Page:Summary Report of Al Capone for the Bureau of Internal Revenue.djvu/33

SI-7085-F "Now, it clearly appears from the facts and circumstances before the court in this proceeding and at the trial of United States vs. Capone, that this respondent's activities were linked with those of an organized body of men whose outlaw camp is at the Lexington Hotel. Of this body the defendant Capone was chief. The respondent claims that he didn't know what this band was doing, but his understanding is that they were engaged in gambling and bootlegging.

"It is perfectly clear from a long array of conclusive circumstances that this band exercises a coercive influence over those with whom it comes in any contact which is nothing less than insurrection against the laws of the United States. The court would have been blind indeed if it had not observed the intimidation practiced on witnesses almost under the eyes of the court.

"It met be borne in mind that this respondent was in court, sitting with his concealed firearms behind the defendant, while the defendant was glaring at witnesses who were on the point of remembering something about the business in which the defendant was engaged, and which the witness could not possibly have forgotten; yet witnesses faltered and failed at the critical point.

"To this camp at the Lexington were summoned the witnesses who testified to the defendant Capone's losses at horse races. To that camp were summoned counsel for conferences. And from that camp, under what coercive influences we can only conjecture from what transpired in court, came that array of shocking perjury with which the court was affronted during the closing days of the trial. We had here the spectacle of witness after witness testifying in a way which was psychologically impossible, pretending to remember things which in the very nature of the human mind the witness could not have remembered if he had forgotten the things which he pretended to have forgotten. It was perjury on its face. - 32 -