Dailey

One Durrant was upon trial in the city of San Francisco, charged with murder, and, while the jury was being impaneled, the petitioner, Dailey, advertised by posters and newspapers that he would produce in a certain theater in said city of San Francisco a play entitled “ The Crime of a Century.” Thereupon, Durrant presented an affidavit to the court wherein his trial was pending, setting forth that said play was based upon the facts of his case, as established at the preliminary examination and the coroner’s inquest, and that the production of said play during the progress of his trial would be an interference with the administration of justice, and deprive him of a fair and impartial trial. The affidavit was full and complete as to details, but we see no purpose to be subserved by a further statement of the allegations therein set out. Upon the presentation of the affidavit, the superior court made an order directing this petitioner, Dailey, to desist and refrain from giving any public performance of said play, and further ordered him to cease from advertising the same. The present proceeding is one of certiorari to review the action of the court in making the aforesaid order, it…

dissenting.—1 dissent. All the provisions of the constitution must be construed together, and effect given, when possible, to each. The one, section 9, of article I, which provides that “ Every citizen may freely speak,” etc., is to be construed in view of that large and important part of the constitution by which a judicial department of the government is created, and all the usual and necessary powers of courts given to the tribunals established under it. One of the most essential of these powers of a court is to protect itself against unlawful intrusion upon its orderly conduct of business, and to insure litigants in a pending proceeding the free and unembarrassed administration of justice. In the case at bar, in a court of record established by the constitution, a trial was gravely progressing in which a man’s life was at stake, and an act was about to be done which it is admitted “would be an interference with the administration of justice, and deprive him of a fair and impartial trial.” Is it possible that a court is powerless to protect a defendant, in a case pending before it, from an act that would deprive him of a fair and impartial trial? In my opinion the right given…