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In July 1933 State's Attorney Herbert O'Conor filed a complaint against
Bernard Ades with the Maryland State Bar Association. On October 23, 1933, five
days after Armwood's death and five days before the execution of Lee, Judge
William C. Coleman suspended Bernard Ades from practicing in federal courts and
filed charges against him in the United States District Court. O'Conor's complaint
asked for an investigation of "improper interference by Baltimore attorneys in
county cases," referring specifically, of course, to Bernard Ades. The States'
Attorney claimed that Ades was insinuating himself, uninvited, into cases in
progress (the cases O'Conor had in mind were those of Euel Lee and of Page
Jupiter, another Eastern Shore Black man accused of murdering a white) and that
he was defaming court officials. O'Conor's expressed fear was that Ades behavior
might have the "effect of engendering race prejudice. ^
Judge Coleman's charges were partly an elaboration on O'Conor's complaint
that Ades improperly involved himself in cases and slandered officials. In addition,
Coleman charged Ades with attempting to induce a government witness to perjure
herself, lying to a court, and attempting to obtain Euel Lee's body for improperly
purposes. Ades, it will be recalled, obtained Lee's permission to dispose of the
latter's body after the execution, evidently without telling Lee that the plan was to
transport the corpse to New York City for a memorial and anti-lynching protest.
After two months of pre-trial maneuvering, the disbarment case brought
against Ades by Judge Coleman opened in U.S. District Court on February 28,
1934. The presiding judge was Morris O. Soper, known as a liberal, and the two
prosecutors were appointed by the Bar Association of Baltimore City. During the
next week, some seventeen witnesses, including Ades himself, testified. On March
20, Judge Soper submitted a 37-page opinion finding against 6 of the 8 charges
Coleman brought against Ades, but sustaining the charges that Ades attempted
improperly to obtain Lee's body and that he slandered the prosecutors in the
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