Where Schmitz spent the night of Thursday, June 13, the night of his conviction, is a matter of dispute. Sheriff O’Neil insists that he spent the night in jail. This has been denied. The statement has been made, apparently on good authority, that all of Friday following, Schmitz, accompanied by Dominic Beban, a deputy sheriff and State Senator from San Francisco, was about town in an automobile. But on Saturday, Judge Dunne warned the sheriff that Schmitz was to be treated as any other prisoner. After that day, pending his appeal to the higher courts, Schmitz was confined in the county jail. Attorney J. C. Campbell made a hard fight to keep his client out of jail. Among other things, Mr. Campbell held that the Mayor had so much official business to attend to that it was practically necessary for him to be in his office all the time for the next month.
Schmitz, under this conviction, was sentenced to serve five years in the penitentiary.
As early as March 20, 1907, two days after the Supervisors gave their confession to the Grand Jury, The Chronicle touched upon the growing resistance to the prosecution. It said:
“In the leading political clubs there is talk of Governor Gillett removing Mayor Schmitz and appointing a successor. This is in the line of gossip, however, for there is a legal question involved, the framers of the municipal Charter having provided no means for the removal of the head of the municipal government should he be found criminally derelict. There is also some talk of Schmitz resigning if Heney will vaccinate him and render him immune from punishment for his offenses, as he is said to have done with the Supervisors. Another angle of the gossip in this regard is that the Mayor will appoint a Board of Supervisors picked by prominent merchants and professional men who have organized for the purpose of redeeming San Francisco from the toils of the grafters.”
The Chronicle, in its issue of April 3, in discussing this phase of the situation, said:
“The spectacle of the entire legislative body of a city confessing to the acceptance of great bribes is astonishing. Their continuance in office and consultation with the good citizens as to the best methods of restoring good government is unique. In many parts of the country there is outspoken disapproval of the course which is being taken, and loud declarations that if there were any good citizenship in San Francisco the confessed rogues would be driven out of office and hustled into the penitentiary. It is declared that in granting ‘immunity’ to these Supervisors the city is again disgraced. Of course, all this is absurd. In the first place, there is no evidence and little probability that immunity has been promised to anybody. Secondly, if the present Supervisors should resign Schmitz would promptly fill their places with men whom he can more implicitly trust but who would not be subject to indictment or in any way amenable to decent influence. As for Schmitz, he will remain Mayor until he is convicted of crime. The public does not know how that conviction is to be got. It is supposed that some Supervisor can give part of the necessary evidence, but no Supervisor can be compelled to give any evidence at all, and they probably would give none, if driven out. They are not obliged to criminate themselves. As for Schmitz, he is still defiant. He apparently does not believe that under the legal rules of evidence he can be convicted of what he evidently did. The journals which contrast our slow movement with the swift punishment which befell briber and bribed when the Broadway street railroad franchise was purchased doubtless do not understand that the laws and court procedure in California are designed not to convict criminals, but to aid their escape from justice, and that when Jake Sharp bought the New York Aldermen he did not also buy the authority which filled vacancies in the Board. As the situation in this city is unique, so, also, must be our methods of dealing with it. It may be that every Supervisor ought to be promptly indicted but it is certain that that is the one thing most ardently desired by the innumerable company of grafters outside the board. And it may not be but to help them.”
Keane had two champions on the board, however. Supervisors J. J. O’Neil and O. A. Tveitmoe. They resisted Keane’s discharge, denouncing it as unwarranted and cowardly. Mayor Schmitz vetoed the resolution removing Keane. The Supervisors, however, adopted the resolution over the Mayor’s veto.