 Some second @-@ tier defendants were unable to post bail because the government refused to permit the Civil Rights Congress ( CRC ) legal defense fund to provide bail funding . The CRC had run afoul of the judicial system because it had posted bail for the 1949 trial defendants , and four of those defendants skipped bail in 1951 . Leaders of the CRC were called before a grand jury and asked to identify the donors who had contributed money to the bail fund . Novelist Dashiell Hammett , a manager of the CRC fund , invoked the Fifth Amendment , refused to identify donors , and was sentenced to six months in prison . 
