Ballard’s Police Judge Questioned
A dairyman challenges the legitimacy of his jail sentence and the authority of the judge who signed the warrant.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The validity of a Ballard city ordinance and also that of the acts of Police Judge H. Vernon of that place have been taken into question by the application of Roman Weise for a writ of habeas corpus. In the petition it is alleged that Weise, a dairyman, is restrained of his liberty by City Marshal A. T. Diggs under an order of commitment signed by Vernon, ordering Weise's confinement in the Ballard city jail for twelve days in satisfaction of a fine for the violation of an ordinance providing for the abatement of nuisances. The petition states that the detention is illegal because the ordinance was not introduced at a regular meeting of the city council, nor was an accurate copy published as required by law. Furthermore, the petition claims Judge Vernon has been acting without authority for eighteen months, as the city council never passed an ordinance creating the office or fixing its term, and the judge had simply held over after his supposed term expired.
“Although Vernon has been acting as police judge of Ballard for the past eighteen months he has been acting all this time without authority of law.”
This 1894 challenge to the legitimacy of municipal courts highlights the messy, informal nature of governance in the boom years before Ballard was annexed by Seattle in 1907. Today, questions of judicial authority are handled through rigorous state oversight, but the tension between local enforcement and city-wide administrative legitimacy remains a common feature of Seattle’s civic debates.
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