CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - JUDICIAL POWERS - LEGALITY OF THE GRAND JURY REPORT

On December 2, 1952, a federal grand jury for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in a "presentment" made to that court, took the State Department severely to task for what it considered to be a conspicuous failure in handling the problem of subversive employees, United States citizens, at the United Nations. It further charged the State Department with impeding the grand jury's progress in attempting to fix responsibility for the failure upon certain State Department officials. On October 11, 1951, the Camden County grand jury presented to the Superior Court of New Jersey for Camden County a report in which various irregularities in connection with the management of the county jail were charged. The sheriff of the county moved to expunge from the record portions of this report alleged to be defamatory as to him.

An order denying this motion was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in In re Presentment by Camden County Grand Jury. The October grand jury of Westchester County, New York, in its report on the so-called "Peekskill Riots" of 1949, roundly criticized the American Civil Liberties Union for publishing a report entitled "Violence in Peekskill." The grand jury described the Union's report as ''based on a biased assumption as to the underlying cause of the disorder" and found that "much of its text and some of its conclusions are so far from the truth as to be scandalous." In Tennessee, a grand jury which two years ago investigated charges of "immoral practices" in a Memphis high school reported to the court that the charges were wholly unfounded. Incorporated in the report was a statement that Mrs. Maurine D. Hayslip, a teacher at the high school who had first publicized the charges, had "viciously maligned" the school and that her continued employment in city schools would be "unadvisable and a disservice to the community." A motion by Mrs. Hayslip to expunge this portion of the report was denied by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in Hayslip v. State. The October grand jury for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in a "presentment" issued November 25, 1952, said that certain non-Communist affidavits filed by union officials under section 9(h) of the Taft-Hartley Act were not "worth the paper they are written on" and that the filing of such affidavits was a "subterfuge." The union officials, who were not named, had invoked the privilege against self-incrimination when subpoenaed in connection with an investigation of possible violations of conspiracy and perjury laws arising out of the non-Communist affidavit provision of the Taft-Hartley Act.

The grand jury recommended that the National Labor Relations Board revoke the certification of the unions involved. Two unions and four union officials individually moved to expunge this "presentment" from the records of the court. The district court granted the motion in Application of United Electrical Workers.