Seventy-two days were required to impanel the jury before which Ruef was tried, fifty days being devoted to actual court work. There were summoned 1,450 talesmen, of whom 446 were examined. Six jurors were denied their freedom for forty-two days before the jury was completed. Blake, arrested for jury-fixing, was trapped, tried and convicted before the jury was completed. Two of Ruef’s attorneys were, during the impaneling of the jury, indicted for alleged connection with Blake’s attempt to influence the jury in Ruef’s favor.
There is, so far as the writer can find, no evidence that the Graft Defense or its agents employed Haas to kill Heney any more than there is evidence that the Graft Defense or its agents employed Pauduveris to murder the pivotal witness, Gallagher. But that Haas was urged to kill Heney because of the exposure of Haas’s previous record at the first Ruef trial is well established.
“I was urged frequently,” said Haas in a confession made to Langdon and Burns, “to kill Heney by certain persons whose names I will not tell you, and I also talked to other people about killing Heney and was advised by them not to do it. In addition to that, certain persons approached me several times and referred to the time I was thrown off the Ruef jury, saying: ‘I’d never stand that sort of a roast,’ and ‘I’d kill a man who did that to me,’ and similar things.”
Who urged Haas to do this thing, and what was their motive? Haas alone could have answered the first question. But the bullet that ended his life sealed his lips forever.
Of Haas’s purpose in getting on the first Ruef jury we have some testimony. Joseph Brachman, a close associate of Ruef, who had known Haas for nearly a quarter of a century, said in an interview published in the San Francisco Call, November 15, 1908:
“When Ruef was on trial in the Parkside case, on the bribery charge, I heard that Haas had been called on the jury panel. At that time I was frequently in consultation with Ruef, every day, in fact. But I was afraid to go to Ruef with what I knew of Haas, so I went to one of his lawyers—I won’t say which one—and told him of the record of Haas. I told him that Haas was a bad man and an ex-convict. I said that Ruef should challenge him.
“I was in court the day that Haas qualified and passed into the jury. Again I told his attorney that Haas was a bad man, to get rid of him, but nothing was done. When Heney produced the evidence showing that Haas was an ex-convict I was in court, also. I met Haas after he had been disqualified. Haas told me the reason why he stayed on the jury and why his record was not made public by the defense of Ruef. He told me that he expected $4,000 from Ruef for his services on the Parkside case jury. He said that he was hard up, that he was in debt, that he owed money on his saloon and that if he had been permitted to stay on the jury he would have been able, with the $4,000 to be paid him by Ruef, to clear himself of debt.
“He also told me, Haas did, on the day that he was disqualified, that he was going to ‘kill one of the prosecutors.’ He did not say which one, but he frequently repeated to me, that he was ‘going to get one of the prosecutors.’ I met him many times and often, frequently he told me that he was ‘going to get one of the prosecutors.’”