Note 226 — Chapter XV · Ruef Pleads Guilty to Extortion.[207]

At the completion of the Ruef Jury, the Chronicle, issue of May 15, 1907, said:

“The Ruef jury is complete and we are now in a way to learn all the truth about the particular crime for which Ruef is this time on trial, but which, compared with most other crimes for which he has been indicted, is a mere peccadillo. That Ruef got the money is proved, for he has confessed. His defense, of course, will be that the French-Restaurant proprietors voluntarily presented him with it. The state will have to prove, in order to secure a conviction, that they did not give the money voluntarily, but yielded it up under threats which they believed it to be in his power to execute. If the state fails to prove that Ruef will stand before the community merely as a moral leper, loathsome to be sure, and despicable almost beyond human conception, but yet not proved guilty of that for which the law prescribes punishment in state’s prison. If proper proof cannot be made he must, of course, be acquitted of this crime and at once put on trial for another. Nothing is gained by society by the conviction even of the most unmitigated scoundrel on insufficient testimony. But when the proof is sufficient the salvation of society demands punishment, and more particularly of punishment of the rich criminal.”