The Watchman And Southron

Arraignment Of Sinclair And Fall Is Postponed
Washington, Dec. 17.--Arraignment of Harry T. Sinclair and Albert B. Fall on an oil conspiracy charge was postponed today in the District of Columbia supreme court until next Tuesday.

Arguments on Sinclair's motion to quash the indictment were put off until the same date after the presiding justice had found the day's docket crowded with other cases having priority.

The announcement from the bench was made after Sinclair, whose lease of Teapot Dome started the senate oil inquiry, had waited in court for more than an hour. Fall waited at his hotel.

The charge against Sinclair and Fall is similar to that which Fall and Edward L. Doheny, lessee of the Elk Hills reserve were exonerated of by a jury yesterday.

In anticipation of court ruling upholding the Fall-Sinclair indictment, government counsel are planning to ask that the oil man and former oil man and secretary be brought to trial early in January.
Simultaneous with the announcement of Justice Bailey's postponement of arguments on the Sinclair motion, Winton J. Lambert counsel for Fall, made a motion to quash, in behalf of the former cabinet officer. The Fall motion was based on the same grounds as that of Sinclair but went a step further in challenging the authority of Owen J. Roberts and Atlee Pomerene, the special government prosecutors named by President Coolidge to handle the oil case.

The new grounds presented in the Fall motion were based upon the August decision of the United States supreme court in the Myers case from Portland, Ore., in which the removal power of the president was held to be unrestrained by the senate concurrent clause covering the exclusive appointive power. From this decision Fall's attorneys took the ground that the action of the senate in directing the president on February 28, 1924, to appoint special prosecutors for the oil cases encroached upon the constitutional prerogatives of the executive.