Throughout the trial, the defense had argued that Michigan’s criminal syndicalism act, both on its face and as applied to Ruthenberg’s participation at the Bridgman convention, violated state constitutional and federal Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of political speech and association.  Now, in proffering to Judge White specific requests to charge the jury in conformity with the defense’s claims of constitutional liberties, requests that were also denied, the defense would find yet other grounds for objection. 

Conscious of the existing state of federal free-speech law, the trial court judge’s instructions to the jury might well have been deemed relatively unassailable.  The judge began by enumerating, clearly and coherently, the task for the jurors:

It is not disputed that the convention held near Bridgman was a meeting of the Communist Party of America, nor is it disputed that the respondent was present at that meeting; which leaves for your consideration these three questions: 1st.  Was the Communist Party of America, at the time the respondent assembled with that organization . . . a society formed to teach and advocate criminal syndicalism?  2d. Was the Communist Party at the time and place in question an assemblage to further the alleged unlawful purposes of the organization?  3d. Did Charles E. Ruthenberg assemble with the Communist Party voluntarily, that is to say, with the conscious purpose and design to further and aid the teaching and advocacy by the Communist Party of the doctrines of criminal syndicalism?^[82]

     In regard to the first question, the judge elaborated on the difference between ideological advocacy and advocacy of criminal syndicalism:

In order to establish that the Communist Party was at the time and place in question an organization which taught and advocated criminal syndicalism, the prosecution must satisfy you from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, not alone that this party taught the theory that the social forces now in operation would of their own momentum bring about an encounter of force between opposed social classes, but also that this party taught and advocated crime, sabotage, violence and terrorism as the method or one of the methods of accomplishing the changes in the organization of society desired by the communists.^[83]