The 1930s saw a surge of union organizing and major strikes. Communists were leaders in these struggles, organizing for their own unions and others, which frequently generated repressive action against them. Pat Chambers and Caroline Decker were organizers for the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU), a Communist union, and soon became the victims of California's Criminal Syndicalism Law. California vs. Pat chambers et al documents a three-year court struggle against 18 CAWIU organizers which jailed several of the men in San Quentin and the women in Tehachapi.

The Criminal Syndicalism Act passed the California Legislature in 1919 during the "red scare" which followed World War I. This law defined as a crime the use of force and violence "for accomplish- ing a change in industrial ownership or control or effecting any critical changes."

Originally used to jail members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the law later prosecuted Communists and other radicals. Agricultural interests anxious to repress farm labor organizing turned to the Criminal Syndicalism Act. They first used it in 1930 in Imperial Valley when five Communist farm labor organizers were imprisoned. In the big 1933 cotton strike in the San Joaquin Valley, authorities arrested the leader Pat Chambers and charged him under the Criminal Syndicalism Law. However, a hung jury failed to convict him.

The Criminal Syndicalism Law was used again in July 1934 during the state-wide persecution of Communists flowing from the 1934 waterfront and general strike in San Francisco. Deputies arrested eighteen people for vagrancy in a sweep at the headquarters of the CAWIU in Sacramento. The defendants were winnowed down to eight including the two top Communist farm leaders, Chambers and Caroline Decker. Those men and women were charged under the Criminal Syndicalism Law. The hysteria was heightened during the pre-trial period by a supposed "kidnap" of the star witness for the prosecution by Communist supporters.

The jury was divided and took four days to reach a split verdict. They found the defendants innocent on one count and guilty on another similar count. The judge ignored this contradiction and sentenced the defendants to prison terms.

Leo Gallagher led the appeal to the Sacramento Court of Appeals. The Court's decision was handed down on September 28, 1937. The judges rejected most of the appellants' objections to the conduct of the trial and reaffirmed the constitutionality of the law, but wrote, "The effect of conflicting irreconcilable verdicts in this case, however, compels us to reverse the judgment." It went on to say, "It would be impossible to reconcile these verdicts. They are a part of the same trial and all depend on identical evidence." The Court ordered the defendants released. The law itself remained.

This case was not handled by the law firm Norman Leonard was associated with but by Leo Gallagher who later became a partner of Katz, Gallagher and Margolis, a firm of labor and civil rights attorneys in Los Angeles with close ties to Leonard's firm.