Precedent: A Play About Justice.
I.J. Golden
New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1931.

Tom Mooney (1892-1942), a member of the Socialist Party, was a labor agitator and anti-war activist living in San Francisco. In 1916, the Chamber of Commerce held a large Preparedness Day Parade to rally support for the European War. A bomb exploded at the parade and ten people were killed. Mooney and three other men, including Warren K. Billings, were arrested and charged with the bombing, and Mooney was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. Billings was convicted of second degree murder. After the trial, evidence of perjury surfaced and the conservative Wickersham Commission concluded that the sole purpose of the trial was to convict Mooney and Billings. Thereafter, Mooney's death sentence was commuted to life. A huge international outpouring of public support followed in the next two decades. A European survey taken in 1935 showed that Mooney was one of four best known Americans, the others being Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford. Mooney was finally pardoned, but not until 1939, after 23 years in prison during which his health had suffered. He died a few years after. Billings was released with Mooney, but not officially pardoned until 1961; he died in 1972.

With Tom Mooney still serving his life sentence in a California prison, the case simmered on in the Thirties. I. J. Golden, a lawyer and amateur playwright, persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his drame á clef in April 1931. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, "By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made Precedent the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening... Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly."