3,000 THEATER
CASES DISMISSED.
PROSECUTOR KIMBRELL CLEARS
DOCKET UP TO APRIL 3.
WAS NO EVIDENCE TO CONVICT.
300 CASES, ALL RECENT, REMAIN
TO BE TRIED.
Kimbrell Acts on His Own Initiative
as Soon as the Cases Are All
Transferred to Porter-
field's Court.
Over 3,000 theater cases were dismissed by County Prosecutor I. B. Kimbrell yesterday shortly after Judge W. H. Wallace had transferred all of the Sunday closing cases of all kinds to Judge E. E. Porterfield's division of the criminal court. Every Sunday labor case against theater managers, house employes and actors, filed after grand jury indictments, from the beginning of the crusade last September until the indictments returned April 3, was dismissed.
Mr. Kimbrell stepped to Judge Porterfield's bench during a five-minute recess in the trial of a shooting case and said quietly to the judge:
"I want to make a world record at clearing a docket. The state asks that all theater cases numbered 5,337 to 8,849 be dismissed."
"Certainly," replied Judge Porterfield. He then directed James Gilday, the clerk, to make the order on the record. None of the theater attorneys nor Attorney R. R. Field was present. Kimbrell's action came as a surprise. When Judge Wallace was asked about it in the afternoon he said:
"That's news to me, but I knew that Mr Kimbrell intended to dismiss all of the old cases sometime. He talked with me about the matter some days ago and I told him that I was in favor of dismissing the older cases, if Judge Porterfield insisted upon trying them in the order of filing."
These are the cases in which Judge Wallace recently said he had no evidence. They would have been dismissed in his own court eventually. His talk with Kimbrell shows that he was aware of this.
"There is no possibility of all the theater cases being tried," Mr. Kimbrell said. "If the state secures convictions in cases of this nature it will be only in those recently filed and while deputy marshals still remember what they saw in each theater on certain Sundays, Judge Wallace himself has said, that the state has no evidence in the old cases.
The dismissal of the old cases is a help both to Judge Wallace and to the theater managers. The state is now in a position to secure convictions and the managers are freed from their burden of bonds. Enough cases remain to use as a test of every phase of the Sunday labor statute, which Judge Wallace is attempting to enforce. There are about 300 cases left, a hundred or so each week since the return of indictments on April 3. It will take us all summer to try that many."
