Biography
Robert Thompson was the CPUSA NY State chairman; WWII Distinguished Service Cross (New Guinea); Spanish Civil War — Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion commander. Foley Square defendant; 3 years (reduced for WWII service). Jumped bail; captured August 1953 in Sierra Nevada Mountains; +4 years. Brief stint at Alcatraz; skull fractured by Yugoslav fascist inmate wielding a pipe. ONE OF TWELVE COMMUNISTS SENTENCED UNDER DENNIS V. UNITED STATES:
Robert G. Thompson, a leader of the communist Workers' Party, along with eleven other party leaders were found guilty for advocating the violent overthrow of the United States. None of the defendants ever directly advocated to overthrow the government, but the prosecutor claimed that by supporting an ideology that advocated for violence, they also did by extension. The defendants claimed that their First Amendment freedom of speech rights were violated and they served no "clear and present danger to the nation".
Thompson was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. (He got a lower sentence than his co-defendants because of his war record.) The case went all the way to the Supreme Court who affirmed the lower court's verdict.
National Guardian, October 19, 1953, national page 16: The paper reports the recaptured fugitive from the first Smith Act prosecution awaiting trial in New York. This is an interim procedural status, not a new sentence or exact date of capture or discharge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1953-10-19-5-52-nat-guardian.pdf
Tombs custody in the December 1953 prisoner roster
The December 19, 1953 Laisvė, page 3, names Robert Thompson at the Tombs in New York City in a political-prisoner greeting roster supplied by a prisoner-aid committee. The introduction describes those listed as then imprisoned. This supports an earlier custody point in his interrupted chronology, not a new initial admission or a finding of continuous imprisonment from 1949 through 1960. It gives no discharge date or elapsed custody total.
