(c) Instead of repealing the penalty provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917, the Atomic Energy Act, by § 10(b)(6), preserves them in undiminished force. (b) The partial overlap of two statutes does not work a pro tanto repeal of the earlier act, unless the intention of the legislature to repeal the earlier statute is clear and manifest. (a) At least where different proof is required for each offense, a single act or transaction may violate more than one criminal statute. The Atomic Energy Act did not repeal or limit the penalty provisions of the Espionage Act. (b) The question whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 rendered the District Court powerless in this case to impose the death penalty under the Espionage Act of 1917 is not substantial, and further proceedings to litigate it are unwarranted. (a) A stay should issue only if there is a substantial question to be preserved for further proceedings in the courts. (d) This Court's responsibility to supervise the administration of criminal justice by the federal judiciary includes the duty to see not only that the laws are enforced by fair proceedings, but also that the punishments prescribed by the laws are enforced with a reasonable degree of promptness and certainty. (c) In the unusual circumstances of this case, this Court deemed it proper and necessary to convene in Special Term to consider and act upon the Attorney General's urgent application. (b) The power exercised in this case derives from the Court's role as the final forum to render the ultimate answer to the question which was preserved by the stay. (a) That the full Court has made no practice of vacating stays issued by single Justices does not prove the nonexistence of the power it only demonstrates that the circumstances must be unusual before the Court, in its discretion, will exercise its power. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, and to vacate that stay. This Court has power to decide, in this proceeding, the question preserved by the stay granted by MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS had power to issue the stay. The Attorney General petitioned this Court to convene in Special Term and to vacate the stay. On June 17, 1953, MR JUSTICE DOUGLAS denied a writ of habeas corpus, but granted a stay, effective until the applicability of the Atomic Energy Act could be determined in JUSTICE DOUGLAS for a stay and a writ of habeas corpus, contending that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 rendered the District Court powerless in this case to impose the death penalty under the Espionage Act of 1917. Counsel who had not been retained by the Rosenbergs but who represented a "next friend" applied to MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS for a stay, but he denied it, since they raised questions already considered by the Court. Thereafter, counsel for the Rosenbergs applied to MR. At a Special Term on June 15, 1953, the Court denied a motion for leave to file an original petition for a writ of habeas corpus and for a stay, and again adjourned. After disposing, in effect, of all such collateral attacks then pending in the courts and denying a further stay, this Court adjourned the October Term, 1952. Thereafter, several unsuccessful collateral attacks on the sentences were made in the lower courts, and reviews of the decisions thereon were sought in this Court. The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, and this Court denied certiorari and rehearing. The overt acts relating to atomic secrets occurred before enactment of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, but other aspects of the conspiracy continued into 1950. The Rosenbergs were convicted and sentenced to death for conspiring to violate the Espionage Act of 1917 by communicating to a foreign government, in wartime, secret atomic and other military information. “That said, most historians think she was guilty.U.S. and in Soviet documents released decades later,” explains Kislenko. “Ethel’s guilt remains a question because of a lack of documentation, both in terms of proofs offered during and after her conviction in the U.S. In 2016, the Rosenberg’s sons asked President Barack Obama to pardon their mother. There has been continued doubt specifically about Ethel’s role in the spy scheme. “Needless to say, it was also a bit of pander to the increasingly vitriolic anti-communism of the period, mostly coming from Joseph McCarthy and his associates,” Kislenko says. Arne Kislenko, professor of history at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, sees the convictions as coded to a time when the United States wanted to look strong on Soviet aggression around the world, particularly during the Korean War. One reason for the lasting controversy about the case is due to the perceived harshness of the sentencing. Cold War paranoia influenced the proceedings.
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