85 Years Ago

by Thomas L. Libby

On June 10, 1925, as Claude Williams awaited trial on a bootlegging charge in a Santa Ana jail, he bribed a guard to let him out for a few hours to liberate some liquor from the courthouse storage room and move it to a truck waiting outside. The conspiracy was discovered and additional charges were filed; but when Williams's case came to trial in 1928 it ended in dismissal: The evidence couldn't be located.

Getting convictions in California for violations of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (prohibiting the manufacture, sale, transport, import, or export of intoxicating liquors) was difficult during Prohibition, which stretched from 1919 to 1933. The federal Volstead Act implemented the 18th Amendment, and California's Wright Act reinforced it. But this defining issue of the Roaring Twenties was highly controversial, and getting the cooperation of juries could be a challenge. As happened in Santa Ana, evidence might disappear before a case got to trial. And in one San Francisco case, the jurors acquitted the defendant - after they drank all the evidence. In Eureka, a case was dismissed after a hole was drilled through the bottom of the courthouse floor to drain the evidence into a wooden keg below.

On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment was passed, abolishing Prohibition and making the largely unpopular 18th Amendment the only constitutional amendment ever to be repealed in its entirety.

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