O’Connor immediately objected: Without charging Whitney with membership and participation in a group that itself engaged in criminal syndicalism, the prosecution’s case rested solely on guilt by a nebulous chain of associations. He moved for a directed verdict after the prosecution’s opening statement, but Judge Quinn denied the motion. Now, it was O’Connor’s turn to show the defense’s hand. Whitney’s innocence would be demonstrated by her own political beliefs and personal interactions with the Communist Labor Party of California, all of which exhibited no purpose or objective that might be characterized, beyond a reasonable doubt, as criminal syndicalism.[43]
On Saturday, February 7, O’Connor died of influenza. Without O’Connor to block their way, the state’s attorneys railroaded the trial, turning the charges against Anita Whitney into the prosecution of the IWW. A mountain of evidence – approximately 60% of that introduced by the prosecutors – substantiated the IWW’s syndicalist character. There was everything from IWW songs to excerpts of IWW-circulated literature to testimony by professional witnesses of the IWW’s suspected destruction of industrial and agricultural property. The twenty-some witnesses for the prosecution had built a formidable case against the IWW. But the IWW’s connection to Anita Whitney hung by a slender thread: the Communist Labor Party of California, of which she was an organizing member, had adopted the Communist Labor Party of America’s platform, which in its section on industrial unionism endorsed the IWW as an example of “the revolutionary industrial proletariat of America.” In short, Anita Whitney was criminally responsible because of this tenuous nexus to the alleged syndicalist activities of certain members of the IWW.[44]
The defense relied on only two witnesses. First, there was Max Bedacht, a National Executive Committee member for the Communist Labor Party of America, who testified to a resolution passed at the national convention[45] that might cast doubt on the state’s characterization of the C.L.P. as a violent or terrorist organization. Second, there was Anita Whitney. Taking the witness chair on February 19, she asserted, in essence, that although she was a member of the Communist Labor Party of California, she neither understood nor intended it to be a vehicle of criminal syndicalism, and it was neither her purpose nor that of the state party to engage in violence, terrorism, or violation of any law.[46]
