Biography
Thomas Mooney San Francisco labor organizer and IWW militant — son of an Irish coal-miner Knights of Labor organizer — who along with Warren K. Billings was framed for the July 22, 1916 Preparedness Day Parade bombing on Market Street that killed ten and injured forty. Convicted of first-degree murder in 1917 on perjured testimony; sentenced to death. President Wilson, alarmed that Mooney's execution might trigger Russian-style worker revolt, personally interceded with California Governor William Stephens, who in 1918 commuted the sentence to life. The case became a 22-year international cause célèbre. Pardoned by Governor Culbert L. Olson on January 7, 1939. Thomas Mooney was San Francisco labor leader and socialist activist. On July 22, 1916, a parade was organized in San Francisco by local supporters of the Preparedness Movement which advocated American entry into World War I. A suitcase bomb was detonated by an unknown assailant, killing 10. Mooney and labor leader Warren Billings were both framed for the bombing by the San Francisco Police Department using falsified evidence and perjured testimony from a paid off witness, Frank Oxman. On November 1920, Draper Hand of the SFPD went to Mayor James Rolph and admitted that he had helped Charles Fickert and Martin Swanson frame Mooney. Later, two witnesses, Edgar Rigall and Earl K. Hatcher, came forward and provided evidence that Frank Oxman was 200 miles away during the bombing and could not have seen what he told the court at the trial of Mooney. In February 1921, John McDonald confessed that the police had forced him to lie about the planting of the bomb. Despite this new evidence the Californian authorities refused a retrial. Mooney served 22 years in prison before finally being pardoned in 1939 by Governor Culbert Olson. By then, Mooney had been suffering from jaundice and ulcers from his time and prison and died shortly after in 1942 at age 59.
