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a protracted series of protests led by the ILD, no one was ever even arrested.^"

In the wake of Matthews' murder, though, the ILD was able to win one of its
demands: a change in venue for Euel Lee's trial from Snow Hill to Towson, in
Baltimore County, just north of city. The trial began on January 20, 1932, with
Bernard Ades and Philadelphia ILD lawyer David Levinson as defense counsel.
The defense immediately raised the ILD's second demand, that Blacks be
permitted to serve on Lee's jury. The motion failed. The ILD defense then sought
to show that the prosecution could place Lee no closer than one mile from the
murders he allegedly committed and that the evidence found in Lee's room was
either irrelevant or planted by the police. Despite the apparently flimsy nature of
the prosecutions's case, and some contradictory testimony by prosecution witnesses,
Euel Lee was found guilty by an all-white jury only two days later after thirty
minutes of deliberation. He was sentenced to death. Despite the verdict, the Afro-
American editorialized on the importance of what "two Jewish lawyers, backed by
the Communist Party," had done with the Euel Lee case:

Against the will of the Eastern Shore residents and the county court
officials, the trial was moved to the calm and judicial atmosphere of a court
room near Baltimore. That alone is a great victory for order and decency.

Prosecuting attorneys from three counties, with a confession in their
hands obtained by alleged third degree methods, feared or were unable to
produce it in court. That is victory number two for justice and fair play.

And finally one of the three presiding judges was put on the witness
stand to swear that he had selected juries for 26 years and never selected a
colored juror, that he never considered colored persons as prospective
jurors...

[Ades and Levinson] laid the groundwork for an appeal to the
Maryland Court of Appeals and if necessary to the highest court in the land
to determine whether Maryland courts may exclude citizens from the jury
service by any expedient or subterfuge on the ground of color....

This has been done by the International Labor Defense - the
"dangerous" Communists, the radical Reds.... These Reds, supposed
enemies of the Bible and the United States Constitution, have contended for
the right of a humble black citizen to a fair, orderly, and impartial trial