The San Francisco call., 1898-12-18
Peoples Verdict in the
 RoSSer Case.
THAT REMARKABLEACQUITTAL
CHIEF OF POLICE LEES IS DIS-
 HEARTENED.
Something Is Radically Wrong in the Matter of the Drawing of the Trial Juries, He
 Says.

Justice Is dead in San Francisco" Is the general verdict, or rather the wall of the people.
 "She passed through many dangerous crises" said one citizen, "and for some inexplicable reason died in the Rosser case"
 ''In a case, too," said another. where the defense was pitiful in its grasping at straws and the blackness of that senseless butchery overshadowed all"
 Tt was wanton crime" third man said, and the blood of the murdered Hilderbrand cries in vain from the reek- ing soil of this lawless State"
 What tumble of justice, what dark cabinet of hocus-pocus, what hideous abort of reason" cried fourth, "Set red handed Rosser free-free to go on his way killing and rejoicing in the malignity or his soul?'
 ''Rosser has a precedent of his own now, said prominent attorney, ana has a peculiar law unto himself, so in terpret twelve California good men and true"
 This Is the tenor of the things people are saying on the streets, and the words. strong though they be, are inadequate to express the deep dissatisfaction the pub lie feels over the verdict that acquitted the drunken, murderous soldier. Rosser, morose, irascible, quarrelsome fellow, feared by his comrades and summed by his officers when sober, and a furious demon when in liquor, his usual condi- tion whenever in reach of the bottle, com mitted an atrocious crime, came into court with the pitiful plea that in some low groggery somebody for some reason or other drugged his whisky. The rarity the absurdlty and the stupidity of that excuse is lost in tha brain-dulling amaze ment that jury could be found that would listen to 1t without a bribe.
 There are long, loud whispers that Rossers people were wealthy, and that 1t flowed out in all directions, even in that quarter of the compass where is located the jury-box of Superior Court Department No. 6, but this hardly rises is only a whisper. The public knew the Judge of that court to be above the shadow of suspicious thought not to his tSq hGao 50 it dgropes for reason for
 Chief of Police Lees sat in his office yesterday, disconsolate over the verdict The crime had been committed before a cloud of witnesses, the case of the people was established ere the smoke of the mur- derer's revolver had floated away. Al least the cell-door of a long Imprisonment was open just before RoSser. But the Chiefs plans all mislayed, and the crimi- nal went free.
 Tt Is distressing" almost moaned the gray;o,headed Police Chief yesterday. l ging Rosser got was the cheap whisky he filled himself up on around the Bar bary Coast saloons.
 "Oh, I don't know who or what to blame," he continued wearily, "but there is something wrong with the jury busi- ness. We can't get the right kind of men when we want them. Mind you, I am not accusing any of those twelve men who consider Rosser an innocent, misused man. am not swearing to any individual complaints. but Rosser should at least have gone to the State prison for a term of years if not hung for his horrible crime. It was the most senseless verdict ti that has ever disgraced this, this city or the the State ] should be changed Now T,a when a jury is is names get back in the box and they are drawn out again. I know this to be true. A man named Wilcox while serving in the Becker case was actually drawn for the Elsie Williams case and was also drawn for another case at the same time. There is too much carelessness in this matter and a big leak somewhere. The $2 fee system for criminal juries is bad. It brings a class of chronic jurors around the courtrooms. But I am too disheartened to talk to-day. 1 was sure we could con- vict Rosser, because his guilt was so manifest and his excuse so flimsy. But we couldn't do it. Something is wrong. Is oil,