"Mr. Shortridge, your conduct is boisterous and offensive and tends to interfere with the orderly conduct of the court. I declare you guilty of contempt and sentence you to be confined in the County Jail for twenty-four hours. Mr. Sheriff, take him into custody." [148] The two principal points on which the defense based their applications for writs of habeas corpus and of prohibition were: (1) That Juror Wise, having sat on a petty jury within a year, was disqualified to act as a Grand Juror, and hence the indictments were fatally defective. (2) That the matter was before the Supreme Court of the United States on a writ of error. [149] Heney, in his affidavit in contention that an Elisor should be appointed to bring Ruef into court, indicated the conditions which were handicapping the prosecution. [150] Biggy afterwards became Chief of Police of San Francisco. [151] Ruef was with one of his henchmen, Myrtile Cerf, when arrested. Long after, when he had plead guilty to one of the extortion charges, Ruef stated in an interview published in the San Francisco Call, May 16, 1907, that it had been his purpose "to wait until the Legislature had acted on the Change of Venue Bill," which was considered in a previous chapter, and which at the time of Ruef's flight was being engineered through the Senate by George Keane in his capacity as Senator. Ruef, in his interview, stated further: "We had expected that this bill would go through. Naturally we were surprised when we learned that Campbell, the Mayor's (Schmitz's) attorney, was at Sacramento lobbying against the bill. What his object was I do not know. He even went to George Keane, who had charge of the bill, and tried to switch him to the other side." During the period of Ruef's disappearance, his attorneys had insisted that they were unaware of his whereabouts. Myrtile Cerf, his companion in flight, refused to say before the Grand Jury with whom he had telephonic communication while at the roadhouse, on the ground that such testimony might incriminate him. [152] Ruef's arrest threw the administration into the greatest confusion. Supervisor Wilson testified at the trial of The People vs. Ruef, No. 1437, Part 3, Vol. 7, p. 3175, that at 2 o'clock of the morning following Ruef's capture, he went down to Henry Ach's apartment to ascertain if the rumor that Ruef had been found were true. [153] Of the procedure which made possible Ruef's long technical fight to escape trial, the San Francisco Chronicle on November 10, 1906, said: