The Justice of the Peace Who Sent Men to the Chain Gang Takes His Turn in It
Former Newport Justice of the Peace Warriner, a fugitive after the grand jury and district court got through with him, is caught by a deputy sheriff and hauled off to serve 150 days at hard labor — ball, chain and a smile.
The county jail set out the chain gang Tuesday morning for the first time since early in the summer. A small piece of the county poor farm, which the efforts of the previous chain gang had not subdued, will be cleared up.
Among the members of the chain gang is former Justice of the Peace Warriner, of Newport, who was captured at Newport Saturday by Deputy Sheriff Geary and brought to Sandpoint to serve out a 150-day sentence. Warriner took the chain gang with good grace, and set out to work with the ball-and-chain attachment with a smile. Warriner had sentenced many an unfortunate to the same task while acting as justice of the peace in the Newport precinct, until the grand jury and the district court made him a fugitive from justice. — Sandpoint Review.
“Warriner took the chain gang with good grace, and set out to work with the ball-and-chain attachment with a smile.”
A local magistrate who handed down hard sentences is finally on the other end of one — a small-town story about how the people who run the courts are not above them. Warriner's fall also shows how porous the Washington–Idaho line was: a Newport official tried, sentenced and put to work across the border in Sandpoint, a few miles from the bench he used to sit on.
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