Biography
William Dudley Pelley was a writer and former Hollywood screenwriter who founded the fascist Silver Legion of America in 1933. He ran for president on the Christian Party ticket in 1936. He was already imprisoned following a separate 1942 federal Espionage Act prosecution when named in the Washington case; that fifteen-year sentence must not be attributed to the Smith Act trial. He was named in the January 3, 1944 Washington indictment alleging conspiracy to undermine military loyalty under the Smith Act. The mass trial ended in a mistrial on December 7, 1944. The indictment was dismissed in December 1946; no conviction resulted in this case.
Ellen Deppe, "The Spirits Enter Politics," The Carolina Magazine, February 1936, printed pages 21-22 (PDF pages 173-174), reports that Pelley had received a one-to-two-year State Prison sentence in superior court for violating blue-sky laws through Galahad Press stock sales, but that the sentence was suspended. This is an ordinary securities prosecution in his biography; this source does not establish physical imprisonment or political motivation for that conviction. It also describes his Galahad College and Silver Shirts operations in Asheville, the April 1934 congressional investigation and his September 10, 1935 presidential announcement. These events are separate from his later federal sedition and Espionage Act cases. Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Carolina_magazine_%28serial%29_%28IA_carolinamagazine65univ%29.pdf