Biography
Charles Crozier was vice-president of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Local 203 in Juneau, Alaska. Authorities arrested him and other union members on June 24, 1935, following a confrontation on the picket line at the Alaska Juneau Gold Mine. The defendants were prosecuted for riot with dangerous weapons. After a five-week trial involving about two hundred witnesses, the jury acquitted the twenty-four defendants on December 15, 1935. Irvin Goodman and Alaska senator Henry Roden represented the defense.
Alex Hodoff's January 1936 Labor Defender report, page 14, identifies Crozier as the last defense witness and Local 203 vice-president. It describes defense counsel Henry Roden offering Crozier's old, rusted hunting rifle and pistol to challenge the prosecution's dangerous-weapons allegation. The report says twenty-five defendants were acquitted but gives no exact verdict date; this differs from the existing account's twenty-four defendants and does not resolve the December 14 versus December 15 chronology in other records.
Daily Worker, December 24, 1935: Page 5’s captioned group photograph identifies him by surname among the Juneau union defendants recently freed after the riot trial arising from the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company strike. It supplies an identified portrait and corroborates release by December 24, but gives no exact release or verdict day and does not settle the conflicting December 14/15 accounts. The photograph also includes defense lawyers Goodman and Roden; they are not counted as defendants. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n309-NY-dec-24-DW-Q.pdf
Pages 1-2 report acquittal of twenty-four Juneau strike defendants after a five-week riot trial involving about two hundred witnesses. Defense rested December 6, prosecution rebuttal began December 9, and the paper places the verdict at midnight Sunday, differing from December 14 wording in another contemporary report. Three-to-fifteen-year punishment was exposure, not a sentence served. No exact individual jail discharge is inferred. Local 203 vice-president Crozier, the final witness, brought an antiquated rifle and pistol which counsel Henry Roden offered to expose the dangerous-weapons allegation. Source: https://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19351219.pdf
Labor Defender, January 1936; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, December 24, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Voice of the Federation, December 19, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Page 1 captions the same Juneau defendant group; the report explicitly dates the riot-trial acquittal to noon December 14, 1935 after twenty hours of deliberation. It describes Judge Alexander, prosecutors Holzheimer and Folta and defense lawyers Irvin Goodman and Henry Roden. The caption says twenty-five while the article says twenty-four; another existing report gives December 15, so these conflicts remain explicit rather than silently replacing established dates. No precise physical discharge day or completed custody interval follows from the verdict.
