November 3, 1926, after a preliminary hearing which had stretched into its sixth week in Division 2 of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, Judge Samuel R. Blake bound over for trial in Superior Court Aimee Semple McPherson and her mother, Minnie “Ma” Kennedy. The charge was criminal conspiracy.
The complaint which the District Attorney of Los Angeles, California had filed against the two of them, plus alleged co-conspirators Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff, Kenneth G. Ormiston, John Doe, Richard Roe, and Sarah Moe, charged “conspiracy to commit acts injurious to public morals and to prevent and obstruct justice, and to obstruct and pervert the due administration of the laws of California,” thus threatening “the peace and dignity of the People of the State of California.”
Specifically, the People alleged that Aimee Semple McPherson “surreptitiously disappeared” on May 18, 1926 from the beach near Venice and reappeared at about 2 a.m. on the morning of June 23 in Mexico. The complaint informed that she “swore falsely, wickedly, and maliciously, with intent to procure another to be charged, arrested, and indicted of the crime of kidnapping,” said testimony being addressed to a Los Angeles grand jury at a time when she well knew she had not been kidnapped at all. The People accused that between May 19 and 26, Mrs. McPherson had “resided and remained concealed with goggles and other devices and contrivances at Carmel-by-the-Sea from which place she departed with Kenneth G. Ormiston, with the full knowledge, acquiescence, and consent of Minnie Kennedy.” The complaint also charged that the evangelist and her mother hired Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff to impersonate Mrs. McPherson and give false testimony tending to disprove the evangelist's presence at Carmel.
The preliminary hearing, which commenced on September 27, became the longest litigation of its kind in the history of Los Angeles courts, filling forty-two volumes of transcript with about 3500 pages of copy!
District Attorney Asa Keyes, who later went to San Quentin Penitentiary over irregularities in his office, personally directed the prosecution's case, a virtually unheard of procedure for a D.A. serving a county the size of Los Angeles. He associated with his two crack deputies, Dennison and Murray, while Joseph Ryan, who coveted the assignment, sat reluctantly on the sidelines, destined to serve only as a witness for the State. Ryan was the one who had developed the case against the evangelist, or as her friends charged - “manufactured the evidence.”
As the People’s case unfolded, it became unmistakable that the prosecution would expose its whole arsenal - all its evidence against the defendants. This was as unprecedented a procedure as the District Attorney’s personal appearance in the hearing, for prosecutors generally jealously guard as much evidence as possible in a preliminary hearing, reserving it for the jury trial. The testimony of Mrs. Wiseman, “the Hoax woman,” would have been enough to clinch the binding over of the defendants, as matters go at preliminary hearings. Ralph Hersey’s ridiculous identification of the evangelist on a Carmel street would have sufficed to make inevitable Judge Blake's adverse decision against the defendants. But Asa Keyes presented a list of about thirty-five witnesses and elicited from them testimony which completely exhausted all of the prosecution's evidence. Did Keyes recognize that he had no case before a jury — that presumption of “innocent until proven guilty” would boomerang against his vacillating witnesses- that the prosecution's own testimony in and of and by itself would betray sufficient “reasonable doubt” to demand the acquittal of the defendants?
If such was indeed the case, why would Asa Keyes proceed?
You have to understand the desperate compulsion which motivated this man in prosecuting defendants. He was out to make a record for himself as an invincible prosecutor. Once he dragged a victim into court, there were no holds barred in his attacks.
When this preliminary hearing began, Asa Keyes, whose last name “rhymes with ‘tries,’ ‘lies,’ and ‘dies’,” as Lately Thomas quipped (p. 28, “The Vanishing Evangelist"), was smarting under the rebuke of California's Governor Richardson who rapped the Los Angeles official for convicting innocent defendants. The Los Angeles Examiner of September 25, 1926 reported that on the previous day the governor issued a pardon to T.H. Heape, whom Keyes had sent up to San Quentin the previous year for grand larceny. Richardson announced, “This is the sixth pardon have given men convicted in Los Angeles county and later declared innocent by the district attorney.” Keyes protested in his own defense, but the governor rebutted, “As it is the duty of the district attorney to seek justice rather than conviction, why did he not advise the jury to acquit?” (p. 6).
