thing like that. It was all there, what you paid, mailed to an office in Los Angeles. He said, "I d ,1ust like to know if I got my money s worth." I didn t know, so I just phoned the insurance commissioner s office, and got hold of somebody. I don t know whether I knew someone I must have known one of the fellows over there and he says, "Heck no, that s an unlicensed outfit. They haven t got any insurance company. They 1 re Just selling people pieces of paper." He said, "That s just one of about six titles that they re peddling these days," and there was no direct regulation of this thing at that time. You didn t have to register for the kind of insurance company it purported to be I think It purported to be a mutual company. Only stock companies were regu lated, and so there was no law preventing a person from organizing one of these "mutual" things and going into business. But these people hadn t organized it. They just pretended they had something. The cash Input here was all theirs. There Just was no insurance company at all. So when I found that out I got somewhat concerned about it, and I thought, "This Is an awful gyp." But he didn t know who had sold the paper to him. He didn t know where he was. He had the name, but the name meant nothing. There was no address. There was a Los Angeles address I think on this piece of paper and $60 petty theft. What do you do in that kind of a situation? At one of the Thursday meetings of the justice court prosecutors I talked about this thing. I thought we ought to follow up, and all of a sudden, around the room other deputies spoke up, "Oh, we ve got one of those." The Chief said, "Gee you d better turn in all your stuff to Arthur here, and let s see if maybe we can make something out of It." So I got all the files, and you could see a pattern by dates as the sellers moved through Alameda County selling this phony paper as they went. I went over to the Insurance commissioner, and they had a much larger picture. They had them coming up the Valley from Los Angeles to the north, and then coming 28 Sherry: down the coast selling these things as they went along. They had a lot of Information. We began Identifying the guys who were selling and then we began soliciting asking the police and everybody else and telling people, "If you hear of anyone else who has done this, let us know." We picked up a large number of complainants In this area. The money involved in Alameda County was $150,000 or $200,000, which for those days was a considerable large amount of money. I finally got all of this put together and came down, and told everybody, I said, "By gosh, we can go after this as conspiracy or something, because then we can get all this " "Conspiracy to do what?" was the answer, and I said, "Well, conspiracy to obtain property by false pretences, and conspiracy to operate conspiracy to act as insurance agents without licenses." Now, these are misdemeanors. There are big arguments all the time about whether conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor ought to be a felony or just a misdemeanor. Well, we thought the law was useful. We could handle the cases as a felony and thus we could take it to the grand Jury. Well, in any event we got grand Jury indictments, made a raid on the office in San Francisco and for the first time in my life Deputy District Attorney Sherry is all over the front pages. This is my_ case, you know. And it was Just absolutely great. This was the first time I put the case on before the grand jury. It was my first grand jury experience. Warren himself was there. This was a big enough thing. It was quire a show. We finally rounded up everybody and they all wound up by pleading guilty so there wasn t any trial Involved in the thing. In Charge of the Berkeley Office Sherry t About that time Marcus Hardin, who is now senior partner In a big law office In Oakland, was then in Berkeley as prosecuting attorney of Berkeley. Warren began a personnel shuffle. Mark was recalled to the main office to get on the senior trial staff to try cases there, and apparently because of my success with 29 Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: Sherry: MF: the insurance fraud case I was told that I would take over the Berkeley prosecuting attorney s office. What year was this? I came out here and started in January, 1935. I remained in Berkeley, I guess, until about 38. About three years I had out here. That was a most unusual job in those days, because I was deputy district attorney, but I was the prosecuting attorney in Berkeley, the name on the door in letters of gold said so, and I had a secretary all my own . We had what they called a Justice s Court in the city of Berkeley. That was the name of the court. Oliver Youngs was the Judge of the court . Fere I was then responsible for the prosecution of crime in Berkeley. The Berkeley police department was the outfit I was working with, and I was the one who determined whether cases would be charged and what the charge would be and all that kind of thing, which was the first really big ongoing responsible Job I held in the oiflce. Yes. I want to ask you a question about that. I think that in 193^- there was a constitutional amendment passed that allowed the defendant to plead guilty to a felony in an inferior court.* I don t know whether it was then or not. 3^ was the time when they passed the thing allowing comment on the defendant s refusal to testify, which has since been declared unconstitutional, but which most important of those changes was making the attorney general chief law officer of the state of California Yes. I think that this pleading of guilty to a felony in police court was passed in 3^ It could have happened at that time. I wondered if that had any effect on your work? *Penal Code Sec. b35a, 1935- A legislative enactment, [note added by Professor Sherry during his editing of the transcript. J Sherry: No. It Just meant that instead of waiving preliminaries, a man could plead guilty right there. It Just expedited things. Just had a certificate clamped to the complaint to the effect that he had pleaded guilty to the charge, and the complaint was certified in the superior court for sentence. We used the procedure right away. A lot of other counties didn t wake up to it for two or three or four years after. But