Law: Joyriding Jury

One week end in Chicago last January the jury hearing the second embezzlement trial of ousted Superior Court Clerk Frank V. Zintak spent most of its time on a tour of saloons in the neighborhood as well as some that were far enough away from the Criminal Courts Building to require a bus ride to reach them. Keeper of the twelve men was Former Deputy Sheriff Daniel Miller, who went along.

Activities included many a beer, dancing, attempted petty larceny of a radio and a bar stool.

When arguments in the case were completed three days later, what the jury had to decide was whether Clerk Zintak was guilty of embezzling $10,500—part of $26,500 the defendant was short in his accounts as a result, he testified at his trial, of loans to other Democratic politicians: clerks, cashiers, elevator boys, even judges.

It took the jury but six hours to acquit Frank Zintak, who returned to the courtroom when the verdict was brought in long enough to repeat Samuel Insull’s lines: “I never in my life did anything wrong.” Following a revealing investigation into the Zintak jury’s joyride Judge Benjamin P. Epstein last week held the entire panel in contempt of court. Five jurors who drank & danced were sentenced to serve five days in jail. Six who drank but did not dance received three-day sentences. A 37-year-old telephone mechanic named Leo Fahey, who merely watched, was fined $50.

Deputy Sheriff Miller got six months in jail.