Berrett-Molway Trial: 1934

Morning brought more officials and more questions, while Berrett vainly asked to phone friends and the police laughed at him. Late Saturday afternoon, unwashed, unshaven, unfed, and having slept in their clothes on hard board "beds" in separate cells, Berrett and Molway found themselves in a lineup as strangers inspected them. "A girl picked me out," said Berrett later. "When she placed her hand on my shoulder, I all but passed out. I knew I had never seen her before in my life, but what could I do?"

After the lineup, the chief inspector said, "Boys, you've been picked by five people. We are changing the charge from suspicion of murder to murder."

On Sunday night, the police phoned lawyer Charles W. Barrett on Berrett's behalf, then told Berrett that Molway had cracked and "told everything." Berrett laughed at them and promised to "give them a true statement for Tuesday. When they came down, all excited, I gave them the same statement I had given them before. Gee, they were mad."

As the trial opened on Monday, February 12, the defendants challenged 19 prospective jurors to get a jury composed of laborers, mechanics, and machine operators, including a janitor, a clerk, a truck driver, and a foreman, who was made foreman of the jury. Engineers, businessmen, and professionals were excused.

In the courtroom, Berrett and Molway found themselves shackled together in a green wire cage. In front of them sat a deputy sheriff, his back to the courtroom, staring in the defendants' faces. Defense attorney Charles E. Flynn protested to the court that the prisoners' situation represented "the most prejudicial atmosphere possible" in an attempt "to impress the jury with the guilt of the defendants at the bar." Judge Thomas J. Hammond waited until the second day of the trial to have the deputy sheriff moved to the side of the prisoners' cage.

District Attorney Hugh A. Cregg opened with a description of the crime: how Berrett and Molway, with an unknown third man (named as "John Doe" in the indictment), carrying out a well-planned robbery in mid-morning at the Paramount Theatre, were interrupted by the arrival of the Paramount's bill poster, Charles F. Sumner. When Sumner turned to run, eyewitnesses would testify, he was shot down.