Tom Mooney Trial: 1917

Then Cunha came up with a surprise witness: one Frank C. Oxman, an Oregon cattleman who traveled frequently to California and Kansas, buying and selling cattle. He testified that he had arrived in San Francisco on the morning of the parade and was watching it when he saw a jitney containing five people turn from Market Street onto Stewart. As it stopped, men he identified as Mooney and Billings jumped out, put a suitcase on the sidewalk, and hopped back in the car. Oxman declared under oath that Weinberg was at the wheel, and Rena Mooney was visible in the car. Dramatically pulling a yellow envelope from his pocket, Oxman stunned the courtroom by announcing he had had the presence of mind to jot down the jitney's license number. It was Weinberg's.

The Mooney defense team, led by W. Bourke Cockran, was flustered by Oxman's sudden appearance. The defense did not ask for a recess while it could check on his credibility. It also failed to exploit the inconsistencies in the testimony of Oxman and McDonald, who had testified to seeing the defendants on foot, not in a car. It did not put on the stand any of the 18 policemen stationed along Market Street during the parade, any one of whom could have testified that they had orders to keep cars off Market Street that afternoon and that only two, with official passes, had trespassed on the parade route—neither one of which was Weinberg's jitney.