there are many cases in which the defendant there was no point in standing around and waiting for a preliminary hearing and waiting, you know, for a transcript to be prepared in cases involving, let s say, a parole violator who has been arrested on another charge and charged with it. He s going back to prison in any event, and he didn t like the dead time waiting for this procedure. So if he could plead guilty and get the thing over with right away, it was all to the good. That was its chief utility. Or in cases in which it was obvious there was no defense. But that dealt with a relatively small matter of procedure. It was Just a convenience. MP: Oh it was? I didn t know about that. In some of the research I had done, I d come across quite a debate In the Commonwealth Club about that amendment. Sherry: Well, it has continued and experience has been very good with it. But it s not a procedure that is very often invoked. Just in special kinds of cases. So far as Berkeley was concerned, I was the district attorney. I was the person that people saw every day. Whenever there was any kind of a civic bash, no matter what it was, why I was Invited. The prosecuting attorney was on all the programs and all that kind of thing. I Joined the Lion s Club; I Joined all the other I think seven different clubs, stupidly not realizing that my friends in private practice or working for other people were having their dues paid while I was paying all my own. The county didn t take care of that. So I had to cut that down after a while. But I made lots of friends and got longlastlng friends. It was home town , of course. There were some very interesting experiences. We had the first of riots and mass trials and all or that kind 01 thing, antedating the Free Speech Movement by 31 Sherry: a good many years in those days. MF: Sherry i MF: Sherry: When was this? Oh, 1935 or 36, when Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth Flve-and-Dlme store heiress, made her first marriage, which was reported in the newspapers, with people starving to death, as costing a million and a half dollars for this great big thing. The girls in the five and dime store were Just getting practically peanuts wages and that sort of thing. There was a lot of labor unrest in those days, efforts particularly to get union labor organized. There was a five and dime store down at Shattuck and Center, or something like that, on the west side of the street, and there was some talk about strike, but I don t think anybody was actually striking. How ever, a number 01 students went down there, carrying picket signs you know: "Unfair," and with references to Barbara Hutton and a million dollars for a wedding, you know, and people were entitled to you know, whatever it is. In those days, picketing was illegal, crime . It was a That s right. There had been an anti-plcketing It was a crime. People began complaining that the students weren t Just standing like these professional labor pickets you see now, they were walking around and raising Cain, as they do now. There is no difference In the technique at all. People didn t like It. They were not used to it. This was a new kind oi a thing. One day, I got a call from the chief of police, whose name was Jack Greening at that time. He said, "I have fifteen people under arrest down here for picketing." No prior information to me as to what he was doing or was going to do at all. Well, the office was very sensitive to labor problems, because we d had a lot of trouble in Oakland with a taxi cab drivers strike Involving a couple of murders with drivers driven into Lake ferrltt, you know. Oh gosh, It was Just awful. And the pea- picker strike thing and other disturbances In the days when labor was trying to organize. This was 32 Sherry: pre-New Deal of course. Now let s see, wait a minute. It s about the time of the New Deal, *34 I think was the election year, 1935* This was the time when labor was regarded as bslng a very radical sort of thing. Organizing efforts were marked by an enormous amount of violence. This was the work of so-called "goon squads." Of course historically, if you read Jack London stories of the old teamsters strike in San Francisco, back in the years, before that time, where scab drivers would be pulled off their wagons, taken up an alleyway and had their arms broken, so they couldn t drive the teams anymore. These people would hit people with baseball bats and tar and feather them and wrap them in baling wire. Oh, they were real rough. It was after the general strike in 193^-t so Bridges was in the ascendancy and he was trying to extend his power by getting the ILWU people into any kind of a labor situation there was. They read about this little incident in Berkeley, and Bridges told the newspapers in San Francisco, "They can lock up those kids, but by gosh our guys are going to be over there tomorrow and we ll show them what picketing is like." Well, that set off some alarms down in the main office, and Warren began to give it his attention. He was steamed about the fact that the chief of police hadn t said anything to me, you know, before he went out and made the arrests. Warren was saying, "You don t do things you don t react that kind of a way I You work out your problem and see what s going to happen when you do it." Because of course the pickets marched into the court and we had fifteen jury trials right away. Why normally, we had a Jury trial maybe once every two years. You know, I missed Oakland, where I could pick up a few more . Well in any event, next day, sure enough, the Teamster guys were out there, and then a bunch of them were arrested, and so here s another big group of people, and these are pros. They got bailed out right away. They knew how to handle themselves. Then we had in Berkeley on the campus here, what was called a Social Problems Club. That was a 33 Sherry: communist outfit. They made no bones about it, they were. Aubrey Grossman was one of the leaders of that thing. They used to sit outside the Sather Gate every day and have speakers, very radical, fiery talks, with out benefit of sound amplification. People didn t have it in those days. Well they got a lot of sympathizers round about. The same kind of thing that happens around here now, you see. Every day that picket line got bigger, and there