A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 16 August 1960. A sleeved arm grips a hammer and sickle whose blade forms the beam of a scale, and its pan holds a scroll lettered "Guilty when charged." Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743285).
What the cartoon shows
One image, and three words beside the signature. The archive describes a sleeved arm gripping a hammer and sickle by its handle. The sickle forms the beam of a scale, and its pan holds a scroll. The words on the scroll are the cartoon's whole case.
GUILTY WHEN CHARGED
JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR......
Who drew it and where it is kept
Jim Berryman drew it for the Washington Evening Star, and his signature with the paper's name is on the drawing. The original is in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, in the series of Jim Berryman political cartoons (NAID 5730852). The archive's rights line records it as public domain. That describes the holding; it does not make the newspaper a government office. The archive classes the source as openly identified and the audience as the domestic public. Which Soviet case, if any, prompted the cartoon is not recorded.
How to read it
FRAME tags it name-calling, through the symbol and the phrase, and calls that a weak fit. That is fair: the cartoon makes an accusation about a legal system rather than calling anyone a name. Its argument is that in Soviet courts a charge is a verdict.
Taken as a statement of principle, the cartoon is on firm ground. A court where the accusation settles the outcome is not a court. The presumption of innocence, the right to confront the evidence, and a jury that can say no are what separate a trial from a ritual.
The same measure applies at home. A reader who agrees with Berryman about Moscow should hold Washington to the same standard. For another Berryman cartoon on this site, see It's Time to Lay This Needle Aside!, on vaccine politics. The next record in the archive is another Berryman, In English or Spanish, on Castro and Guantanamo.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Soviet Scales of Justice, 16 August 1960. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743285, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
