Magistrate F.C. Wessels finding that there was sufficient evidence for the defendants to be tried on charges of high treason. The defendants were asked to plead, with all pleading not guilty they were released on bail. Their defence lawyers asked for a jury trial, the alternative being a trial by two or three judges, a request rejected by the state in treason trials. The Treason Trial began in Pretoria on 1 August 1958 with 91 people on trial having been charged with high treason. The trial saw 57 blacks, 16 whites, 16 Indians and two coloureds charged with attempting to overthrow the South African government between 1952 and 1956 with the intention to replace it with a communist system. The defence lawyers opened the trial by lodging an objection to two of the three trial judges. They called for Justice Joseph Ludorf to withdraw because of his involvement as a lawyer in other cases against some defendants while Justice Frans Rumpff should withdraw as he had asked for the former to be appointed as a judge on the treason trial. The case was then adjourned until the following Monday. When the trial resumed on 12 August 1958, chief defence lawyer Israel A. Maisels continued to challenge the indictment referring to the masses of documentary evidence which he claimed was impossible to read in less than two years, and was an abuse of the court process and that the prosecution did not know what its case was about. After the trial collapsed in October, it was decided in November 1958 to resume the trial on 19 January 1959 with a decision to drop 60 people from the indictment. On 22 November 1958, 30 of the 91 were re-indicted with the charge now been narrowed down to a conspiracy to endanger and overthrow the state based on the 1955 Congress of the People gathering and the adoption of the Freedom Charter. The remaining 61 were to be indicted in April 1959. The trial resumed on 19 January 1959 in Pretoria with the defence arguing for the trial to be moved back to Johannesburg, due to the hardship of travel for the defendants, a city where the majority of them lived. The case was postponed on the first day until after lunch as the bus carrying the defendants had broken down. The trial resumed on 2 February 1959, with the venue change request