were more people, and finally one day the police came back and there were 110 people being processed through the department. Warren called up and he was livid. "This is no way of doing this kind of thing! You tell the chief of police we issue no more complaints on any of these things until further notice!" So I told the chief. He was a very, very narrow and unimaginative guy without much flexibility. It just made him mad, but he did it. He took orders. Then we started setting these cases for trial. We wound up with oh gee, I guess a hundred trials. We ended up trying two Jury trials a week scheduled for four months in advance. I was there every day, and I was, oh I was, you know, free to keep trying and trying and trying cases, but this was too much for the defense lawyers. They couldn t be away from their offices for so long. They finally became reasonable, and we agreed on one case in which they would appeal the conviction. Then we would settle all the rest of the cases on the basis of the appeal. If the conviction was affirmed, they d plead guilty on all the rest of them. If it was reversed we would dismiss all that were left. MP: Now were these just local defense attorneys or were they Sherry: No, this was Grossman and Richard Gladstein. They re still in practice in San Francisco. Gladstein was the attorney then for the ILWU. He d been at Boalt Hall ahead of me, and Grossman just behind me. Grossman was a real dedicated communist. Re became Secretary of the Communist Party of Northern California later on. These were the years before the invasion of Poland. Actually he was such a Sherry: dedicated type that he went underground, just disappeared you know, did that business. He reappeared after the war, and how he shed that background and got back into practice without a ripple so far as I know, I never was able to understand, but he did. Very, very talented lawyer, and he was on the Law Review here. A very able guy. Boy, he was sure dedicated. Well, the case was affirmed, and we began looking around for our defendants. Well, we couldn t find any. Half or them were oif in the Lincoln Brigade in Spain you know, fighting, the ones that could get over, the real sincere ones. The rest of them finished school and trickled off and were gone. We Just couldn t find any of them so we just quietly dismissed everything and forgot about the whole business. A little after that I went down to the main office and began trying cases. I was a member of the senior trial staff, and did that up until the war took me away, in 19^2. MF: Your mention of those Berkeley cases reminded me that one of the things that we ve heard over and over again about Warren s office was that he really expedited cases going through the courts, that he felt thai; was very important . Sherry: Oh yes. He insisted on a very, very efficient opera tion. We used to have great complaints about Frank Coakley because Frank Coakley took too long to try a case. Leonard Meltzer was the calendar man you know. Frank of course would try many of these very, very long, complicated fraud cases, just as George Perkins would, and Frank Is slow and deliberate in his trial methods, but my gosh, he had his cases prepared I never saw cases prepared more beautifully and more thoroughly. Meltzer s technique was largely a great emphasis on cross- examination, and complete economy of movement i get the case tried and get It done, move it along, don t drag it out and try to prove a lot of facts you don t have to prove, and that kind of thing. Just two different kinds of trial lawyers. 35 Sherry: But we for example, one of the rules was we must never ask for a continuance. The prosecution Is always ready to try a case. That was one of the rules. That was Warren s rule. "Do not ask for a continuance." He said, "There s no excuse for it. If we ve got more cases than we can handle we ll tell the board of super visors we need more manpower." The operation was very efficient, but you must remember that the right across the office, the mean level of professional experience was about fifteen or sixteen years. You see, the office staff had low turnover. They didn t move as they do now, and some of the best trial lawyers in the business were in that office. They d know it was a reasonably permanent job and they were working at it and developed very, very high skills, so things could move much better than they do now, when you have an every -changing law and an enormous volume that you can t cope with, and young people who come in and go out inside of two years. It s much, much different. When I returned from military service, Warren had been elected attorney general, and had gone off to San Francisco with Warren Olney and Charles Wehr and Ted Westphal, and one or two others; and Ralph Hoyt was district attorney. MF: Before we get on to tnose years, I wanted to ask you also about the Berkeley chief of police. How were your relations with him generally? Sherry: Well, Jack Greening was one of my first personnel problems in the operation . I normally had little trouble getting along with people, but Greening viewed anybody who came out there new, that he didn t know, he tended to regard them with great suspicion. He was a very cagey, very cautious man, very very fearful about things. He tended to be rather uncompromising and terribly strict, an awful disciplinarian in his police department . But ultimately when you got to know him, when, you know, he finally got your measure and understood where you were, then he was easy to get along with, so far as I was concerned, but there was always always a tension between him and his people in the department . Sherry: I remember one of the things that always happens to you when you are working at the police court level; that people are around asking you to fix traffic tickets, or kill them, or that kind of thing. We had all kinds of rules and regulations about that. On traffic tickets our answer was, "Yes, this will cost you $5 bail to be forfeited, or $10 or what ever it is, and you give me the money and we ll pay it off." The Chief (Warren) said, "There s only one way you can fix those and that s by paying the fine. If your friend isn t willing to, well maybe you re going to have to pay it." Everybody understood that and it worked quite well. A lot of people considered it to be quite a convenience to be able to call up somebody at the district attorney s office and have the deputy d.a. say, "Send me the $5 and I ll take care of it for you." That was a great convenience. Anyway when I came to Berkeley, I don t think Greening and I had even met before that time. One of my very good friends, the closest friend of my father s, was In the printing business, Freltas Press in Berkeley, whom I had known for many, many years. His delivery truck man had gotten a parking ticket, and I think Jim gave it to me at one of those Lions Club affairs. "Some time," he said, "can you do anything about this?" I said, "Well, I don t know. I suppose you ll have to pay a slight amount or post some bail and that sort of thing." He said, "Well, see what you can do." My contact with the police department was the bailiff, a man named Wise. Wise was a very, very nice guy. He was the guy who would brief me, tell me where the skeletons were hanging and where the booby traps were. I said, "How do you handle these matters out here? How do you take care of these?" "That s all right, let me take care of It." He took it and went away. I didn t hear anything about it at all until one day I got a telephone call from Warren, the Chief, and he was wild. He said, "I had a complaint here about you from Jack Greening." I said, "What do you mean?" He said., "You ve been fixing tags out there." 37 Sherry: And "boy, was I sore! Because Greening hadn t said a doggone word to me at all. I said f "That s wrong. That s all wrong, taint right!" He said, "Well, what happened?" I told him exactly what happened. He knew Greening very well. Greening was always acting like that. He d never come to the guy concerned. He made the arrests in the picketing cases and didn t tell anybody. Earl says, "well, if that Isn t like that blank ety- clank. Forget it!" he says, "Forget it!" So I forgot it. That was the end or that. But poor old Wise got pretty badly disciplined for that by Greening. But insofar as professional relationships were concerned, that police department was great. There were no problems about cooperation or anything else. Warren Olney and Charlie Wehr handled all homicide cases. They ran that as their own private domain, so whenever there was a homicide, no master wriere It was in the county, they d go tearing off. If there was a homicide in Berkeley, for example, that wasn t my business. They would take care of interviewing witnesses, taking statements , working with the police and all that kind 01 thing themselves. They were on constant call for that. One day the Inspector in charge of homicide, old Jim Wilson, came in and he wanted me to issue a complaint for a murder, in a homicide case out here. I said, "Well, Where s the report?" "Oh," he said, "Wehr and Olney have taken care of that, you know. All you have to do is take my oath on the thing." So I did, and then I went down and got hold of Wehr, and said, "Look, let me take care of Berkeley. You don t have to do that. I can do it." He said, "Do you really want to?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Okay." Then I went to Wilson, old Jim Wilson. I said, "I m going to take care or all the homicide stuff." He had me spotted for the tenderfoot. H e said, "You really want to get called out on all homicides?" I said, "Sure do. I ll be there. Where you go, I go." Full of the old Wehr spirit. well, that included automobile fatalities as well as other things. San Pablo Avenue was the place. The Snerry: death rate down there was terrible. It was a badly lighted street, and that had all the traffic. There was no freeway at that time. All of the north-south traffic, Sacramento traffic, the rest of It, went up ban fablo Avenue. Big wide street, you know. People would get lost in the middle of the street, couldn t be seen, headlights in every direction. Oh, It was carnage. Anyhow, I m happily asleep at 11:00 one night at home and there s the doorbell, and pounding on the door, and Wilson said, "Well, we got one. Are you coming?" I said, "Sure." I got dressed and went out, and we had a bad one. I sat around in the hospital all night, talking to the people and taking statements, and that sort of thing. Then I just took over and handled that whole business. But Wilson, after we d been doing this together for about a month, phoned again one night and said, "We got one." I said, "Okay, when are you coming over?" He said, "Oh, you really don t have to go out on this one. [Laughter] A very normal kind of a thing." He didn t need any help, nothing that they would use accidental something or other. So I d finished my hazing by him. We had a fine relationship thereafterwards. So that was, all in all, that was good trial experience, dam good investigator experience. The Role of the Inspectors MF: Did you have to do most of the investigative work yourself, or did you have inspectors? Sherry: The police do the investigating at the first stage oi the case, but the prosecutor who authorizes the filing of the complaint has to review all the police work, so all of their reports, all oi their work has to be put down in writing, and you review it. You are required In most cases you talk to the prosecuting, complaining witness you know, the victim of the thing, just to get the feel of the case and decide at what level to charge it, what the traffic will bear in that kind of case. Now, the inspectors were assigned to the main 39 Sherry: or flee, down at the courthouse. They were down there Captain George Helms, a wonderful man was In charge. He looked exactly like everything you imagine a wild west sheriff should look like. Just a wonderful and a very handsome guy. He had six or seven Inspectors there whose Job it was to do Investigative work on the high level stuff that came into the district attorney s office about graft, corruption, and that kind of business, where they did most of their work, most of their important stuff. They were also assigned to the lawyer on the trial staff who was going to try the case, so that when you received a case down there, and the trial staff gave out a case assignment, at the same time an Inspector would be assigned to the case. The first thing he would do would be to read the file, note down the names of all the witnesses that appeared in the file and place them under subpoena