Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-05-12
PARDONED.
An Innocent Man Released
from Folsom.
MATT SULLIVAN'S HARD LUCK.
Sentenced for AnOther's Crime-Pa-
pefs Prepared for His Release.
A Strange Case.

will be found among the Associated Press
DISPATCHES in to-day's issue of the HER
AID, that the papers are being made out
for the pardon of Matt Sullivan, and that
in few days he will be set free from
Folsom and allowed to return to the city
where he was tried and sentenced for a
crime which he never committed.
The story of Matt Sullivan has been
told once or twice in these columns, but
is of sufficient interest to be worth repeat
ing, He was hard-workiDg Irish la
borer who had been living in Los Angeles
several years. He was not, it is true, in
every way model citizen, for he was
known to be drunk and disorderly upon
occasions, but no one ever said that he
had very bad name. Suddenly, one
day last fall, the police swooped down
upon him and charged him with having
robbed Chin aman. The heathen had
made a complaint to the effect that
one man had held him on very dark
night, while another having mask on
the upper part Of his face, but having a
scar near his mouth, had taken the
u4OhCy lIOlu LIS pCCkct. lncT6 WAS
good deal Of robbery and burglary going
on at that time, and the authorities
wanted to make an example of some
body.
"Where we're you that night ?" they
asked Matt, and he could not answer
them. Moreover, he had a scar on his
chin. The Chinaman was brought up
and asked to look at Matt, and he iden-
titled him promptly, just as he would
have identified an Egyptian mummy if
the police had given him the cue.
They examined poor Matt and held
him to answer. He had no friends, no
money, and not very much legal counsel.
There was no bail for him, 80 he was
given board and lodging at the expense
of the county, in the place which is
provided for evil-doers. The next
was trial. Matt made desperate
effort to prove an alibi. All the robbers
try that scheme. 1t was a failure.
Twelve men sat in tneir seats in Judge
Cheney's room and listened to the testi
mony. 1t was only, a matter of
form to try the rascal. Then they
man, smoked cigar all around and took
ballot.
SIN the above entitled action" said
his eye glasses with easy nonchalanCe,
eve find the the defendant-um-guilty :"
Several days later, Matt stood up and
locked blankly at Judge Cheney,
while that official informed him
in sad, but formal tones that
he must go up to Folsom and
break rock for three years. Folsom is a
foggy, disagreeable place, and the oc-
cupation of breaking rock is said to be
very bad for the lungs. The mortality
rate there is very large, but for wards
such as this, society is much better off
when they are breaking rock at Folsom.
Through all this little comedy there
were two men that were much dissatis-
fed. One was Matt, who; seemed to think
for some reason that he was being un-
fairly dealt with, and the other was one
Kirby, buccaneer of the old school, at
that time resident of the County Jail.
During great part Of the summer and
autumn this Kirby had led a very bad
gang, and they had done a variety of
reckless deeds, holding up lone horse
men on the highway, rihing the CASH
boxes of roadside inns, and, in some
cases, venturing to operate right in the
center of Los Angeles, where there was a
policeman on every nineteenth block. All
was fish that came to their net, and
Chinese cheap labor was not boycotted.
Thus it happened that while Matt Sulli-
van was undergoing trial, the real de-
fendant was waiting his trial for another
performance of a similar sort.
There was little of what the church
people call VIRTUE" and ordinary men
denominate "whiteness" in old Kirby
for all that he made practice of break
ing the statutes. For the taking of
purses that was his occupation and he
felt it no sin to labor therein. But when
it came to seeing an innocent man 60 to
Jail, that was quite another matter. He
hung out to the end, hoping that it
would not be necessary to break his
record by owning up to anything except
under compulsion. When Matt was
actually shipped north to break rock in
Folsom then Kirby made the amende
honorable. He came forward and ac-
knowledged that they had tried the
wrong man. He narrated all the circum-
stances of the robbery affair, showed
the very scar that the Chinaman had
seen, and even the detectives them
selves, who will, some of them, believe
a man guilty even if he died two years
before the crime was committed, in this
case were compelled to own up and ac-
knowledge that they had worked the
wrong clue.
This was last February, the first of the
month. When the news worked its way
into Folsom that Kirby had confessed,
Sullivan said to himself, "Now can go
back to Los Angeles, and every one will
know l am innocent" He packed up
his stuff and made ready to start. Every
time the mail was delivered he was sure
that his pardon had come. But it did
not come.
When the authorities of the law under
whose clear vision this little farce had
been performed woke up TO the trick
which Sullivan had played on them in
not being the right man they decided to
have him out without delay. Judge
Cheney and District Attorney Kelley
wrote Immediately to Governor Water
man and asked that poor Matt be freed
from durance. Then they forgot all
about it. Two months passed. The
| letters to the Governor got covered with
dust in pigeon-hole. Once in a while q
few friends who still remained to Matt
would say, pretty hard lines for him, 4,
eh ?" but nothing was done.
1t was in the month of April when one
of these friends made the above remark
to reporter on the HERALD, and he set
about looking the matter up. From that
| time to this anticles, editorial and local,