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Prohibition Era trial re-enacted

Window into the past a project of The Castle museum

Marietta attorney Ray Smith delivers a closing argument in his role as prosecutor in “History on Trial,” a mock re-enactment of a 1920s bootlegging case held in the Washington County Courthouse on Monday. (Photo by Michael Kelly)

MARIETTA — The prosecution got another shot at Alice Harman on Monday, nearly 100 years after her original arrest, but Harman walked free.

Harman was the defendant for the second “History on Trial,” organized by The Castle museum and played out in Courtroom A of the Washington County Courthouse. Monday’s mock trial, an ad hoc replay of the prosecution of Harman on a charge of aiding and abetting a bootlegging operation in Roaring Twenties Marietta, was held in two parts -one for students in the morning and a more expansive version for the general public in the afternoon.

All roles were played by lawyers, except for Washington County Common Pleas Judge Mark Kerenyi, who presided over the trial. It was a chance for attorneys to lighten up and entertain the audiences, about 30 students in the morning and a full house of people just interested in seeing the show during the two-hour afternoon trial.

“They lifted the mattress, looked in my bedroom, my medicine cabinet … they looked at my underthings,” said Harman, played by attorney Robin Bozian, flapping her hands in distress as she recalled the Dec. 8, 1923, police raid on her Fearing Street house. “It was awful.”

Attorney Ray Smith, playing the prosecutor, attempted to tie Harman to a bootlegging operation run by a man named Kesselring who owned a mysterious yellow Studebaker with a back seat modified to conceal liquor bottles. Kesselring, Smith told the witness and the court, had also been busted for having a concealed underground still.

Harman maintained that despite testimony by her nosy neighbor, Bee Jones, that the car was frequently seen coming and going at her house, with men apparently lifting heavy crates of bottles out of the back seat and carrying them into the house, she didn’t have alcohol delivered, didn’t sell it and didn’t know anything about it.

She said the deliveries were empty bottles and cases of fresh peaches she used in her renowned peach seltzer, which also was what she was pouring down the drain of her kitchen sink when the police burst in.

Explaining why big crowds of people were often seen at her house in apparent states of intoxication, Harman said she was a singer and many people came to be entertained at her house -some of whom were elderly and not terribly stable on their feet. She bristled at the suggestion that alcohol was served at her house.

“Alcohol? I am absolutely shocked. I would not have alcohol delivered to my house, especially with a neighbor like Mrs. Jones,” she said. “Besides, you have to be sober when you sing, ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart.’ You can’t be drunk to sing that.”

The trial wound up with attorney Shawna Landaker, who played the defense lawyer, calling for dismissal on grounds that her client’s rights had been violated because the prosecutor, police and judge were paid a commission for every conviction. Kerenyi quickly threw that argument out.

Smith recounted the odor of alcohol reported by police as Harman poured her “peach seltzer” down the drain, the mysterious visits of the notorious Studebaker reported by the neighbor, connecting her to the bootlegger Kesselring, and told the audience – which was serving as the jury – that it was perfectly acceptable to convict on circumstantial evidence.

Both the jury of students in the morning and the general public in the afternoon found Harman not guilty.

When the afternoon verdict was read, Bozian leapt up, waved her arms and shouted “I ‘m buying one for everybody!”

Former Washington County Common Pleas Judge Ed Lane, who helped organize the project, said the 1920s case was remarkably similar to present day events, with contraband alcohol the focus instead of illegal drugs.

“There are many correspondences to modern times. Alcohol seizures and arrests were a daily event, and the police and news were very focused on it,” he said.

Lane said the attorneys were given the files on the original case along with clippings from The Marietta Times that covered the case, which were valuable because the court in those times did not take depositions. Nothing in the mock trial was scripted, he said – the trial strategy and flow was entirely up to the attorneys, witnesses and judge.

The original case against Alice Harman was dismissed by the judge, Smith said. The bootlegger, Kesselring, made a deal, Lane said.

“He ended up taking a plea. He played it smart, didn’t say anything, got a lawyer, and pled to a lesser charge,” Lane said. “So many similarities to today.”

Ava Powers, a seventh grader at Veritas Classical Academy, was among the student audience – and jury – at the morning session.

“I think it’s important for people to know the difference between fact and assumption,” she said after the trial was over. “It was an opportunity for me, because people my age don’t know what really goes on in the world.”

Power said she voted not-guilty.

The story arc of the trial hit home for Wyndham Sparling, who came from Waterford to see the trial. His family, he said, can trace its roots back to 1862 in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

“My grandmother lived in Spencer, W.Va., back in the prohibition era, and her husband left her with six children to fend for herself. She took to bootlegging, and she was arrested,” he said. “And the man who left her, he came back and pleaded guilty to it and did the jail sentence instead of her.”

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