astonishing performances going on in the courts at San Francisco, it
soon became apparent to the thoughtful, that no man, whose fortune was
expressed in terms of less than five ciphers could make such a defense.

Thus the unpalatable truth was forced home, that we have in California a
technical defense available for the rich man charged with crime, which
is in effect denied even those of the so-called middle classes.

With this conviction came demand of reform of the criminal laws to
ensure:

(1) A prompt trial of an accused person on the merits of the case.

(2) A prompt judgment in the case of a verdict of guilty.

(3) A prompt hearing of the case in the Court of Appeal.

The machine was, of course, against any such "wicked innovations," as
Assemblyman Grove L. Johnson would have called them.

However, at San Francisco, three considerable bodies, the Bar
Association, the Commonwealth Club and the Citizens' League of Justice,
took the matter up, and for months had the ablest lawyers of the State -
at any rate the ablest not retained for the defense of capitalists under
indictment - at work wrestling with the problem of simplifying the
criminal codes and doing away so far as possible with technical defense,
except in such cases as the substantial rights of the defendant might be
involved.

A committee consisting of J. C. McKinstry, J. J. Dwyer, Lester H.