The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Criminal Justice, 1858

If 1857 included plenty of high drama with the massacre of Sheriff James R. Barton and members of his posse hunting bandits near San Juan Capistrano, it would have been thought that the next year, 1858, would be much quieter.  To a significant degree that was true, if the Barton incident and its aftermath is viewed as the peak of lawlessness and disquiet in greater Los Angeles during the tumultuous decade.

But 1858 proved to have a shocking start.  In the prior fall's elections, Los Angeles marshal William C. Getman, a Mexican-American veteran and longtime city lawman, secured election as county sheriff.  Just days into the new year, however, Getman was called to the scene of a disturbance involving a man named Reed, who showed signs of violent mental illness.

Like Barton a brave, but reckless, individual, Getman stationed a few men around the scene where Reed holed himself up in a building, but brazenly approached the crazed man telling Reed to drop his gun and that he wouldn't shoot the sheriff.  Reed promptly fired, mortally wounding Getman, who died moments later.  William W. Jenkins, who was discussed in the blog for his role as a deputy constable in the homicide of Antonio Ruiz in July 1856, was one of Getman's sidekicks, and, stationed atop the building, fired through a space in a covered porch and killed Reed, ending the incident.

When the supervisors convened a special meeting on 7 January to honor Getman, it was supposed to nominate a successor to fill out the sheriff's term, but postponed this action until the 11th.  When that meeting was held, supervisor and prominent merchant Francis Mellus nominated Joseph H. Smith, an experienced lawman, while supervisor Francisco Ocampo put forward James S. Thompson, who had involvement in the manhunt for the Barton killers as a candidate.

Whatever the reason, the vote was 4-1 for Thompson, after which Mellus, who obviously voted for Smith, resigned, presumably because of his displeasure over the outcome, though nothing was stated in the minutes as to why Mellus quit.  His replacement was Ralph Emerson.

During February, there was some minor business, such as the creation of a new township of Los Nietos for areas on either side of the San Gabriel River (then the Rio Hondo) in modern Downey, Whittier, Pico Rivera and nearby areas and a requirement of new bondsmen for recently elected San Gabriel constable Roy Bean, who later became the famed "Law West of the Pecos" in Texas.

On the 4th, the supervisors reaffirmed the conditions of the maintenance of the county and city jail, located in the courtyard behind the Rocha Adobe, then used as the courthouse and city and county offices, situated on the west side of Spring Street just north of 1st Street.  It ordered Sheriff Thompson to be responsible "for the safe keeping and support of prisoners confined in the County Jail" by allotting 50 cents per person per day in food and other essentials, while providing Thompson $3 per day compensation.

Going to further levels of detail than previously recorded in the minutes, the board ordered that bedding, clothing and other articles that were requisitioned by the sherff was to be certified by a board committee and then approved by the entire body.  Moreover, each quarter a disbursement of $50 was to be provided for lights, fuel and water and the supervisors were sure to add that "the prisoners [were] to be furnished with plain wholesome food, and their persons as well as the Jail, to be kept clean."

Then, the body resolved that a tax levy of 30 cents per $100 of assessed property be implemented to pay for jail expenses, repealing previous orders of August and November of the previous year.  The vote, however, was 3-2, with members Stephen C. Foster, Emerson and Tomás Sánchez voting yes and Ocampo and Julián Chavez voting no. Incidentally, this was the only time that the supervisors had a Latino majority.

This 18 September 1858 article in the Los Angeles Star discusses statistics about the local economy provided by the deputy assessor, although the information was hard to gather, evidently.  Still, in the post-Gold Rush years, the economy was in stagnation, a condition that would considerably worsen in the first half of the 1860s,  For the administration of criminal justice, which consumed most of the county's meager budget, the hard times made matters much worse.

Financial issues were clearly continuing to be a problem, as noted here before with the Gold Rush petering out by mid-decade, a national depression breaking out in 1857, and the local economy in a serious downturn.  Revenues were never high because of low tax rates, but as property values dropped in the worsening economy, the problem became more acute.

Consequently, in a special meeting of 5 February, the board resolved that

a Court House and Jail Yard, are imperatively required as a Public necessity, and as the only means of effecting the same, that a loan should be effected, and that our delegation in the Legislature should be requested to use their best efforts to have a Law passed therefore.

As will be seen below, the legislature did pass an act allowing the county to put the matter of a loan before the voters in the fall election.

Matters were quiet for some time after this.  In the February and May meetings of the board, lists of jurors who served in the district court, where the most serious felony criminal cases were heard, were provided, showing that, of 120 voters who were called to service (though only some became trial jurors), 14 of them had Spanish-language surnames.  In August, a new listing for the district and sessions (which heard most criminal cases) courts, revealed that 7 of 44 jurors had Spanish-language surnames.  So, out of 164 persons, 21 were Latino, a rate of 13% generally matching that of previous years.

