John Semer Farnsworth - Sentencing and Appeal

Sentencing and Appeal

On February 27, 1937, John Semer Farnsworth was sentenced to four to twelve years in prison for conspiring "to communicate and transmit to a foreign government—to wit Japan—writings, code books, photographs and plans relating to the national defense with the intent that they should be used to the injury of the United States". Details of the Farnsworth case appeared in Alan Hynd's 1943 book, Betrayal From the East: The Inside Story of the Japanese Spies in America. Also in Captain Ellis M. Zacharias Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer, 1946.

In January 1938, he appealed the judge's decision in his petition for the writ of habeas corpus by arguing that the court erred in ruling that a petitioner could not be released "from unlawful imprisonment" by habeas corpus proceedings; further, that the court did not have jurisdiction in the first place and had no power to pronounce an indeterminate sentence. Despite his efforts, his appeal was rejected and his sentence upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

He served an eleven-year prison term. He died in Manhattan at age 59.