Fine or Jail Term Ordered To Make Bootleg Buyer Talk

Camden Courier-Post - October 29, 1935

Reveal Rum Source or Else, is New Rule of Police Court

2 Wilkie Nabbed Are Among First ‘Victims’

Unless they tell where they bought it, drinkers of bootleg liquor arrested by Camden police henceforth will receive the full penalty of $200 fine or 90 days in jail, Police Judge Lewis Liberman decided yesterday.

The new policy of getting to the bootleg seller through the bootleg drinker was announced by Judge Liberman when he imposed maximum sentences on two men arrested by Acting Detective John V. Wilkie at Eighth and Cooper streets last night.

The men were Albert Waite, 29, of 916 Pearl Street, and John Barrett, 34, of 237 North Eighth Street. In the latter’s pocket, Wilkie said he found a half pint of “white mule.”

Barrett refused to tell Wilkie where he brought [sic] it, so in a pre-hearing conference with Judge Liberman and Court Clerk Edward Smith, it was decided to give Waite and Barrett, originally arrested as just drunk and disorderly, a trial on the more serious charge of possessing illicit liquor. If Barrett gets a change of heart and names the seller, his sentence later will be suspended, said the judge.

“This is a fine idea to make the purchasers of illegal whiskey tell where they got the stuff,” said the judge. “There will be mighty few willing to pay $200 or spend three months in jail rather than tell on a speakeasy.”