"Reprehensible"

All crimes cannot be neatly dovetailed into the law. Anna Laura Lowe committed no crime when in 1920 she married an ancient, incompetent Creek Indian named Jackson Barnett. It was no crime for her to hire lawyers, who successfully induced Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles H. Burke to release $1,100,000 of her husband's royalty oil riches for distribution to herself and the American Baptist Home Mission Society (TIME, Feb. 18).

But her conduct was "reprehensible" in the findings of special-Assistant-to-the-Attorney-General Pierce Butler Jr., son of Associate Justice Butler of the U.S. Supreme Court, who last week finished a thoroughgoing review of the Barnett case. Mr. Butler found: 1) the Interior Department had no power to give away Barnett's wealth; 2) the U. S. could sue to annul Barnett's marriage to Anna Laura Lowe; 3) suits to recover Barnett's wealth were justified; 4) nobody had been guilty of criminal conspiracy or fraud.

Said the Butler report: "However reprehensible it may be for this woman to marry the Indian for mercenary purposes and to procure the assistance of lawyers to aid her in becoming possessed of his property as his wife, it is not a crime nor is her procurement of assistance a conspiracy to commit a crime."

The report exonerated Commissioner Burke, whose resignation last week was accepted by President Hoover. Mr. Burke said he was "very happy" to get out. A Federal grand jury in Oklahoma almost indicted him last summer on this very case. Said the President: "I have the highest esteem for Judge Burke . . . and I propose a little later to offer him another important position in public service."

Meanwhile Secretary of the Interior Wilbur promised an entirely new policy of Indian administration.