Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice
(1932)
by Edwin M. Borchard
Case #45
Andrew Toth
PENNSYLVANIA
In 1885, Andrew Toth, aged thirty-six, came from his home in
a small Hungarian village to make his fortune in this land of liberty and
promise. He went to Braddock, Pennsylvania, along with many of his
countrymen, to work in the Carnegie steel mills. He was a pious man, of
cheerful disposition and considerable intelligence, but he found difficulty
in learning to speak English. In Hungary, he had left a wife and daughter,
both of whom he expected to bring over after he had saved sufficient money;
but his four sons came to the United States with him.
In the fall of 1890, there was a great deal of unrest among the laborers of
the industrial and mining regions of western Pennsylvania. Large numbers of
aliens who were working in steel mills twelve and thirteen hours a day,
seven days a week, for very low wages, desired to better their working
conditions and were experimenting with the strike as a method of obtaining
their demands.
This was the spirit prevailing among the numerous Hungarian workmen in
Braddock on New Year's Eve, 1890. The Hungarians celebrated the coming of
the New Year with quantities of polinky, a favorite Hungarian
beverage. A considerable number were already on strike. As New Year's Day
dawned, the Hungarian celebration continued, and it was not long before many
of the men were in impassioned moods. They were especially angry because
their mill, The Edgar Thompson Steel Works, was operating on New Year's,
although it was a holiday, and because a large number of men were working
willingly. The indignation around Dugan's Hollow, where most of the
Hungarians lived, was seething.
At about two o'clock that afternoon, the working force at the furnaces of
the Works was surprised by the sudden assault of a mob of two hundred
infuriated Hungarians, armed with clubs, ax handles, shovels, and the like.
There were about four hundred men at work, many of them Irish, some
Hungarian, and some of other nationalities; but they were scattered about
the yard, and were so taken by surprise that many of them were badly beaten
before the mob could be stopped. There was fierce, savage fighting for a
short time. The working men gradually closed their ranks, and, reinforced
from other parts of the plant, soon drove the rioting Hungarians out of the
yard on the run. These drifted back to Dugan's Hollow in small groups.
Quite a number of workmen were injured in the pitched battle. Patrick
Nyland, the yard boss, was caught between the two fighting crowds and was
mercilessly beaten about the head and shoulders. He was taken from the yard
on a stretcher, and placed in a quiet place, and forgotten. A couple of
hours later he was discovered, where he had been left, unconscious. The
physicians despaired of his life. Michael Quinn, a furnace boss, was
brutally beaten, and it was necessary to take him to the Mercy Hospital,
where he told about his experience. He said:
I was at work at my furnace when these Hungarians rushed into the mill like a lot of wild animals. Everything had been reasonably quiet all the forenoon, and we were not expecting their visit. I tried to defend myself but it was no use. Four of the Hungarians knocked me down and beat me with clubs. One of them had a shovel with which he struck me three times on the head and twice on the side. They all acted like a lot of brutes. There was no occasion for the trouble except that the Hungarians thought they could force us to support their strike.
The county sheriff arrived in Braddock. Feeling was running
high against the Hungarians. He deputized two hundred men, and immediately
started making arrests of the leaders of the riot, upon warrants sworn out
by Charles M. Schwab, manager of the plant.
In several days fifty-four men had been arrested, and the county officers
started their investigations. One paper reported:
The work of arresting the rioters is still going on with persistent regularity. The apparent object of it is to thoroughly terrorize the semicivilized Slavs about Braddock, and to impress them distinctly with the fact that we have both law and government in America.
When Michael Quinn died five days later as the result of a fractured skull and a broken rib driven into his lung, public opinion became enraged. On January 7, 1891, the Pittsburgh Press, in an editorial on the responsibility for Quinn's death, said:
Had the Hungarian laborers not raised the disturbance Quinn would most likely be alive today. This surely establishes the responsibility for his death, no matter who may have been the individual that struck the fatal blow.
Who had beaten Michael Quinn? The officers discovered
several witnesses who said that they had seen it happen. They were given the
opportunity to examine the arrested Hungarians as they were marched through
a room for identification. Peter Mullen indicated Andy Toth, calling him
Steve Toth, and stated that Toth was the man he had seen hitting Quinn over
the head with a shovel at Furnace C. Mullen said that Toth had tried to
strike him also, but that he had escaped. Two other men said that they had
seen Michael Sabol and George Rusnok attack Quinn at Furnace A, Sabol
beating him to the ground with a shovel, while Rusnok held him down. Other
witnesses were found who said they had seen these three men with shovels or
clubs among the rioting Hungarians. The three Hungarians were indicted
without delay, and brought to trial in the Court of Oyer and Terminer of
Allegheny County before Judge Edwin H. Stowe on February 4, 1891.
