ABE RUEF.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1911, Page 7

ABE RUEF.

THE SAN FRANCISCO GRAFTER. A LONG-WINDED TRIAL. SAN’FRANCISCO, 3Qth Nov. In the year of the great earthquake and fire, 1906, Abraham Ruef, political “boss” of San Francisco, was arrested and charged with over seventy crimes of bribery, conspiracy, and extortion. Two years later he was convicted on one charge. Last week his appeal to the first, court of higher resort was decided against him. Two nights after this I passed him on Market-street, still the same self-confident, spick-and-span young, man, with something of a boyish swagger. He is out on bail, released by a kind judge pending the final deciskm of his appeal. Perhaps in the end he will be sent to serve his sentence of fourteen years ; but it is. generally believed that the final decision of his appeals will not be for a year or two yet. A long-winded trial this! But perhaps the case is peculiarly involved? No, that'is not tiie explanation.. A local paper says that all the evidence could have been given in a single day, “and in England it would have been so given.” The only unusual thing about the case, is that Ruef has a great deal more money than most men that are charged with felonies, and so; he was able to use all the cumbersome devices of the American law to keep liimself out of prison. No need to recount the: efforts to prevent the case beiilg brought to trial by means of demurrers and other technicalities, and his lengthy examination of jurors were only such as every rich man makes' in order to get a jury that will “protect his, innocence.” But as one manifestation of the liberality with which the arch-boodler spent his money to evade just punishment—no, pardon, to “vindicate his character”—

the size of the documents containing his appeal may be mentioned; Those documents made up 24 bound volumes containing 12,000 printed pages in addition to ton , volumes of lawyer’s briefs.

The chief grounds of the appeal—if one may state them 'in'-a' slightly condensed form—were that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, and that Judge Lawlor had misconducted the trial. -One characteristic plea was that the judge, had denied justice to the accused man; Joy /refusing to get a new jury after Prosecutor Heney had been .shot in the courtroom by Morris Haas, a Enef sympathiser. Ruef contended that the jury that had seen the shooting would be prejudiced against him. But the appeal judges thought this hardly sufficient ground for upsetting the verdict. As to the contention that the verdict was against the weight of evidence, the Appeal Court found : —“ln our opinion the evidence not only supports the verdict of the jury, but no other verdict could reasonably be justified.”

Of course, everyone knew from the beginning that Ruef Was guilty, but it took four years for the courts to find it out, and even now there is the legal doubt involved in the appeal to the higher courts. Strange and wonderful is the justice of the American courts.