“And,” Stanley Moore hastened to add, “have been before these indictments were ever filed in this court, as the events of that midnight deal in which you participated on April 29 amply demonstrate.”[468]
District Attorney Fickert, in the face of the Court’s direction that he take his seat, denounced “the statements and aspersions you have tried to cast upon me” as “false in each and every particular.”
A third of Mr. Calhoun’s attorneys added his denunciation. Mr. John Barrett decried the proceedings as “infamous.”
Judge Lawlor sentenced Calhoun’s three attorneys to serve five days each in the county jail for contempt and ordered the Sheriff to take charge of them.
But the extraordinary scene was not concluded. The prisoner at the bar had not yet been heard. Calhoun took the floor to tell the judge on the bench that should the Judge send him (Calhoun) to jail for contempt “it will be heralded all over this country as an honor.”[469] The Court attempted to interrupt the angry defendant. The interruption was ignored. The prisoner at the bar was exhibiting himself as more powerful in San Francisco than the Judge on the bench. When he had said his say, he took his seat.
The trolley-graft cases dragged along for more than a year after this astonishing scene in Judge Lawlor’s courtroom.[470] The defendants applied to the Supreme Court in habeas corpus proceedings, but failed to secure interference. They then went to the State District Court of Appeal, where they secured a writ of mandate directing Judge Lawlor to dismiss the indictments in the cases of the trolley-graft defendants.[471] The District Attorney’s office announced to Judge Lawlor that the District Attorney had no intention of prosecuting an appeal from the judgment and order of the District Court.
Judge Lawlor thereupon dismissed the cases as directed. He also included the cases against Frank G. Drum, Eugene de Sabla and John Martin, which were governed by much the same considerations as the trolley cases. Four years and a half had passed since the indictments had been brought. Little by little, the influence of those of the community who were for law and order and impartial law enforcement had been sapped and broken down. The prosecution had been worn out; the community had been worn out. The defense had shown greater staying qualities than either peace officers or community. It had been pretty thoroughly demonstrated that convictions could not be had.[472]
The dismissal of the trolley-graft and gas-graft cases was the final breaking down of San Francisco’s efforts to have the cases tried upon their merits. To be sure, the indictments against the telephone-graft defendants and the prizefight-graft defendants, and against Schmitz and Ruef still stood. Glass, a telephone-graft defendant, had been convicted, but the Supreme Court had reversed the decision on technicalities.[473] The absent witness, Gallagher, was not a material witness in the Glass case. But when along in August, 1912, a year after the dismissal of the gas and trolley-graft cases, Glass’s case was called, it was found that important witnesses had disappeared. The incident was taken by the papers, not as a reflection upon the community, but as a joke on Judge Lawlor.[474] The Glass cases were finally dismissed.
Former Mayor Schmitz in February, 1912, was brought to trial. Ruef was brought over from San Quentin prison to testify against him. But Ruef refused to testify unless the Ruef indictments were dismissed. This, Judge Dunne,[475] before whom many Ruef indictments were pending, refused to do. Ruef did not testify. Schmitz was acquitted. The other indictments against Schmitz were eventually dismissed.
The same course followed in the cases of the other graft defendants. The graft defense had beaten San Francisco; its record of shameful success was complete.