[72] No sooner had the indictments been returned in the San Francisco cases than the validity of the indicting Grand Jury was attacked. For months that issue occupied the attention of the Courts. One by one the members of the Grand Jury were dragged into Court, and in effect placed on trial that technical disqualification if such existed might be established. The greater part of a day was, for example, consumed in thrashing over the question whether one or three motions had been made in nominating the stenographer to the Grand Jury.
Then came appeals to the higher Courts which occupied more months and all but endless labor and expense.
When the attacks on the Grand Jury had been met and disposed of, and the defendants brought to the trial Court, the Prosecution found its labors scarcely begun. Every trial juror was placed on trial. Weeks and even months were required, because of technical objections, to secure a trial jury.
Just before the Legislature convened, Abe Ruef, had, as example, been convicted by a jury in the securing of which the metropolis of the State had been raked as with a fine-tooth comb for talesmen who were not technically disqualified to serve. Thousands were available who would have given the defendant a fair trial, but in all San Francisco very few could be found who were not because of one technical reason or another disqualified.
After conviction came the defendant's appeal, in which the Most trivial reasons were accepted for freeing the defendant whose technical defense had failed him in the lower Courts. Former Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco, after conviction of extortion, and Abe Ruef, after having pleaded guilty to the charge, were given their freedom under circumstances which, to put it mildly, shocked the whole State.
[73] A prominent San Francisco attorney told the writer recently that "the criminal lawyer too often questions a talesman needlessly, not so much to disqualify him, as to get technical error into the record."
[73a] It was on a technicality of this kind that the District Court of Appeals found excuse for reversal of the judgment in the case of Louis Glass, convicted of bribing a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. E. J. Zimmer, the auditor of the Pacific States Telephone Company, of which Glass was an official, refused to testify at Glass' trial. The trial court refused to instruct the jury to disregard the refusal. The Appellate Court held this to be a fatal error.
Chapter XVI.
How the Change of Venue Bill Was Passed.
Slipped Through the Assembly Without Serious Opposition in Closing Days
of the Session - Passed by Trick in the Senate Although a Majority of
That Body Were Opposed to Its Passage - Typical Case of Machine
"Generalship."