The Judge Who Drank: A Local Magistrate’s Confession to the Grand Jury

ATTEMPT TO INDICT A QUADRUPLE MURDERER ON MURDER CHARGE.

Judge Mercer, you are not doing very well. I hear that since last looking over your head is not an effective way to improve your health," said a reporter to Justice Mercer, yesterday.

"It is not good for me any more than it is likely to be good for anyone else," replied the Judge. "I have just about the effect it was intended to produce, though I am happy to bear my burden. For instance, have you noticed my connection with the temperance organization? A man called them there to testify in this case, and I told them the facts and rights. Now, my enemies are trying to have me get a grand jury indicted for 'TAKING INTO THE HOUSE.' They have got my house up there; they will try to make it sick. There is just one thing about it, as a house man has been in this county. Politics runs everything and a man can't sit on his own case. I was elected partly on the platform that I was to look after the interests of the working men. Now I find that I failed to protect their interests by leaving them to be drunk."

"I found that fully one half of the drunks who were brought before me were laborers and saloon keepers had worked and made up from $36 to several hundred dollars each and come to town and been cleaned out by gamblers in one or two days. I found that when I issued warrants for saloons they generally wind it up before the warrants were served, and skipped, so I had to arrest them on territorial warrants. The only way I could deal with them was on the charge of vagrancy. They would then have to give bonds for their good behavior, which would include no drinking."

"In several instances there were both territorial and city cases against the prisoner, and I accepted their own proposition—to take fines in the city court and costs in both, and I am not to submit them to the grand jury if the prosecuting attorney did not ask to hold them, besides the prosecuting attorney decided to hold them. I must agree as far as concerns."

"In the territorial cases several of the cases were submitted to the grand jury, and also I found that the grand jury would not indict them on the ground that they had already been punished under the city ordinance and because the witnesses abouted to object on oath. The gamblers and political enemies are engineering this attempt to prosecute me, but I am going to see it out and indict myself."