Tom Zima

Released
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1920s
State:Pennsylvania
Time Imprisoned:
2 Years 2 Months 8 Days
Support
Communism Civil Liberties
Tom Zima

Biography

Tom Zima was a member of the Communist Party from Woodlawn, now Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, and one of the defendants in the Woodlawn sedition case. The prosecution grew out of a red raid of November 11, 1926 on Communist organizers among the Jones & Laughlin steelworkers, in which Zima's house and Pete Muselin's barber shop were searched and a quantity of party literature seized. Tried under Pennsylvania's Flynn anti-sedition law alongside Muselin and Milan Resetar, he was sentenced to five years of hard labor at the Allegheny County Workhouse at Blawnox. He entered custody on November 26, 1929 and was released on February 3, 1932 — 799 days, about two years and two months. Resetar did not live to be released; he died at Blawnox in October 1931.

See the entry for Pete Muselin for a fuller account of the case, including the letters he and Zima wrote from Blawnox.

This biography previously consisted of two sentences followed by the words "WASHINGTON CRIMINAL SYNDICALISM LAW PRISONERS" — a section heading from the source, captured along with the text.

Case

Allegheny County Workhouse
Charges: Sedition (Pennsylvania Flynn anti-sedition law; organizing Jones & Laughlin steelworkers at Woodlawn, now Aliquippa — the red raid of November 11, 1926).
Sentenced: 1927
Incarcerated: Nov 26, 1929
Released: Feb 3, 1932
Sentence: Five years of hard labor at the Allegheny County Workhouse at Blawnox, on conviction under Pennsylvania's Flynn anti-sedition law. Entered custody November 26, 1929 and released February 3, 1932 — 799 days, about two years and two months served of the five years. The row previously held the sentence and the note of a December 1931 pardon, with no institution and no dates of any kind, so the profile published no imprisonment figure at all. It also carried the generic import charge of a federal Espionage and Sedition Act prosecution; this was a state prosecution under a Pennsylvania statute, eight years after the war ended. On the year. This record now gives the conviction as 1927, stored at year precision. Two of the biographies in this case say 1928. 1927 is preferred because the raid was in November 1926, because the fourth defendant's record gives 1927 for the conviction and 1928 for his discharge on appeal, and because the appeals — the Pennsylvania Superior Court, then the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, then a refusal to review by the United States Supreme Court in 1929, then custody in November 1929 — do not fit into the time a 1928 conviction leaves. The 1928 date may be the sentencing rather than the verdict. A court docket would settle it.
Convicted: Yes — released February 3, 1932; pardons reported in December 1931
Institution State: Pennsylvania

Related Cases

Milan Resetar Milan Resetar Pete Muselin Pete Muselin Steve Bratich Mike Matty