The attempt upon Gallagher’s life led the prosecution to take steps to secure his testimony in a form in which it could be used before a trial jury in the event of Gallagher’s death. Under the California law, testimony taken at a preliminary hearing can, in the event of the death or disability of a witness, be used at the trial of the case. After the Parkside case trial, Ruef was arrested on a charge of bribery and given a preliminary examination at which Gallagher testified against him. Gallagher’s testimony was thus made secure against poison or dynamite.
The Examiner following the explosion printed a series of ridiculing cartoons picturing the dynamiting of a bird cage and describing at length the escape of the parrot that had occupied it.
The Chronicle took advantage of the dynamite outrage to voice its condemnation of Gallagher. “There is,” said that paper in its issue of April 24, “no more undesirable citizen on earth than the contemptible boodler James L. Gallagher, who is living on the profits of the shame which he brazenly flaunts in the face of mankind, but the effort to discover the miscreant who dynamited the house where he was living should be pushed as vigorously as if the intended victim was the most estimable citizen of California. Society despises such boodlers as Gallagher, but it does not seek their destruction by dynamite. The dynamiter is a coward who is even more contemptible than a boodler. He sneaks up in the dark, fires his explosive and runs, because in his craven soul he dare not stand up and meet his enemy. The punishment of the dynamiter—successful or unsuccessful—should be severe, but it should be solemnly inflicted after due process of law.
“It is, of course, possible that some of the wretches with whom he was associated during his career of crime have taken that method of getting rid of his testimony, but it is not probable. Among those against whom he has not yet given the testimony which he will give are the only persons who can be conceived of as having a motive to get Gallagher out of the way, but no one that we hear of suspects any of them of having resorted to that atrocious method of defense, in which six persons besides Gallagher himself came near being murdered. In the absence of any conceivable sufficient motive the dastardly act must be assumed the work of a wicked man gone crazy.”
The following from the San Francisco Argonaut of May 2, 1908, is fairly expressive of the attitude of the San Francisco weekly press on the attempt on Gallagher’s life: “Mr. Heney in so far as it lay in him to do it, ‘placed’ the ‘crime’ upon the ‘minions’ of Calhoun. The other independent and all-seeing minds of the prosecution’s staff fell in with this theory of the case. So far as the so-called graft prosecutors are concerned there is no mystery about the matter—the explosion in Gallagher’s house was nothing less than an attempt to assassinate that eminent worthy for the sake of ‘getting him out of the way.’ This theory has to face several embarrassing considerations. In the first place, Gallagher’s testimony has been given again and again, and stands as an official record in a half-dozen instances. Getting Gallagher out of the way would not, therefore, do away with his testimony. Furthermore, there are other witnesses competent to testify to every vital fact in the Gallagher story. So far as the immediate case is concerned, Gallagher has already given his testimony and the effect of ‘getting him out of the way’ would be only to emphasize his statements. Furthermore, if there had been any wish to get Gallagher out of the way there has been plenty of chances to do it any time this year and a half past. If assassination has been part of the scheme of the defense, there have been ten thousand opportunities since the striking of that famous bargain between Spreckels and Gallagher inside the Presidio gate. The thing might have been done, too, without hazarding the lives of half a dozen women and children.”
In view of the inability of Mr. Langdon’s successor in the District Attorney’s office to make effective prosecution of the graft cases, on the ground that Gallagher, who had left California, was absent from the State, and that his testimony was necessary to secure convictions, the Argonaut article makes interesting reading.