vindication

ush419

The book study for this week in chapter 25 para 24 it reads, "What a shock for those persecuted. the corpses of the two witnesses were suddenly alive and active again. It was a bitter pill to swallow for those clergymen to swallow the more so since the Christian ministers whom they had schemed to put in prison were free again, later to be fully exonerated. The shock must have been even greater when in September 1919, the Bible Students held a convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, USA. Here J.F. Rutherford, recently released from prison, stirred conventioners with his talk "Announcing The Kingdom," based on Revelation 15:2 and Isaiah 52:7. Those of the John class began once again to "prophesy," or preach publicly. They advanced from strength to strength, fearlessly exposing Christendom's hypocrisy.

The words fully exonerated are what i want to find out about. I know they weren't I believe that the govt. just dropped it after the war was over like they did in a lot of other cases that were pending or being appealed.

If anyone has any info on this I would really like to see it. Pls let me know.

Truly as can be seen from paragrah sited above they are legends in their own minds!!!!!!!

Leolaia

It's a distortion of what happened. The revisions to the Revelation Climax book now remove the word "exonerated", which better reflect the truth.

The conviction was overturned on appeal because the judge had accused a hostile witness (a secretary at Bethel) of lying when she said she could not ID a rubber stamp that she would have used on a daily basis. So the judge went too far in treating the witness as hostile (by prejudicing the jury), and the conviction was overturned, and with the war over, the prosecutor did not want to retry the case.

More details here:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/96081/1645219/post.ashx#1645219

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/117685/2069933/post.ashx#2069933

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/117685/2069985/post.ashx#2069985

garybuss

Exonerated = To free from blame.

Overturning a conviction puts you back in the same position you were before you were convicted the first time. Back in the same position you were in before you were convicted means to free from blame, and to free from blame is the definition of exonerated, so I can't see how a conviction overturned and never retried wouldn't be an "exoneration" by definition.

I understand Rutherford was a member of the bar and practiced law after the overturned conviction. I've not bothered to look for proof of this. Maybe some here have information on that. If it's a fact, then I'm still not sure if it's proof of anything anyway. We have a convicted felon here who got his license to practice law back after he got out of incarceration while still on parole and his case was certainly not overturned nor was his conviction pardoned.

My point (to myself) is that having a license to practice law and being a member of the bar is certainly not proof of not having a felony on record or even of not being on parole.

If the claims are true that all of the conviction counts were overturned, then I'd have to agree that for me that would equal "fully exonerated", and I'd have no problem with that part of the report.

BluesBrother

I found this link to the article in the New York Times describing the trial and conviction of the Directors of the Bible Students . I found it interesting, they have others too

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9506E6DD173EE433A25752C2A9609C946996D6CF&oref=slogin

PS Whoops, the link does not seem to work for me now...but if you wanted to search the archives of the New York Times there is some interesting stuff

justhuman

Psycho Judge Jo