The famous journalist Carey McWilliams noted that a few months earlier, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were detained and interned in detention camps, and argued that there were common links between the Japanese-American internment and the anti-Mexican response to the Sleepy Lagoon case. In October 1944, the state Court of Appeals unanimously decided the evidence was not sufficient to sustain a guilty verdict. It reversed 12 of the defendants' convictions and directly criticized Fricke for his bias in and mishandling of the case.