held incommunicado in the Los Angeles county jail, which means that no visitors, not even newspaper men, were permitted to see them. For a time not even Mrs. Rivera and her children were permitted to see the husband and father. Only their local attorney saw them. Two attorneys who were representing them in another state were excluded on the flimsy ground that they were not attorneys of record in California.
The only excuse Oscar Lawler, United States District Attorney, had to offer for this severe isolation when, in July, 1908, I called upon him at his office and protested was:
"We are doing this at the request of the Mexican government. They have accommodated us and it's no more than right that we accommodate them."
Requests were also made by the Mexican government that the men be not admitted to bail and the requests were obeyed. The privilege of liberty on bail pending trial is guaranteed by the law to all accused persons below the murderer in cold blood, and yet Judge Welborn, sitting both as district and circuit judge, denied the men this privilege. Bail had previously been fixed as $5,000, ten times the amount required in similar cases that had previously come up. In the latter part of July, 1908, this amount was raised and presented in the most gilt-edged form, but it was not accepted. Judge Welborn's excuse was that a rule of the Supreme Court says that during habeas corpus proceedings the custody of a prisoner shall not be changed. This rule he strangely interpreted to mean that these particular prisoners should not be admitted to bail.
During their six months of incommunicado, when the prisoners were unable to make any public statement, Lawler took advantage of their enforced silence