Keyes’ conduct of the hearing and public statements during its course may be interpreted as almost deliberate attempts to prejudice the public against the evangelist. How else can one explain his personal participation for five weeks in the hearing, his exposure of all the prosecution evidence, and his subsequent near-tirade against Mrs. McPherson at the time he dismissed the case against her? In effect he thundered, “She's guilty. I just can't prove it!”
That Judge Blake bound Mrs. McPherson over for trial gets more publicity than the fact that the District Attorney nine weeks later dismissed the case as hopeless for conviction. To many, an aura of guilt attaches to the binding over. But this is completely to misunderstand the nature of a preliminary hearing.
A preliminary hearing proceeds on almost the opposite philosophy of a jury trial. In Superior Court the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In a preliminary hearing he is virtually presumed guilty unless proven innocent, which is almost an impossibility for the defense. Perry Mason pulls it off in fiction, but in real life courtroom drama it happens very rarely.
Why? Because the court in a preliminary hearing takes the testimony the prosecution produces at its face value. No matter what the defense does, if the prosecution can present a prima facie case, the judge generally binds over the defendant for ‘rial. The court does not test the credibility of witnesses or weigh the evidence. If any witnesses connect a defendant with the crime, the judge binds over, regardless of how much evidence there may be in favor of the defendant. Conflicts in testimony are viewed in favor of the prosecution.
Thus Judge Blake had no choice but to bind over Mrs. McPherson and Mrs. Kennedy for Superior Court trial. Mrs. Wiseman-Sielaff testified the evangelist and her mother hired her to commit perjury. Ralph Hersey and others testified they saw Mrs. McPherson at Carmel. The decisive testimony of people who could prove that Mrs. McPherson was not the woman with Ormiston at Carmel - and that included the Town Marshall (sort of Police Chief), August England - could have no bearing on Blake’s decision, though it must have influenced a jury as - at worst - reasonable doubt, or at best -exoneration for the evangelist.
The chances are remote that in any preliminary hearing the defense could completely demolish the prosecution's case. The preponderance of evidence has no bearing, and questions of conflicting facts are resolved in favor of the prosecution. There are differing procedures in different courts.
In January of 1927, after Asa Keyes cried “Uncle” over the case, some of Mrs. McPherson's friends crowed exuberantly. The evangelist was pleased she would now be able to devote full-time to evangelistic efforts without the interruptions of daily court appearances. Her mother, however, would have preferred to be acquitted by a jury. Minnie Kennedy didn't agree altogether with the assessment of Judge Jacob F. Denny, formerly of the Fifty-eighth Judicial Circuit of Indiana and in 1927 a member of the bar in California. Denny declared,
“The vindication of Mrs. McPherson and Mrs. Kennedy could not be more complete. It is infinitely stronger than if it had been determined by a Jury after hearing all the evidence and resulting In an absolute acquittal. A jury passing on the case would naturally be supposed to be unbiased and to give an unprejudiced decision. But in the present case, the State of California, with all its machinery, power, and prestige, spent many thousands of dollars in the investigation of the truth of the charges which it had made against these women. These charges they admitted were all false.
“tn addition to the ordinary investigation which it made by state officials, this case, by reason of its having excited national interest, was given special attention. For more than half a year the entire resource of the State of California was devoted to the unearthing of evidence against them. Special agents were employed in great numbers to trace down every remote rumor that might throw light on the case.
“All of this evidence collected was reviewed by the officers themselves most interested in procuring a conviction and naturally supposed to be highly hostile to the defendants. This tribunal themselves determined that there was not sufficient evidence against the defendants even to justify placing them on trial before an unprejudiced jury.
“Seldom, if ever, in the history of American or English jurisprudence has so signal a vindication been achieved without a single gun being fired by the defendants in their own defense.” (p. 1, “Foursquare Crusader,” Jan. 22, 1927).
The judge was somewhat carried away with exaggeration, but his point was well-taken and his conclusions justified.
However, Mrs. McPherson's reputation might have been better served if the case had gone to trial. No jury could listen to the testimony adduced in the preliminary hearing without acquitting the defendants. And Mrs. McPherson's attorneys amassed considerable evidence they held back for the jury trial which never materialized because the prosecution chickened out!