Dispensing Justice in Rural Nevada : Small-Town Judges Are a Throwback to Days of Old West

The judge, his wife and the stranger were having coffee in the kitchen of the judge’s log cabin in this remote hamlet. Logs crackled in the living room fireplace, heating the modest home.

“Where’s your courtroom, judge?” Justice of the Peace Johnny Williams, 61, was asked.

“You’re in it. The courtroom is the kitchen. We sit around this table and hear cases. We don’t stand on ceremony in Jarbidge. I never wear robes, just my everyday coveralls,” the spindly 6-foot, 135-pound judge said.

Williams is the lowest-paid judge in Nevada. His salary as justice of the peace at Jarbidge, population 17, is $25.12 a week. It was $9.30 a week when he was elected to his first term 23 years ago.

Few ever get to Jarbidge, elevation 6,200 feet, an old gold mining camp 12 miles south of the Idaho line in Nevada’s northeast corner on the slopes of 10,839-foot Matterhorn Mountain.

A one-lane, 105-mile-long winding dirt road through the mountains leads here from the south. The only other way in or out is 26 miles on a twisting one-lane dirt road north to pavement Charles Hillinger’s America

through a narrow river canyon embraced by towering peaks peppered with spectacular rock outcroppings.

Jarbidge is really out of the way. Hunters and fishermen wander through here spring, summer and fall. Not many others. Most of winter the town is snowed in.

Meting out justice in small towns and hamlets of rural Nevada is the domain of 62 elected justices of the peace, 47 of them lay judges, some high school graduates, some not, some university alumni. Fifteen are attorneys; a dozen are women.

Nevada’s justice courts are a throwback to the days of the Old West.

“Come see my jail,” Judge Williams beckoned. Two blocks up the town’s dusty only street, past a handful of log cabins and turn-of-the-century false-front-frame buildings, by the Outdoor Inn, a saloon with a sign “No Guns Allowed in Bar,” is the Jarbidge jail, a small concrete, adobe and wood structure with two cells.

“This is what a jail oughta be,” the judge said. “Primitive, unsanitary. Nowadays prisoners are pampered too much. We don’t pamper prisoners in Jarbidge.”

No Mattresses

In the jail were two rusty springs on bed frames. No mattresses. No bedding. Under each spring sat a chamber pot.

Down the road from the jail is The Barn, an abandoned red barn converted into a 10-room hotel, $15.90 a night with a common bathroom and shower.

Williams, a lifelong resident of Jarbidge, was first elected judge in 1962. He was postmaster here 24 years until he retired and his wife, Gloria, 60, succeeded him last year.

“I served as judge three years my first term, then quit to become town constable. Constable was paid $60 a month then and judge only $40,” Williams explained. “After five years as constable I went back to being judge.”

“The Post Office Department didn’t think it was right having a postmaster who was also a cop. But the Post Office Department said it was OK to be postmaster and judge because being judge was much more dignified than being constable. So, I have been judge ever since.”

He runs for office every four years and has never had any competition. To supplement his income, the judge is a plumber, carpenter, heavy equipment operator at a nearby gold mine and runs the Jarbidge Water Co.

‘Holds Town Together’

“Judge Williams does everything. He pretty much holds the town together,” said Outdoor Inn bartender-cook Wileen Cambridge, 35. “He blades the road so we can get in and out. . . .”

The judge performs half a dozen marriages a year and hears mostly fish and game violation cases. “One night last year wardens brought 11 violators to my kitchen for trial. The whole house was full of them,” the judge recalled.

“I left,” the judge’s wife chimed in.

But he usually isn’t very busy as far as courtroom activity. This year, for example, he has heard only two cases so far.

Judge Johnny Williams, the remotest judge in the state, is the only judge in Nevada without a telephone. “I got by 61 years without a phone. No sense getting one at this late stage of the game,” he snorted.

Jackpot Justice of the Peace Jay W. Snyder’s hat, glasses, face, hands and clothes were covered with dirt from clouds of flying dust as he bulldozed garbage into a pit at the town dump.

An unlikely spot to find a judge.

“Look, being judge doesn’t pay that much,” laughed Snyder, 64, as he took a breather. He earns $116.28 a week as judge, a job he has held in Jackpot, population 1,000, for eight years.

He augments his judiciary income by filling many other positions in the tiny town. Judge Snyder is sanitary fill caretaker, secretary to the town board, building inspector, director of the municipal water and sewer system and airport manager. He was also Jackpot fire chief and ambulance driver for 15 years until he gave up those two jobs this past July.

Jackpot is a three-casino town. Gambling is its only reason for existence. The main streets are Lady Luck Boulevard, Roulette Avenue and Snake Eyes Drive.

Hectic at Times

“You have to have a lay judge in a town this size as isolated as we are,” Judge Snyder acknowledged. “An attorney with any smarts isn’t going to fool around in a small place like this.”

