San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Judge urged leniency for pot crimes
Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1994
Jan. 15: The San Francisco Municipal Railway has fired driver Hal Womack, who shot a passenger who allegedly attacked him on the 5-Fulton line. Womack, a 12-year veteran of the bus and streetcar system, was dismissed this week for violating Muni regulations that bar drivers from carrying weapons. Womack, 48, also could face up to one year in jail if convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and carrying a loaded firearm. The passenger, 21-year-old Dallas Johnson, has been charged with misdemeanor battery. According to Womack, Johnson punched him repeatedly in the face then left the bus. When Womack stepped off the bus to clear his head, Johnson returned to the bus and threatened him again, the driver said. After Johnson ignored a warning shot, Womack shot him with his palm-sized 25-caliber Beretta, according to the driver. “A lot of drivers carry guns for protection,” despite Muni’s rules, 21-year Muni operator Victor Cellis said yesterday. “If riders pull a knife on you and you don’t have anything to protect yourself, you can get killed out there.”
— Ben Wildavsky
1969
Jan. 15: San Francisco Superior Court Judge Francis McCarty urged state legislators to reduce “horrendous mandatory State prison sentences” for marijuana and narcotic users. In a letter to State Senator George Moscone he said the law “betrays a degree of hysteria” in dealing so harshly with the “user trapped in his addiction.” The “fury” of the law should fall not on the victims but on the “profit-making dealers” in drugs. Presently, he said, “a second conviction of possessing even a fifth of a marijuana cigarette calls for a mandatory two-year State prison sentence.” A second conviction for possession of a narcotic results in imprisonment for not less than five years with no hope of parole.
1944
Jan. 13: There were only two in the taxicab as it pulled away from the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in San Mateo last Sunday night, the driver and the well-dressed middle aged lady in the back seat. They were on their way to Mills Field, whence she was to take the New York plane. On the Bayshore the driver picked up two cadets returning to the Merchant Marine training school at Coyote Point. The cadet who sank into the back seat beside the lady sighed as the cab started up. “Well,” he said, “back to the grind.”
“You have nothing to complain about,” said the lady quietly. “At least you’re alive.” Curiously, as though she had to, she went on talking. “For 10 months, I have lived for the day when my son was to start his first furlough. That day was today. I came out from New York to see him this morning ...” Her voice broke — “I saw him all right, but he was dead. He was killed in an accident last night.” They rode in silence for a while. Then the cadet in the back seats said: “I know how you feel. I had word from my folks that my brother was killed at Tarawa.” As they approached the school the cadet in the front seat spoke up. “I haven’t said much, but I had a brother too. He is buried at Salerno.” Minutes later the cadets got out at the training school and the lady rode alone to the airfield. She was the mother of Sergeant Clement C. Armory, the 21-year-old tail gunner, whose oxygen supply failed him in the sub-stratosphere flight of his bomber over Fresno, Saturday.
— Robert O’Brien