right away. Even if you knew you didn t have a fixed trial, they would at least get the people buttoned down there. Then the trial deputy would go to work and read the preliminary transcript, read all the documents in the file, keeping a record of weak spots in the case, was there evidence of this, and did somebody talk to so-and- so, and that kind of business. Then you d get the inspector in and tell him if evidence needs to be got, If further information is required. He d go out and get it, and then usually, most of these things could oe corrected by further police work, weak spots and things. We d ask the officer who had originally investigated the case. It was his responsibility. We d just talk directly to him. "You know, you ve got to get this other stuff for us. We haven t got it." If he couldn t do it, if it were out of the county or something like that, then the inspector would go ahead and do it. Usually anything out of the city, a ramification in the case of this kind, the Inspector would have to do it. Local police couldn t leave their Jobs and do that kind of thing. So they did an awful lot of police work, investigative work, in that connection You d usually work go with him, you know. Both of you would go together on that kind of business. That s basically what they did. Sherry; MPi Snerry: MPi Sherry: MP: When the case was on trial, they d be shepherding the witnesses around, and if something would develop during the trial and you needed some information right away that wasn t available, the inspector would get it for you. It made a very effective team. That was the principle function. Yes. We Interviewed several of the inspectors. I hadn t known that they all worked out of the central office. Yes. All of tnem. As a matter of fact, I interviewed Lloyd Jester several months ago. I encountered Lloyd Jester the first time when he was chief of police of Albany, which was an elective job, if you can tie that, well, not: he was first a police man in the department old John Glavinovich was the chief of police, and when he retired Jester ran and won the election. After two or three terms he came down with us as an inspector. Then he was away during the war, and then he came back briefly after the war and then went off someplace else. That s when I lost track of him. Yes, that s right. He was in the district attorney s office before he went to Albany and then about the time when Warren decided to run for attorney general he was asked if he wanted to run for police chief in Albany. After the war, he ended up as police chief in Fargo, North Dakota, and was there for about five years , and then got called back into the service again . When he got back out of the service, I think that he d written J. Prank Coakley and asked if there was any work here, and Coakley said, "Certainly. Come on back." Administration of the Office MF: Could you tell me something about how deputies were recruited? Sherry: The deputies are all recruited the same way I was Sherry recruited. There was a reason of course for it. One of the things that Earl Warren was very, very committed to was complete independence oi action . As much inde pendence as possible. He didn t want to be subservient to anyone or owe anybody anything. And he didn t he was always pressed by friends of his to appoint their sons or relatives to the office for appointive positions. He liked to make his own selection. If a classmate or friend had some young lawyer that he was recommending, Earl would consider the guy. By having two or three "bottom deputies," as we called them, on the staff without pay, warren could always respond to one of these requests to appoint some friend or relative by saying, "Well, gee, I d like to, you know, but things are pretty tight. I ve got Senator Fletcher s son down there, and I ve got Oxle Hotle, and you know, they re serving without compensation in some cases for a year or two. You wouldn t want me to put your boy in ahead of those guys, would you?" And of course you couldn t say [laughterj MF: Very clever. Sherry: do that Insulated him from people who were and gave him an opportunity to be doggone sure who he was appointing. They were tested under fire so to speak before they got on the payroll. So that s how the recruiting was done. [Referring to Interview outline. J Now, "how organized and how were cases assigned" the trial lawyer operates of course with his inspector. That s tne team. But the assignment of cases was done by wnat they call a calendar man, who in those days was Leonard Meltzer. He would go to court every day for the arraignments of the new cases. Of course cases were there were please of guilty, those were disposed of, they didn t need anybody s attention at all. But cases in which pleas of not guilty when the plea of not guilty was entered and when a trial date was agreed upon then an assignment slip would be made out, and the calendar man would assign it as he knew he ketp track of everybody s case load. It was mostly assigned according to case load and according to specialty. Sherry: Now although we had specialists like Wehr and Olney and Perkins and Coakley, for these various kinds of cases, there was still enough of the usual robbery, burglary and these unpleasant lewd conduct with little children cases floating around; everybody had to take his share of that as well. You would come In the morning after the calendar was completed the calendar man would go to his office, and he d dot-dash all his assignment slips and that kind of thing. He would come in, make the rounds of the office every morning and give all the slips to the fellows "Those are your orders." The Inspector assigned to you for those cases would also get a corresponding slip. Ultimately, of course, you put the case down on your calendar as to when It was going to go, and reminders to have witnesses at this particular time, and ultimately you prepared the case, you read the stuff, you talked to all the witnesses, and went down to court and tried it. [Referring to interview outline.] Now, about hours "and standards of conduct. Well, the hours were as long as it was necessary to do the Job. Sometimes it was night and day, although if, for example, you were just all tired out about something, you d say "I m taking the afternoon off. I m going to go play goli ." You could do