Other graft defendants joined in the upholding of Ruef and the denunciation of the prosecution. Adverse newspapers joined in the cry of unfairness and hinted at worse. The story became current that no appeal would be made from the Appellate Court’s decision in the Schmitz case to the Supreme Court. Another story had it that the prosecution was breaking down, that the situation had become so complicated that no other trials could be had.[368]
On the other hand, the outcry did not in the least shake the faith of the citizens who were insisting upon the crushing out of corruption at the State’s metropolis. Colonel Harris Weinstock, one of the largest merchants of the State, in a ringing address condemned the efforts made to discredit the prosecution.[369] The same position was taken in pulpit, club room and street discussion. From all parts of the State resolutions and memorials were sent the prosecution approving and upholding its work.[370] And doggedly the prosecution proceeded to justify the expressions of confidence in its singleness of purpose and in its ability to cope with the tremendous odds brought against it.
The immediate indictments about which the controversy raised by Ruef’s claim for immunity centered were those in the United Railroad cases. The prosecution accordingly went before the Grand Jury then sitting—the Oliver Grand Jury which had brought the original indictments had long since adjourned—and secured three indictments against Ruef, Calhoun and Ford for the bribery of three Supervisors, Furey, Nicholas and Coleman.
In these indictments every technical error which the ingenuity of the defense had brought out was eliminated. The new indictments were not secured because the prosecution regarded the objections as having merit, but that the District Attorney’s office might be prepared to meet any emergency which might arise.[371]
The next step was to bring Ruef to trial. The prosecution selected the indictment under which Ruef had been brought to bar for offering a bribe to Supervisor Jennings Phillips to vote for the Parkside street railroad franchise.[372]
Prospect of immediate trial made a different man of Ruef. He was at once seized with the panic which had come upon him when the jury had been completed to try him on the extortion charge. He begged for time. He insisted that he was without counsel. He asked for three weeks, a week, even two days.[373]
Then came an entirely new technical defense based upon the immunity contract. Ruef alleged that he had been deprived of his constitutional rights as a defendant, by following the set program outlined in the contract. But here Ruef had over-reached himself. He had on January 31 entered a plea of not guilty in the Parkside case, the case on trial. The District Attorney had abrogated the immunity contract thirteen days before, on January 18. Whatever technical advantage Ruef may have had because of the immunity contract was forfeited by his plea of not guilty after its annulment.
His attorney gravely contended, however, that Ruef—one of the shrewdest practitioners at the San Francisco bar—was without legal counsel when he had entered his plea, and that he had therefore innocently foregone his constitutional rights. This contention provoked a smile even from Ruef’s partisans. The point was not urged further.
Seeing that trial could not be warded off on technicalities, Ruef endeavored to disqualify Judge Dunne, the trial judge. But this move proved premature. Judge Dunne was about to go on his vacation and Judge Dooling,[374] a Superior Court Judge from the interior, was called to sit in Judge Dunne’s stead. Ruef thereupon proceeded to disqualify Judge Dooling. He alleged that Judge Dooling, as Grand President of the Native Sons of the Golden West, had signed an order expelling him (Ruef) from the order; he alleged further that Judge Dooling had attacked him in a speech at a banquet.
Judge Dooling, placed on trial as Judges Lawlor and Dunne had been, was forced to make defense. He denied in affidavits that he had ever specially mentioned Ruef’s name in any speech, but admitted that he might have said that any man guilty of crime should be expelled from the Native Sons order.