One day the subject of the death penalty came up at the breakfast table. My father blurted out: "I'm against it. There's no such thing as equal justice!"
The sphinx talks! And the floodgates opened. In his days as a lawyer he'd seen too many prosecutors railroad people. Ethel Rosenberg! I nearly fainted. My father, the devout Catholic, who told me bedtime stories about his friend Jack Roth hunting down Rusky spies, is going to defend Ethel Rosenberg? "Your Great-Aunt Jo was friends with Ethel Rosenberg." Disbelief. We're talking about the sweet old aunt who gave us boxes of chocolate chip cookies when we came to visit. The woman ever present with Rosary beads in her hands. The woman who religiously sent money to Catholic missionaries in the Philippines. The Aunt Jo whose sister was a leader of the Silk Stocking district Republicans. The Aunt Jo who left you the Standard Oil stock from her inheritance? That Aunt Jo was best friends with the infamous Rusky spy, Ethel Rosenberg?
Your Aunt Jo didn't need to, but she worked in the New York public schools. She had an office job at the one where Ethel sent her kids. Ethel, he went on, was a devoted mother. She'd arrive early at the end of the school day to spend time chatting with Aunt Jo before taking her boys for religious instruction. That SOB Roy Cohn railroaded Ethel to promote his own career. The United States of America executed some little kids' mother because an ambitious creep who got his buddy appointed as trial judge wanted to become a big shot lawyer and power broker.
Then the sphinx looked as though he was going to fly into a rage and start pounding the table. They tried to railroad my Uncle George [the debonair bookmaker] for the murder of Arnold Rothstein! They tried to force him to give up the real killer, but he didn't know or wouldn't tell. Your grandfather was beside himself worrying that his brother would get sent to the electric chair. George didn't flinch and called the prosecution's bluff. People blamed my father and his friend Jimmy Walker for fixing the trial, but they didn't have anything to do with that. My Aunt Marion and her friends passed judgment on George and set him free. Marion belonged to a bridge club and the presiding judge was the husband of Marion's bridge club friend. The presiding judge appointed a "sympathetic" judge who directed the not-guilty verdict that saved George.
Poor Ethel. Roy Cohn was holding her hostage, trying to break up a big spy ring by wringing a confession out of her husband. Her husband called Cohn's bluff. Cohn didn't flinch. My grandfather was gone, Jimmy Walker was gone, Aunt Marion was gone. New York's Irish women didn't pull the strings anymore. The Roy Cohn had usurped their power to appoint prosecutors and judges. Aunt Jo couldn't save Ethel.