that, but it was Impossible to abuse the privilege, because it was hard enough to squeeze time out yourself to take that kind of time off. [Referring to interview outline. ] Now, about standards of conduct. You were expected, sure as the dickens, to behave yourself and to pay your own traffic tickets, and never try to over-awe anybody by telling them you re a deputy district attorney and demand some kind of favor for that. The problem was compounded in those days, because until 1935 we were still living in what purported to be the "age of prohibition," although after about 1929, that was rapidly coming apart. There were still arrests made, and cases being tried, and so you mustn t ever be caught drinking publicly, anywhere, at all. What you did in the privacy of your own home was your own business. So one would say that high professional and ethical standards were required, and also, by gosh, we nad to behave ourselves. There were a few Instances in which people didn t and bingo! next day they weren t there. Sherry: That s just all there was to it. That was the end. MF: You mentioned earlier that you were involved later on in personnel recruitment in the office? Sherry t Yes. MF: When was that? Sherry: Well, most of that time was beginning about 19^6, 4-7, during Ralph Hoyt s incumbency more than anything else, where we developed and really organized that thing more than it had ever been done before. We found out rather, we put down and made regular procedures out of what had been a traditional mode of doing things before no written records. Always you have the problem of getting an authorized vacancy, getting a slot, getting more positions on the salary ordinance, and not being able to hire unless 3 r ou had someone. Of course the time had gone by when you could get anybody to come to work for nothing. Things had improved very, very considerably. It was just not possible. Consequently, recruiting was a matter of people making application. The office was well known. It had a splendid reputation as a training ground for great trial lawyers, and by heavens, the bar is still filled with alumni of that office, and very, very successful in the practice of law. Although conditions now, I don t think, are as good by a long ways as they were then, it was really something. There was no lack of people applying for positions. We d Just open a file on them, interview, and stack them away. Then when the vacancy occurred, we would have made our evaluations and we would go through until we found the first high evaluated guy and call him, and if he said, "Sorry, I have a Job," then you d go to the next one. That s the way t worked. Relations with other Law Enforcement Agencies MF: What sort of relationship existed between the office and other county law enforcement offices? Sherry t We had very good relationships with all the police agencies. We cultivated those relationships. Also with the city governments of the various cities. All of the cities in this area operated under the standard city charters except Albany which they ve adopted. You know, you used to go down to the stationer s store and buy blank forms of city charters! All of these provided for a city attorney, and some for city prosecutor, but in any event they contemplated that the city would have its own prosecuting officer for misdemeanor cases. Los Angeles still has that procedure, There is a city attorney who prosecutes misdemeanors and the district attorney takes care of the felonies. Many of the Southern California cities continue with that practice. Mow the trouble with that is that if It s a misdemeanor, right away, if you can plainly see it s a misdemeanor, then all right. The city can handle that thing. If it s a felony case, and that s plainly visible, the district attorney can probably handle that thing. But if the district attorney does not go along with a request by the police for a felony complaint; if he evaluates the case as a misdemeanor, the inves tigating officers have to start all over again at the city prosecutor s office to get a misdemeanor complaint. This procedure can be very time-wasting. Although the charters provided for this kind of thing, when Earl Warren became district attorney, he said to the cities, "I ll provide all that prosecutorial service for you. I ll take that load off your back. All you have to do is supply us with the office space and such secretarial help as we need " MF: Tnis is Earl Warren then? Sherry: I don t know how new it was with Warren. I think maybe it Just kind of grew up that way, but he firmed it up and made it a solid kind of a practice, because he could see what was you know, the population was growing and all that kind of thing. He was establishing a pattern . Basically the reason for It was that it was to Sherry: attain uniformity in the administration of Justice in the county by having one single agency making the determinations of who was to be charged, what cases were to be tried, and to avoid the kind of thing that has happened in Southern California, when some gambler, seeing the police breathing down his neck or something for some serious offense would walk into a justice court with the connivance of the city attorney and plead guilty to a misdemeanor, just blocking off a felony prosecution. There s so much time loss where you have these two offices trying to sort out cases. It s a most inefficient system. So we operated very efficiently. Tne cities were delighted to have the D.A. s office do It. We maintained continuous liaison with all the police departments. One of the inspectors I think one of Lloyd Jester s more important duties was running around visiting all police departments on a regular basis, all the time, all over the county. As a former chief, of course, he had. an entree anywhere. So that the relationship of police departments was good, even in Oakland, where we had all kinds of problems, even in the sheriff s office where our office sent two under- sheriffs to prison MF: Yes. I wanted to ask you about that. Sherry: This was And we convicted a couple of police officers of murder in Oakland, for killing a prisoner. None theless we were able to maintain a good relationship with them. MF: How about the courts? Sherry: Well, there was no problem about the courts. The Judges were good. They were getting excellent