Eyewitness 1968: Only death could keep Musmanno from marching
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Judge Michael A. Musmanno
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Following his election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1928, Michael A. Musmanno became its youngest member.
When he rose to address his fellow legislators for the first time, the presiding officer mistook him for a trespassing visitor.
"Are you, sir, a member of this House?" he asked Musmanno.
"Mr. Speaker, I am," he replied. "Furthermore, this is the first time and, I believe, the last time you will ever be in doubt of that."
That anecdote, showing both his self-confidence and his sense of humor, was one of many included in Musmanno's obituary in The Pittsburgh Press. It appeared Oct. 13, 1968, the day after his death at 71 from the effects of a stroke.
In an Oct. 14 editorial, the Post-Gazette described him as "one of the state's most colorful and controversial public figures [who] brought to every major public issue a passionate, if at times quixotic, concern for the underdog,"
A lifelong bachelor, he appeared to be married, in equal parts, to the law and to the limelight.
As a young lawyer he was part of the defense team that worked on ultimately unsuccessful appeals of the death sentences imposed on anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the 1920s. As a state legislator and as an author, he led the successful fight to ban the Coal & Iron Police, a private law-enforcement force accused of terrorizing workers.
Having served as an Allegheny County judge in the 1930s, he was tapped by President Harry Truman to preside over a second round of Nuremberg Trials for Nazis accused of war crimes. Many years later, he was a prosecution witness during the trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann, who oversaw the deportation of Jews to death camps, was convicted for his role in carrying out the Holocaust and hanged in 1962.
First Published March 21, 2010 12:54 am
