Biography
Josef Hocevar was an Austrian immigrant and coal miner in Roundup, Montana, prosecuted under the state’s wartime sedition law. Two men accused him of criticizing President Woodrow Wilson and American participation in World War I during a conversation at the Roadside Saloon on October 4, 1918. A Musselshell County jury convicted him on February 19, 1919, and Judge George P. Jones sentenced him to six to twelve years. He entered Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge on February 22, 1919, and worked in its laundry. His accusers later recanted, admitting that they had made up the allegations while drunk and continued with them out of fear of prosecution. Two hundred Roundup miners supported his pardon request. Governor Joseph M. Dixon pardoned him, and he left prison on August 18, 1921. He later worked as a road laborer in Park County.
