Chester Lane

Lane headed the legal team that put together the motion for a new trial in 1952, two years after Alger Hiss's conviction. Despite Judge Goddard's refusal to give him subpoena power to get typewriter records, Lane was able to cast doubt on, among other things, the Woodstock typewriter placed in evidence by the defense (implying it may have been a deliberate plant); on Whittaker Chambers' amended story that he left the Communist Party in 1938; on the likelihood that the State Department documents were typed when Chambers had said they were. Judge Goddard refused to grant a hearing on the motion.