“Anything to delay trial and judgment is the policy of the accused bribe givers. Every day’s proceedings in the retrial of Glass provides ample proof to convince the most skeptical citizen that the last thing desired by the men charged with debauching the boodle Board of Supervisors is prompt determination of the issues on their merits, and every pettifogging move for delay, every cunning attempt to betray the court into technical error is confession of a case too weak to be given to a fair jury on a plain showing of the facts. The attitude of the lawyers for Glass is sufficient to indicate that he needs lawyers of their peculiar expertness—‘distinguished attorneys,’ Heney calls them—‘distinguished for their ability to defeat justice.’
“Judge Lawlor’s unhesitating denial of a motion to permit the lawyers for Glass to shift their ground in the midst of the impaneling of the jury and hark back to an attack on the validity of the indictments, and his sharp reprimand to Attorney Coogan for his method of misleading talesmen by adroitly framed questions, ought to expedite this trial. Lawlor has a reputation for dealing sternly with legal tricksters and for compelling counsel in the cases that he hears to get down to business and keep at it. At the same time his record on the bench is that of a just judge and always impartial. It is because he is impartial and stern that crooked lawyers, with crooked clients, deem it ‘hard luck’ when their cases are assigned to Lawlor.
“Now Judge Lawlor has a rare opportunity to prove anew his worth as a jurist. He will please a patient and long suffering public and will satisfy the ends of the justice which he administers when he makes the lawyers quit trifling and forces them to let the trial go on. We may expect to see the trial made as tedious and as costly in time and money as high priced counselors can arrange. It is all part of the game—tire out the public, the jury and the prosecution; delay is the safest course for the man accused against whom the people’s case is strong. But we may also expect to see Judge Lawlor trimming the matter of technicalities and pressing it to a conclusion. It was because the people had come to expect such things from Judge Lawlor that they re-elected him, when all the machines of municipal corruption were grinding against him.”
Eaton testified at the second Glass trial as follows: “Mr. Scott did not sign any checks between February 8, 1906, and the latter part of March, 1906, for the company; not to my knowledge. Notices were sent out by me to the different banks in regard to the signatures that could be accepted upon checks after Mr. Scott was elected president. They were sent on the 27th of February, 1906, to all the San Francisco banks that we had an account with.”
Eaton testified further that the day the banks were notified, Mr. Scott went East. Mr. Scott could, Eaton said, previous to that date, have signed checks, but up to that time they would not have been honored at the banks. Halsey, in the Mills Building, gave the Supervisors, of whom Lonergan was one, their bribe money not later than February 26. Supervisor Lonergan testified that to the best of his recollection he had been paid by Halsey some time between February 14 and February 20.
John Helms, a detective, testified at the trial of Patrick Calhoun that he had been employed by the United Railroads as early as May 3, 1907; that his duties consisted of “mostly shadow work, watching out for things being done by the prosecution”; that Patrick Calhoun had himself authorized him (Helms) to employ men to follow Burns on motorcycles. Later on automobiles were substituted for the motorcycles.
If Helms’s employment began on May 3, as he testified, the United Railroads was preparing for its defense at least three weeks before indictments were brought against its officials. The extent of that corporation’s defense, or the details of it, are not known to those outside the corporation. At the Calhoun trial the Prosecution accounted for every dollar spent in the operations against the Schmitz-Ruef regime. The attorneys representing the United Railroads were invited to make as frank statement of the expenditures made by the defense, but they declined.