motorman strike, and was known for being on the "radical" side of labor activists. The conservative leaders of local unions and editors of labor trade papers disliked Mooney intensely, believing him to be a "dangerous troublemaker" whose methods "never produced anything but trouble." Mooney and especially Billings both had prior knowledge of how to use dynamite (Billings was also familiar with clockwork timing mechanisms, and became a watch repairman after his release from prison). Police held Mooney incommunicado and without counsel for six days, during which time they attempted to interrogate him. Mooney declined to speak, invoking his right to counsel some 41 times. At the grand jury proceedings, the suspects were still without counsel and were not permitted to shave or clean up before appearing before the grand jury. The defendants refused to testify in protest of having been denied counsel. After the grand jury returned an indictment, Mooney and his wife Rena, Warren Billings, Israel Weinberg, and Ed Nolan were charged with murder. Fickert alleged that Mooney had planted the suitcase at the bomb scene, which contained a dynamite bomb with a clock as a timing mechanism. Fickert and the police discounted the testimony of witnesses whose descriptions did not fit Mooney and Billings, or whose description of the bombing did not support the district attorney's theory that Mooney had planted the bomb. Mooney and Billings eventually retained a well-known San Francisco criminal attorney, Maxwell McNutt, as their defense counsel. In a set of trials, Billings was tried first in September 1916, Thomas Mooney in January 1917. Both were convicted and sentenced to death. Rena Mooney and Israel Weinberg were both acquitted, and Ed Nolan was never brought to trial but released two months after Thomas Mooney's conviction. Pardons Two years later, a Mediation Commission set up by President Woodrow Wilson found no clear evidence of Mooney's guilt, and his death sentence was commuted. Billings' sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment. The Mooney case and campaigns to free him became an international cause celebre for two decades, with a substantial literature of publications demonstrating the falsity of the conviction. Evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial became overwhelming, but repeated efforts to reverse the convictions or pardon Mooney and Billings were consistently blocked for twenty years until the election of progressive California Governor Culbert Olson, who pardoned both men. Later investigations Although the identity of