“Be it further resolved, that we solemnly assert our utmost confidence in the law-abiding character of our people; that we here declare our gratitude for the inestimable service rendered us by the office of the District Attorney in the restoration of reputable and responsible government; and that we stand firm in our determination to indorse and to aid that office to the end that all persons accused of crime shall be fairly tried and their guilt or innocence be finally established in accordance with the provisions of law.
“To these ends we pledge ourselves, that our beloved city may be purged of boodlers and grafters and be a better home for ourselves and our children.
“Be it further resolved, that we send word to our wounded champion, that his labors for us are appreciated and that his sufferings for our sake are not in vain.”
See [Chapter IV].
Captain Duke, at an investigation which followed, testified: “At Mr. Burns’s suggestion, we took Haas into the room off the courtroom occupied by the stenographers. First we made a slight search, and then I said to Mr. Burns: ‘Are you sure we searched him thoroughly?’ and we went over him again. I felt down to his shoes. I always search a man that way, for when I first went on the police force I had an experience with a Chinaman, whom Policeman Helms, who was recently killed, and myself had arrested. We found a dagger in his shoe, and since then I have always examined a man’s feet. I will state that I felt the man’s shoes the other day after they had been put on the corpse and the derringer placed in them, and from the bulge I noticed then I am sure that I would have felt the weapon had it been in his shoe at the time of the arrest. We were looking for anything that we could find. From something the man said—that he didn’t care if he lived or not—I thought that he might make an attempt to commit suicide.
“It would have been an utter impossibility for the derringer to have been anywhere else than in the man’s shoe,” Duke continued. “If it was in his shoe it would have been under the stocking and the man would have had it there 29 hours before he killed himself. It would have made a mark on the flesh or interfered with his walking, and he did not even limp. If the cartridges had been in the shoe they could have got under the foot and the man could not have walked.”
Neither press nor defending lawyers were spared in the criticism. “We have,” said Rev. Bradford Leavitt of the First Unitarian Church at San Francisco, “dreamed that we were living under the government of laws, whereas we were living under the government of newspapers hired by corrupt corporations, and the enemies of civic decency.”