When we returned to court, Assistant District Attorney Wilson said to Magistrate Hatting, “Your Honor, I have no evidence in this case. The police have furnished nothing to the District Attorney’s office. If I have not sufficient evidence by three-thirty I’ll dismiss the whole thing.”
Then we waited. Eventually the expected “minutes and statement” arrived. Murphy swore that they were true—to Juliet’s wholehearted disgust. Her faith in human nature had been betrayed; she did not see why he preferred to keep his job rather than his self-respect. Magistrate Hatting seemed anxious to make everybody comfortable—Juliet, the Catholics, the police, and the public—and to convey the impression nobody was really to blame.
Since the wife of a prominent lawyer had become involved, people in high places in New York had an obligation to protect their own. Publicity had been great before; now it was multiplied tenfold. A letter was addressed to Mayor Hylan:
The action of the Police Department ... constitutes such a wilful violation of the right of free speech as to cause grave alarm to the citizens of New York, who have a right to know why such outrages have taken place, what motives and influences are behind them, and whether any conspiracy exists in the Police Department to deny the right of free speech and the equal protection of the law to citizens of New York. This obviously is a matter of the gravest concern.
We, therefore, ask an immediate and full investigation to be followed, if the evidence warrants, by such disciplinary measures against the officials found to be guilty as will discourage similar offenses hereafter.
This demand was signed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Herbert L. Satterlee, Paul D. Cravath, Lewis L. Delafield, Charles C. Burlingham, Samuel H. Ordway, Pierre Jay, Paul M. Warburg, Charles Strauss, Montgomery Hare.
As a result, Mayor Hylan delegated David F. Hirshfield, Commissioner of Accounts, to supervise an investigation into the previous investigation. The first session was diverted into a discussion of the merits of birth control. The Commissioner was facetious, and, when Mr. Marsh kept after him for interrupting witnesses and getting off the subject, finally said he had been insulted and refused to continue as long as Mr. Marsh represented us.
At the three subsequent hearings Emory R. Buckner took charge of our interests. Dolphin, although summoned, did not appear at any of them. Captain Donohue testified that Desk Lieutenant Joseph Courtney had received the information over the telephone, and had passed it on to him. So far as he knew it was the telephone operator who had given the orders to close the meeting. But he would, he said, have done so anyhow.
“What law did Mrs. Sanger violate?” asked Mr. Buckner.
“She was disorderly. I requested her several times to leave the platform and she defied me and said she would not do it. She caused quite a commotion and people were all hollering and yelling, a general commotion.”