service, darn good trial lawyers. They had absolutely nothing to complain about . We used to get Earl Warren himself used to get a little troubled about T. W. Harris, who was the presiding judge of the court, an old timer, a grand-old- man type, but very, very arrogant, very self-asserting, and that kind of thing. He had a different kind of local political alignment than Warren, particularly during Sherry : the graft paving scandal thing, when he once threatened to charge Ekrl Warren with contempt of court for releasing a grand jury transcript. MF: Oh yes. I wanted to get to that. Sherry: Earl Warren says, "All right, Judge, you just go right ahead . " MF: Was Harris a Mike Kelly man? Sherry: Mo, he wasn t a Kelly man. It was simply that the paving graft scandals began to involve all the best people in town. The Hutchinson family that owned this crushed rock quarry you know where that new Safeway market is, down by the School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland there s that big quarry? That s the old Blue Rock Quarry out of which came that special rock, not to be found any other place in the region. The ordinance, the specifications for the contract, called explicitly for that kind of rock, you see, so they could manipulate prices and every other thing. Well, the Hutchinson family were prominent in society, business, and finance and ail of that kind of thing. Prominent lawyers were mixed up in it. This pressure was enormous. Reputations were ruined right and left. Of course they deserved to be. This thing just kept right on going, and of course Harris, through his son, was very close to a lot of those families, which I suppose today you would call at least a kind of part of the establishment. That s where the pressures came from. Warren, in releasing the transcript, was taking a chance. But he had to release the transcript. He had to get this thing out to the public, what was going on in the grand jury room, where you d ask a man his name and he would tell you that and nothing more; "Where do you live?" "I refuse to testify on the ground that it might incriminate me." "If you told us where you live, this would incriminate you, you thing?" "I refuse to testify." When that kind of think got out into the press the Tribune printed these things why here a distinguished businessman, claiming the firth amend ment to such darned silly questions. This was defiant, you see. Sherry: When that happened oh boy. The public reaction was Just Earl Warren was at the top of the wave at that point. So when Harris, outraged that he was releasing the transcript of the grand Jury hearing as fast as it was being typed up it was highly irregular, but I don t think it was a crime at all Harris said, "You stop that, or I ll find you in contempt of court." Earl said, "Go right ahead." He knew that Harris didn t have the guts to do it, and wouldn t dare do it, because Harris didn t want to be identified publicly with these guys. So Earl always had kind of the Indian sign on Harris. But Harris would retaliate whenever he could, once in a while In assigning Judges, you know, and that kind of thing? he would be very uncooperative. Oh, that s interesting. I wanted to ask you what the rules were, then, governing release of grand Jury transcripts. I don t know that there is any explicit rule on It right now. I don t know of any law about It. We had very Inadequate What was the practice then? Well normally, the transcript was never typed up until the hearing was all over and an indictment had been returned. And then It was typed up. When It was finished it would be delivered to the county clerk, at which point it became a public record. MF: So it was public even then. Sherry: Oh sure. After it was finished. Like the Angela Davis case, you know. Everybody found out what the evidence was when they filed a transcript over there in the county clerk s office. MF: Yes, but I know for instance In the Bessie Ferguson case, the transcript was never opened because an indictment was never made. Sherry: Oh, if there is no indictment, then there is no transcript. The reporter doesn t write up his notes. There s no transcript. No point in doing it. Just the same thing you get a plea of not guilty, or MF: Sherry: MF: Sherry: Sherry: rather an acquittal. They don t write up a transcript. It doesn t serve any purpose. You Just need the transcript in case there s going to be a trial. So I don t know. There wasn t anything explicit in the law about this kind of procedure, but it was, as I say, highly irregular. It had never been done before, and was obviously being done for a purpose to serve the investigation you know, to let the public know what was being concealed behind the doors of the grand Jury. That Just worked beautifully. I read the transcript myself. There used to be a copy bouncing around down here in the office. It was absolutely fascinating. MF: I &lso read somewhere that California law made grand Jury sessions open to the public in 1937 If they wanted it to be. Sherry: Well, on the petition of the attorney general and with the consent of the district attorney and the grand Jury, the grand Jury can have a public session. That is possible. I don t know it may have been used. I have a faint idea that it has been used maybe once or twice. MF: In this county? Sherry: Nfo. Never done here that I know of. I remember during the crime commission days in the 19^0* s when Fred Howser, then the attorney general, demanded that they have an open grand Jury hearing up in Sonoma County in connection with a gambling operation with which he was connected. Which wasn t granted. That has Just not been used. I suspect that that probably had its origins in Earl Warren s recollections of the problems that he had at that time. That had not been an open grand Jury hearing. Of course he accomplished the same thing by handing the transcript to the papers, published by the Tribune, every word, day after day. f Laughter] More fascinating than the funnies! Relations with the Press MF: That gets us Into the question of what the relationship was between the office and the press. Sherry: Well, the relationship was very good. The press In those days was a more considerable kind of a press than we have now. We had two newspapers In Oakland, the Post- Enquirer as well as the Tribune . Both of those papers had a man at the courthouse. Both of them had a man In the city hall . The San Francisco Chroncile and the Examiner had four men over here also with the same kind of dlstri- bution. There were always a lot of press around, and then if there was a big case of some kind or another, they would send more people. Press manpower was far more available then than it is now. There was a lot more personalized or personal kind of reporting. We all got to be great friends with the newspaper reporters and they knew us. We knew who to trust and who not to trust, and it was Just a perfectly splendid working relationship. We had only one problem that I can ever think of with the press, and that was with the Tribune , and that was when Ralph Hoyt was district attorney. It was, I guess, about 19^7. It must have been in 19^-7 that a seventeen-year-old girl, a nice girl, was seduced by a wealthy good-for-nothing jeweler in Glendale, and to get away from him she came up here to one of the state colleges to go to school. It was a family effort to separate those two. He was a married man with a bunch of kids. He Just went head-over-heels for this child. So he came up here for a reunion with her, and he shot and killed her in a motel down in the San Leandro area. Well we had the newspapers came out with this "Clair de Lune murder case" because here s the corpse, and on the phonograph by the body Is a record of Clair de Lune, a very corny version of that day. And there were some kind of flowers red carnations. Another headline was, "The red carnation murder case." Well, that was a nineteen-day wonder. But we hadn t the faintest idea who she was or what had happened. Our only clue was that we found out that she had gone to school in Alameda. 50 Sherry: We began trying to find out, gradually, throughout the night, and then all the next day, finally got all the identifications down, and in the course of that we understood that she d been out with a man who was alleged to have been at Moffet Field, which was a naval air station at the time. The commanding officer phoned up and said that one of his officers had been out with her and dated her while she was at school in Alameda. We wanted to talk to him, and he said, "You could talk to him." He preferred that we have this up at the office, but on the assurance that there be no publicity. Well, what do you do? Say, "Okay, no publicity." But with all those newspaper reporters around, when our inspectors go roaring out of the parking area to go down to Moffit Field, the newspaper reporters know something is up, and they know that when the inspectors go away, they ll come back. And when they come back, they are going to hassle them. Well, they came back, and they had this naval officer. And the Inspectors knew what was happening, too. At the courthouse there s a driveway that goes down from the street that big steel door there down into the basement . Well the cars came up and instead of parking at the curb that big door suddenly came up and the automobile with the naval officer started to go down in. That enraged the reporters, and there was a photographer there. Just as he was about to take his picture, why Jester or one of the inspectors turned the camera down, so all he got was a picture of his toes. The door clanged shut, and boy they were mad. Gee, they were just absolutely outraged at that. We hadn t had any time at all, in the circumstances to get hold of city editors and tell them what the problem was, in the middle of the night. We Just had to do it that way. Then of course he was smuggled out again. Of course they found out who he was. Of course that gave it all the bigger play, when they finally identified the naval officer secretly interrogated by the district attorney. Oh, murder! MF: I can see the headlines. Sherry: Well, anyhow, Al Reck, who was then city editor of the Oakland Tribune, thereafter never printed Ralph Hoyt s name in connection with any story out of the courthouse. He would quote deputy district attorneys and assistant district attorneys. He would never mention Ralph Hoyt, district attorney. He kept that up and continued It for 51 Sherry: a period of about six months. Then the election, I think, was coming up and Ralph was getting mighty upset. But that s the way it was. They finally stopped But apart from that, there wasn t any no problems with the press that I can think of. The Knowland Family MF: Sherry: Me : I guess one of the things that we have been trying to get to, in studying this period, is what the connection was, or the relationship between the Knowland family an d Warren . Well, I can t tell you the whole of that story, because it began long before I got Into the picture. When Earl came to Oakland and began the practice of law here, Joe Knowland was then publisher of the Tribune. He d been a member of Congress. He d been In the legislature. He was very, very active in the Republican party, with which Earl Warren, then as a young man, was affiliated. When Earl Warren became district attorney, some thing that Knowland had nothing whatever to do with at all, they knew each other, they were friendly. Knowland always gave the district attorney, with this one exception that I told you about, a good press, and good editorial coverage and all that kind of thing. Earl Insisted on the nonpartisan quality of the office; it s nonpartisan by law, and by gosh it was going to be nonpartisan. He had Democrats in the office back in the days when you had to hunt a Democrat, hunt to find one. Nobody was asked his political affiliation at all. There was absolutely no inquiry made that way. You probably know that Frank Coakley managed the Al Smith campaign. Actually, he was vice campaign chairman . I was Just going to mention that. 52 Sherry; MP: Sherry; MF: Sherry: There wasn t any partisan pressure from the Knowlands . But there was friendship certainly, by all means. There was a great deal of friendship. Joe s son Bill Knowland then went to the legislature, and he was in the legislature when Earl Warren was attorney general. As attorney general, he would be interested naturally in legislation, and Bill would carry some of it for him, not the law enforcement stuff, but anything else that the attorney general was interested in. So I never could detect anything there at all exce