Note 348 — Chapter XXII · Higher Courts Free Schmitz and Ruef.

The Examiner, in its issue of January 11, 1908, said of the decision:

“The District Court of Appeal has overturned the conviction of Mayor Schmitz on the ground that threatening to prevent the French-restaurant keepers from getting a license to sell liquor does not constitute the crime of extortion, with which he is charged. This is one of the decisions that will aggravate the dissatisfaction of the public with the courts.

“Abe Ruef, once political boss of San Francisco, testified that he had divided with the Mayor the ‘fees’ for getting the licenses which Schmitz had held up until the money was paid. ‘A license to sell liquor is not property in the ordinary sense of the word,’ declares the court, making the point that the indictment ‘does not allege any threat to injure property.’

“Any ordinary intelligence would construe the threat to take away a license to sell liquor from a restaurant unless a certain sum of money was paid as the plainest kind of extortion, particularly when the Mayor was shown to have shared in the money thus exacted, and the fact that the contrary ruling of a court acts as a release of a man whose guilt was clearly established, will not change that view.”

“Even the lay mind,” said the Call, “is competent to reach the conclusion that this decision is bad law, bad logic and had morals.”

The decision was generally condemned by the interior press. The Sacramento Bee denounced it as a “palpable evasion of justice.” The Oakland Enquirer stated that it came as a “shock and a surprise to the law-respecting people of California and of the entire country.” “San Francisco in particular,” said the Los Angeles Evening News, “California in general and the republic at large have suffered great wrong by reason of this reprehensible decision.”