WHERE GUILT DEFIES THE LAW.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3165, 16 April 1909, Page 3

WHERE GUILT DEFIES THE LAW.

GRAFT IN SAN FRAN:iSCO. ! ! I , Dealing with the San Francisco "graft" cases a New York paper says:— ; Patrick Calhoun bribed the supjr- \ visors of the city *of San Francisco, j I That is fact. One of the super- j ■ visors, Michael Coffey, is doing "st-ven years' hard" for accepting the brib:'; Abe Ruef, the Labour i buss, is in durance vile for acting as i go-between for Calhoun, and yet it is practically impossible ro convict Callionn. | i The reason for this is that Calhour. | has money. The most manifestly J , guilty man in America may make all j uut certain cf escaping conviction if i he wiil spend enough. Here is the ' way the system acts. Every man ; called for the jury may be challenged, ' either psremptorily or "fur cause;" j if it can be shown tha', be has form- • ed an opinion on the cess, that is 'good cause for dismissal. Now j every intellectual man in San Fran- ! Cisco has formed an opinion on the I Calhoun cise, and if he is honest , that opinion is that Calhoun is ' guilty, and he wiil say so. The re- ! suit is that no one can hope to be ac- ! cepted for the jury unless he is toe* j illiterate to read the nev\snapars, or j else is a friend of Calhoun, and not honest enough to say so. If Cal | noun's counsel can keep going long I enough, they can be practically certain of getting a jury stuffed with the briber's friend.- 1 . Already the work of impanelling a jury has been going on for two months, and it is likely to continue for two months more, establishing a |new and unenviable record for this country., How could a poor man keep an army of lawyers engaged for such a length of time? The sensational incidents of the series of prosecutions—the shooting j of prosecutor Heney in Court, the | dynamiting of the house of the principal witness for the prosecution (Gallagher), and the many side charges of corruption- have roused intense feeling among the townspeople. "Convict the bribe-giver" is the cry of tha newspapers—except those admittedly paid to plead the grafters' cause. It is the cry, too, of the citizens, many of whom havp banded themselves into a League of Jutsice since the graft exposures. The leader of the campaign against "boodle" is Francis J. Henev, the prosecutor. Ever since the beginning of hte graft cases he has been working for the cleansing of the city and the punishment of the corrupt officials, without receiving a cent of pay. L<»st week the graft newspapers tried to discredit him by showing that he had been 1 paid for these services by the Federal Government, but no one outside his enemies believed it, and he was able to show that the payment he had received was for some land graft proi secutions he had conducted on behalf I of the Federal Government, mostly \ before the graft cases. Still, Heney has many enemies. He is a fighting I Irishman, and now that he is in the \ fight he is not over finnicky about the means he uses to win it. He is continually making capital out of the fact that he was shot, accusing op posing counsel of inciting Haas to the act by their continual vituperation of him (Heney), and the enemy, with impatient annoyance, has been led at lentgh to appeal to the Judge not to allow Heney to "exploit that shooting." The story of the original bribe has almost been forgotten. Just after the great earthquake and fire, ; Calhoun paid through Ruef a bribe i of 200,000 dollars to Mayo? Schmitz f and the eity supervisors to induce

them to grant to the United Kail roads Company, of which Calhoun is president, a fraichi?; o run electric troll ?v thrrvjh in" city., franc ii-'.j j.-< reckon id to'be w.n;th iV.loo,o')') dollars, but the city recur/id twai-i* for it.