May 3, 2023
Federal Courthouse, NY, 1938
This is a short podcast to acquaint you with the actors about
to come on stage in the drama of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers.
They are the government Prosecutor Thomas Murphy, Hiss’s principal
defense lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker, Judge Samuel Kaufman, and the
jury.
Additional Research
Murphy, a 6’ 4” muscular giant of a man with an enormous
walrus mustache, tried to come across as the quiet, somewhat
plodding, but totally competent and honest government attorney just
doing his job. He knew he could not match Hiss’s barrister
Lloyd Paul Stryker, the greatest criminal defense lawyer in the
country and a dramatic actor who could resemble a July 4 fireworks
display if he wanted to. Also, prosecutors’ excessive drama
can create sympathy for defendants. In later years, Murphy
was briefly Police Commissioner of New York City (appointed by a
reform Mayor) and for decades afterwards was a judge, appointed by
President Truman, in the court where the Hiss trials occurred — the
federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.
A lawyer/friend who practiced before him told me that Murphy was a
very quiet, laid back, passive trial judge and that these traits
reflected his inner total self-confidence and sense of his own
competence. My friend said that no matter which side of a
case you were on you were always happy when you got Murphy as trial
judge. He would let you put on your case as you wished and wouldn’t
be interrupting your choreography to preen before the jury, comment
on the evidence, or audition for higher office
Lloyd Paul Stryker was a magnificent performer, a real
barn-burner. He might be out of place in today’s cool
culture. To him, his client was all things good and the other
side was pure evil. It was that simple. He tended to
‘swing for the bleachers,’ ignoring details and endlessly pounding
away at one or two simple points in Shakespearean English. He
had a one man office, employing very young lawyers for a few years
and then letting them go (with the benefit of having worked for a
grand master). Among the books he wrote (in his spare time!)
are laudatory biographies of our first impeached President, Andrew
Johnson, and the famous 18th-19th century liberal British barrister
Thomas Erskine, and two legal treatises — all available on
Amazon. By the time of this trial, he was approaching old
age. He had made a lot of money but I think he had spent most
of it.
Little is known about the judge at the first trial, Samuel
Kaufman. He must have been good to become a judge in the
prestigious Southern District, but he left no mark and was thought
by some to be a hack from the Manhattan Democratic Party’s
‘machine’ in Tammany Hall, which was still quite powerful in the
1940s. He was so small physically that, when he leaned back
all the way in his swivel chair up on the bench, he sometimes
disappeared from view.
About the jury, the important thing is that, judging from
their occupations, none of them had been to graduate school and
perhaps none of them had been to college. They were the kind
of people who can’t afford to live in Manhattan any more.
This trial took them into an unfamiliar world, of conceptual policy
making and political ideology.
Questions: Do you think Murphy and Stryker were well
suited for the roles in which fate cast them? If you were one
of them, how would you use the other’s character traits to your
advantage? If you were Murphy or Stryker, how would you take
the jury into the foreign (to them) world of the State Department
and espionage for the Soviet Union in a way that made your side
look good and the other side look bad? How would you make
your man, Hiss or Chambers, seem to someone on the jury as just an
honest ordinary person like me?