Being jack of all trades gets hectic at times. Once Snyder was in the middle of a wedding when his beeper beeped and he cut the ceremony short to make an ambulance run. Another time he was marrying a couple and tied the knot in record time to answer a fire call. He left the bench on another occasion to deliver a baby on a car seat.

Non-attorneys elected to four-year terms as justices of the peace in Nevada are required by law to attend classes every year at the National Judiciary College on the campus of the University of Nevada at Reno.

Upon election, the new lay judge enrolls in a two-week orientation course on how to carry out his or her duties on the bench. The justices of the peace receive room, board, mileage and their judges’ salary while in school.

“Non-legally trained judges work twice as hard as attorneys on the bench in these small town situations,” said attorney Howard Windren, 58, a professor at the judges’ college. “Justices in small towns know virtually everyone appearing before them. They employ a great deal of common sense in handing down the decisions.”

Judge Marjean Kidner, 39, has been both justice of the peace and municipal judge simultaneously for six years at Wells, population 1,500. She is one of four JPs who double as municipal court judges in Nevada.

As JP she is paid $12,091 a year by Elko County and as municipal judge she is paid $5,500 a year by the town of Wells. She holds court every day in the City Building in Wells. She is elected justice of the peace and appointed city judge by the City Council.

Judge Kidner was elected Nevada Judge of the Year earlier this year by her peers. Her husband, Orlin, 45, is vice principal of the Wells combined school district.

She spent two years in business school after graduating from high school, then became a highway patrol dispatcher two years and clerk of the court 10 years before becoming its judge in 1979.

“Sometimes I disqualify myself, being too close to the parties involved in the case, and another judge is called in,” Judge Kidner said. “I can feel sorry for people appearing before me. I know where they’re coming from. The law does not allow a lot of leeway as far as sentencing when a person is found guilty.”

Justices of the peace in Nevada come from various walks of life. At Gabbs, population 1,000, a central Nevada mining town, miner Reno Ratti, 59, is the local judge.

For that, he is paid $187 a week. He also works at the Paradise Peak Gold Mine. He was mayor of Gabbs before becoming judge four years ago.

Judge Cecil Leavitt, 46, lives in the farming community of Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, a town of 700 people. He drives to Las Vegas every day to work as an accountant. He holds court Saturdays and during the evenings if necessary. He is paid $41.40 a week for his job as judge.

Solan Terrell, 69, a carpenter by trade, has been justice of the peace in Tonopah, populaton 3,000, for 13 years. The job pays $18,500 a year. He holds court daily.

“I think we non-attorney judges have more feelings toward the ordinary people,” Judge Terrell maintained. “My feeling is non-attorneys on the bench approach things differently than attorney judges. We non-attorney judges have feelings more in tune with the average man and woman on the street.”

Judge Joseph Drew, 75, a justice of the peace at Goldfield and the only judge in Esmeralda County, population 777, the past 15 years, told how JPs handle “everything, all the misdemeanors, traffics, small claims, assaults and batteries, and preliminary hearings for murders, robberies and all the felonies.

“I am the meanest SOB in the state when it comes to dopers and drunks,” Judge Drew said. “I was an alcoholic, but I haven’t had a drink since I took the bench. How could I throw the book at a drunk driver if I were guilty of it myself?”

Judge Drew lived in the San Fernando Valley and was a buyer for an aerospace firm until he retired and moved to Nevada. He was chief deputy county clerk and treasurer in Elmeralda County before running for justice of the peace, a job that pays $18,000 a year.

Jack Strong, 79, has been justice of the peace in Searchlight, population 500, since 1969. He rides his motorcycle all over town and holds court in an abandoned gas station. His jurisdiction covers two towns, Searchlight and booming Laughlin, population 3,000. He is paid $10,000 a year.

John Ellsworth, 65, is a retired Army colonel with a master’s degree in hospital administration. He spent $50 running for justice of the peace in Montello, population 193, against three housewives three years ago and won. He is paid $81.40 a week.

“The other day I tried a woman for fishing with worms at a nearby reservoir posted with signs saying it was against the law to use bait, that only lures could be used. She told me she was using a lure when a worm just happened to crawl by and since the fish weren’t biting on the lure she said she mistakenly put the worm on the hook.”

The woman was found guilty, fined $50.

In Moapa, a tiny town of 600, about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Marley Robinson has served as justice of the peace 12 years and as tribal judge for 185 Piaute Indians on the Moapa Indian Reservation 10 years.

“I hear cases for both courts in the same courtroom. I am paid $6,000 a year for being JP and $5,700 a year for being tribal judge,” she explained. She’s elected JP and appointed tribal judge by the tribal council.

Judge Robinson is a rancher recently widowed. In the tribal court she hears divorces, adoptions and custody cases which she is not permitted to hear in her justice court.

“People around these parts call their judge any time of the day or night and they expect me to listen,” Judge Robinson said.

“They get into family fights, ring me up and want me to come over and be Johnny-on-the-spot to referee their battles.”

Such is the way of justice in the wilds of rural Nevada.