The evidence, with a great deal concerning the riot, was submitted to the
jury by the District Attorney, D. A. Johnston. Through the testimony of the
defendants and other Hungarians, Colonel Blakely and H. L. Goehring, the
counsel for the defendants, endeavored to establish an alibi for each of the
defendants, especially for Rusnok, who denied being at the works at all on
New Year's Day. This left an issue for the jury as to whose testimony was to
be believed. A strong plea was made on behalf of the defendants that they
should not be made the victims of race prejudice. The District Attorney, on
the other hand, demanded a verdict of first-degree murder. With Judge
Stowe's instructions indicating clearly the difference between first and
second degree murder, the case went to the jury. It took the jury a full day
and a night to reach its conclusion, which indicated the serious differences
later disclosed. Great was the surprise of all concerned, including the
District Attorney, when the jury returned a verdict of first-degree murder
against all three defendants, a second-degree verdict having been the
strongest expected. On February 11, 1891, the defense counsel filed a motion
for a new trial, which was denied. On April 8, 1891, the three men were
individually sentenced to
be taken hence to the Jail of Allegheny County whence you came and thence at such time as the Governor of this Commonwealth may by his warrant appoint to the place of Execution, and that you be then and there hanged by the neck until you be dead. And May God in his Infinite Goodness have Mercy on your Soul.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reviewed the case on
certiorari and on June 5, 1891, affirmed the judgment of the trial court.
There was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the outcome of this
prosecution among the better class of citizens in Braddock. It was felt that
the Hungarians, who were able to speak very little English, had not received
as impartial a trial as three Americans would have received. Andrew Carnegie
and Charles M. Schwab, together with other citizens, took an interest in the
case, and the Governor was requested to grant a commutation to life
imprisonment. The request was granted on February 25, 1892.
In 1895, applications for the pardons of these men were filed. In March,
1895, Sabol was pardoned, and in September, 1897, Rusnok received his
pardon. The Board of Pardons indicated their belief that Rusnok was not in
the mills at all on the fatal day, but that he had been mistaken for Martin
Pekar, whom he resembled. However, in view of the direct testimony of Peter
Mullen against Toth, the Governor of Pennsylvania refused to grant any
further clemency to Toth.
By this time Toth's oldest son had become well established in Braddock, and
he took up the fight for his father's freedom. A second application for a
pardon was filed in 1902, but it was again denied. The years in prison grew
to ten and to fifteen, and it began to appear, as Toth passed beyond his
threescore years in 1910, that he would serve out his full life term. He had
been a model prisoner, and by reason of his piety, had earned the sobriquet
of "Praying Andy." He was taciturn, but on the few occasions when he talked,
he affirmed his complete faith in his vindication in God's good time.
In 1911 news came from Hungary that one Steve Toth, on his supposed
deathbed, had made a confession before a judicial authority that he had been
the one to attack Quinn, and that Andy Toth was entirely innocent of the
crime. Steve Toth had lived in the same boarding house as Andy, and had left
Braddock on the afternoon of the riot, leaving behind his belongings, as
well as some money. He was no relative of Andy, but bore some resemblance to
him.
So the tide began to turn in Toth's favor, and the fight to prove his
innocence was again taken up. Mr. Edward B. Goehring, brother of Toth's
first lawyer, succeeded in obtaining from the Pardon Board at Harrisburg a
new hearing on the matter. He presented a remarkably clear analysis of the
testimony given at the trial, in which he showed that, while Peter Mullen
had testified that he had seen Toth beating Quinn at Furnace C, two other
witnesses had seen Quinn beaten to the ground at Furnace A, and that when
Quinn came to Furnace A, he was uninjured. Mr. Goehring pointed out for the
first time in all of the hearings of this case, that Furnace A was over five
hundred feet away from Furnace C, and that, therefore, if the testimony of
the two witnesses about the severe beating of Quinn at Furnace A, and his
sound condition upon arrival there, was true, then Witness Mullen must have
been completely mistaken about Toth's beating Quinn at Furnace C. Dr.
Stewart, who was in 1891 a timekeeper and one of the witnesses of the brawl
at Furnace A, and in 1911 the sole surviving witness, appeared before the
Board and repeated in very positive terms his testimony about the events at
Furnace A. It was a physical impossibility for Quinn to have been mortally
injured at Furnace C, yet to have come five hundred feet to Furnace A, and
to have been there attacked as had been described. Presented in this light,
Toth's innocence was sufficiently established so that Steve Toth's
confession from Hungary was not filed with the Pardon Board. Governor Tener,
on the strong recommendation of the Board, granted Toth a full pardon on
March 17, 1911. Among the reasons given was that "the trial occurred within
about six weeks after the riot and at a time when the public mind was under
the influence of the excitement naturally arising from the tumultuous events
of the day."
