Page 369 - Demo

Nuclear Weapons of the Atomic AgeReduced facsimile of the back of the Daniel G. Marshall and Fyke Farmer photograph on previous pageAttorneys Farmer and Marshall worked on behalf of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, yet were not hired by the couple. Because they acted on their own, the two lawyers were called %u201cintruders and interlopers%u201d by a New York Judge. Still, they were able to argue that the Rosenbergs were tried under the wrong law. They claimed the Atomic Energy Act (which said that a sentence of death could only be imposed by a jury) should have been applied, rather than the Espionage Act of 1917 (which allowed for the death penalty at the discretion of the court). On the basis of their arguments, the Rosenbergs were granted a temporary stay of execution by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, on June 17, 1953. However, the entire Supreme Court soon ruled otherwise by a vote of 6-3, and the Rosenbergs were put to death on June 19, 1953. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives was so upset with Justice Douglas that he introduced a resolution to have him impeached%u2014but a committee voted to end the investigation on July 7.