Report of Halsmann’s Pardon is Semi-officially Denied

A semi-official denial was issued today of the report published last night by the Austrian Press Bureau that Philip Halsmann, a young Jew serving a prison sentence at Innsbruck for patricide, had been pardoned by Dr. Wilhelm Miklas, president of Austria. While official government quarters have refused any information, the Austrian Press Bureau insists that its story was partly correct, intimating that the pardon, in principle, has been decided upon, and the official publication of the pardon act would take place next week.

The reports in the Austrian papers had said that not only had young Halsmann been pardoned but that Chancellor Johan Schober had signed the pardon act and Halsmann had been immediately released. It was also reported that Halsmann would now be given an opportunity to vindicate his name, it having been widely believed that he was convicted only because of the anti-Semitism of the jury.

The Halsmann case, which dates back to the summer of 1928, has become a cause celebre. Halsmann and his father Max had come for an excursion to the Tyrol Mountains where the elder Halsmann was later found dead in a ravine. Chiefly on the evidence of a Tyrolean shepherd boy, Philip Halsmann was found guilty of murder and sentenced to ten years in prison. With young Halsmann protesting his innocence it was believed that the verdict of guilty was traceable to the anti-Semitism of the Innsbruck jury.

In view of the widespread feeling that Halsmann had been found guilty because of the anti-Semitic inclinations of the jury, the Austrian Supreme Court granted an appeal and annulled the sentence, ordering a new trial at Innsbruck, a hot-bed of anti-Semitic activity. Careful preparations were made for the new trial and new evidence accumulated. At the second trial in October 1929, Halsmann was sentenced to four years in prison at hard labor.

Since the second trial, strenuous efforts have been made to obtain a third trial. Public opinion in Austria, Germany and Czecho-Slovakia was aroused at what was generally believed to be a tragic miscarriage of justice. Editors who deplored the resentencing of Halsmann were fined. A fund was then raised to lodge a new appeal with the Supreme Court. The appeal was heard and denied and Halsmann remanded to prison. Since he has been in prison he has contracted tuberculosis.