As mentioned in previous posts here, the disproportionate majority of Americans and Europeans on jury pools has led some historians to suggest that justice was not possible for Spanish-surnamed defendants in court.  This, however, is questionable as those surviving cases with dispositions do not show a dramatic difference in conviction rates for Latino defendants compared to their Anglo counterparts.

Incidentally, to give an idea of how large the administrative townships could be in the county, take in this description of the redefinition of the Los Angeles Township, certified by the supervisors on 6 August:

From Arroyo Seco south from the mountains to the city boundary to the northern boundary of San Antonio to San Gabriel River, down to southern boundary of San Antonio, along said line to Rancho de Los Cuerbos to dividing line of San Pedro rancho and Palos Verdes, from the Sentinela [Centinela] and Sausal Redondo to the ocean, north to the line between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, along this to the eastward connection to the north line of Rancho San Francisco and along this to its eastern terminues and south along the eastern boundary of Los Angeles County and southerly along to point of beginning.

This is basically from where the Arroyo Seco comes out of the San Gabriels at Pasadena and La Cañada/Flintridge all the way south to modern Downey area along the old San Gabriel River channel, now the Rio Hondo (the current San Gabriel was created in the winter floods of 1867-68 ).

Then the boundary moved westward to about where South-Central Los Angeles is and to the ocean generally where Redondo Beach is situated.  From there the line followed the coast up to what is now the Ventura County line--Ventura having been carved out of Santa Barbara County fifteen years later, in 1873.

Then the line went east along the boundary of Los Angeles and modern Ventura County and basically took in part of the San Fernando Valley (there was a San Fernando township) and through Tujunga, Sunland, north Glendale, La Crescenta and La Cañada before meeting back at the Arroyo Seco.

Initial county election returns published in the 4 September edition of El Clamor Público match those reproduced in the 11 September minutes of the Board of Supervisors. including the races for county judge and sheriff and the vote on a $25,000 tax levy for a new court house, which was narrowly defeated.  Thanks to Paul Bryan Gray for providing the microfilm of this paper.

Speaking of Los Angeles Township, the election of early September was recorded in the minutes of the board from 11 September.  The vote for a loan for the county courthouse was defeated and the minutes showed the tally as 237-176.   Returns printed in El Clamor Público on the same date were different, with the vote recorded as 236-194.  Interestingly, the measure passed handily in the city of Los Angeles, 115-68 and won in San Fernando and San Pedro, but all 72 voters in El Monte, all but 3 of the 26 in Santa Ana, and all 19 each in San Pedro and Tejon voted against it.  What isn't clear is why there were only some 430 votes, when the races for county judge (won handily by incumbent Benjamin Hayes) and sheriff (with appointee James Thompson easily defeating Joseph H. Smith and 1857 appointee Elijah Bettis) each had between 1400-1500 voters.  

Four days later, given the defeat of the loan measure, the clerk was ordered by the supervisors to send a letter to Mayor Damien Marchessault and the Los Angeles Common [City] Council to present the board's views "upon the present dilapidated condition of the Court House Building" and to seek out their views on the matter and "to place the same and the archives of the County beyond the Contingencies of the weather."  Clearly voters did not see the urgency for better court facilities, even if it meant, as was clear in the last statement, that there were some significant exposure to the elements in the Rocha Adobe!

On 21 September, the minutes recorded that there was a response from Marchessault and the council, though these weren't detailed (neither was the matter reflected in the council minutes, covered in an earlier post on this blog).  However, it is obvious that their concern was manifested similarly to that of the supervisors, because the board's building committee was authorized to expend up to $300 on repairs and instructed to find a new office for the clerk.

Election returns were amended for reporting in the 11 September edition of El Clamor.

The remainder of the year consisted of mundane matters when it came to criminal justice related questions, such as the disqualification (the reason was not stated) of José Antonio Yorba the elected justice of the peace at San Juan Capistrano and the appointment of his replacement, Michael Krazewski and the same for Los Nietos constable F. Bachelor, replaced by O.P. Passons, the runner-up in the justice of the peace contest in that township.

There was also a matter of requesting from San Bernardino County for the reimbursement of prisoner maintenance costs at the county jail for persons wanted for crimes committed in that other locale and for canceling scrip (IOUs) issued to jailor Francis Carpenter for fees that were disallowed in a district court case that went against him.

The next post takes us to the last year of the tumultuous decade of the 1850s.