Toth was immediately released from the Western Penitentiary, after having
served nearly twenty years for a crime he did not commit. He was met at the
prison gate by his four sons and Mr. Goehring. He expressed no hostility
toward those who had falsely testified against him and had ruined his life.
Toth admitted that he was present at the riot, but that he had gone there
only upon the threats of the riot leaders and to save himself from being
"licked." On all occasions, he had asserted his innocence and denied having
been near Quinn at the time of the riot. The newspapers over the whole
country expressed their sympathy for Toth, editorially and otherwise. His
case has since become a modern cause célèbre of the erroneous
punishment of an innocent person.
A movement was immediately started to have the commonwealth of Pennsylvania
grant some compensation to Toth for the twenty years of his life which it
had taken from him (from the age of forty-three to sixty-two). Delegate A.
C. Stein, from Allegheny County, introduced a bill in the House of Delegates
providing for the payment of $10,000 "to Andrew Toth as compensation for his
detention in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, through a miscarriage
of justice." Clergymen and editors joined in urging this reparation, but it
was not voted by the Legislature because it was felt that such a law would
be unconstitutional in Pennsylvania. It was said that the commonwealth could
pay nothing. Andrew Carnegie, for whom Toth had worked in the steel mills,
learned of the situation and arranged for the payment to Toth of $40 a month
for the rest of his life. He returned to his wife in his native village in
Hungary, now Czechoslovakia, to spend his declining years.
Although considerably broken in health by his long confinement, Toth seems
to have come of sound stock. At the present writing (1930) Toth is still
living.
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The Toth case illustrates the dangers of inadequate investigation by prosecuting authorities and of response to popular demands for vengeance. Mob attacks in addition always carry an opportunity for grave mistakes in identity. It would seem that a little care could have established the fact that Furnace A and Furnace C were over five hundred feet apart and not close together, as the state seemed to assume. It is often hard to tell why such obvious facts are overlooked, even by the defense. The distance between the two furnaces was not established for twenty years, and was overlooked on the occasion of two prior pardon hearings. The disclosure of this important fact would alone have punctured the case against Andy Toth – even against Steve Toth, who apparently did strike a blow at Furnace C. In the pardons of Sabol, Rusnok, and Toth, the Board of Pardons calls attention to the fact that the public excitement incidental to the riots and popular prejudice against Hungarians at the time had much influence upon their convictions. Fortunately, the sentence of hanging was commuted to life imprisonment, when the establishment of the truth could still serve a useful purpose. One explanation of why Andy Toth was identified by Mullen is to the effect that during the "line-up," Mullen stumbled awkwardly and nearly fell, which elicited a laugh from cheerful Andy, whereupon Mullen, vexed, pointed his finger at Toth as the attacker of Quinn – "the laugh which cost twenty years," as one writer puts it. Why a bill to indemnify a person whom the state had unjustly convicted and imprisoned should be held unconstitutional, it will be difficult for the layman to understand. Narrowness of outlook occasionally results in attributing peculiar powers to a constitution. When statutes for indemnification become more familiar, as they are throughout Europe, it will perhaps be admitted that the state is but doing simple justice in righting its wrong, and that even an unintentional miscarriage of justice is a public injury which warrants indemnification to the victim. Andrew Carnegie did, as a matter of philanthropy, what the people of Pennsylvania should have done as a matter of duty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Photostatic copy of the docket record, Case No. 18,
December Session, 1890, Commonwealth v. Andrew Toth et al.,
Allegheny County Court House, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
2. Photostatic copy of the pardon record, from the files of the Pennsylvania
Board of Pardons.
3. Pennsylvania Legislative Journal (1911), I, 885.
4. Virginia Law Register, XVII (September, 1911), 406-407.
5. Newspaper articles and editorials in the Pittsburgh Commercial
Gazette, Pittsburgh Dispatch, Pittsburgh Post,
Pittsburgh Press, Philadelphia Record, and the Boston
Sunday Post.
6. Pardon of Michael Sabol, March 28,1895.
7. Pardon of George Rusnok, September 30,1897.
8. Acknowledgments: Edward B. Goehring, attorney at law, Pittsburgh; Francis
H. Hoy, Jr., Secretary of the Board of Pardons; William S. Herbster,
attorney at law, Pittsburgh.