Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846-1912

6. Keeper of the Keys: The Sheriff as Jailer

6 Keeper of the Keys The Sheriff as Jailer The care of the county jails and their inmates proved to be one of the most vexatiousof the sheriff's tasks. Not only were the impoverished counties of New Mexico and Arizona unable to afford secure jails, but the Hispanic and Indian populations were generally unaccustomed to imprisonment as punishment for crime. Nonetheless, the Americans insisted upon a penal system at the county level. To secure prisoners in preparation for trial was fundamental to the Anglo-American judicial system. A host of obstacles obstructed the sheriffs. Incredibly primitive facilities, vigilante action against flimsyjails, and frequent breakouts were just a few problems. Attentive jail guards seemed to be impossible to find. Most jails were overcrowded, since other lawmen lodged their prisoners in the sheriff's lockup. And the frontier citizenry did not respond to the occasional cries for prison reform. Sheriffs generally lackedthe public support necessary to maintain large jail staffs. Still, some progress in improved jail construction was made as the territorial era drew to a close. The American conquerors arrived in the Mexican southwest with a firm resolve to impose the Anglo-American judicial and law enforcement system upon the native population. While General Kearny and his successors did not force the complete apparatus upon them all at once, the necessity for a network of county jails and a territorial prison was an uppermost concern in the governor's office in Santa Fe. The Kearny Code, which went into effect in September 1846, vested each sheriff in New Mexico with "charge of the jail within his county." An alarmed Governor Charles Bent informed Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who acted as a spokes1O8 CHAPTER 6 / 109 man for many territorial interests in the national capital, that "there is not... a single jail or prison in the whole territory." Shortly after the creation of Arizona Territory, Governor Richard C. McCormick reminded the legislature of the conspicuous absenceof county jails. "The officers of justice find it difficult to retain their prisoners,55 said the alarmed executive. Army guardhouses offered sheriffs the only hope of securing prisoners, although the civilian lawmen resented dependence upon the military.1 Elsewhere sheriffs and other local lawmen had recourse to unique penal expediencies. In many communities, lawmen tied prisoners to trees or buried logs dubbed "snubbing posts.55 One deputy sheriff , Hurricane Bill Smith, lodged troublemakers in an empty railroad car at Otero, New Mexico. Samuel Bean, sheriff of Dona Ana County in its earliest days, erected an open air stockade in Mesilla . The first jail of Final County, Arizona, recalled Jailer Oliver Stratton, was primitive. Since this structure had no door, Stratton chained prisoners to a large rock in the floor and slept in the open doorway. A local journalist compared this calaboose to the torture rooms of the Inquisition. In Arizona mining districts, such as Clifton, abandoned shafts served as jails. Jennie Parks Ringgold remembered the infamous "Rock Jail55 at Clifton: The interior consisted of two compartments. One was a large cell about twenty feet square which housed the common drunks, misdemeanor prisoners, and . . . less dangerous types. It had two ventilator windows. . . . The other cell was much smaller and had no windows or ventilators. Here the dangerous criminals were confined. Both cells had regulation steel-barred doors. . . . As local badman Red Johnson remarked upon completion of his stay in this bizarrecarcel,"This is the damndest hole to put awhite man in I ever saw!555 In 1904, an article in Wide World Magazine gave the Rock Jail nationwide notoriety.2 Some county governments were slow to provide adequate penal facilities. The citizens of Lincoln County, New Mexico, failed to erect a county jail for eight years. When Sheriff William Brady finally constructed a carcel in 1877, he could hardly boast. It was an underground cavern, twenty by thirty feet and ten feet deep. This dungeon was lined with logs and consisted of two cells with ingress through a trapdoor in the roof. The jailer, whose office was above ground, lowered a ladder to serve the prisoners. The Las Vegas Gazette described the lockup as "literally a hole in the ground, where HO / Keeper of the Keys candles were constantly burning to enable the prisoners to recognize each other." This "cellar55 jail was very insecure, and escapes were common. By the time Pat Garrett entered the shrievalty in 1881, it was closed. He...