By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--March 26, 2013
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In the U.S., the chief law-enforcement officer for the courts in a county. He is ordinarily elected, and he may appoint a deputy. The sheriff and his deputy have the power of police officers to enforce criminal law and may summon private citizens (the posse comitatus, or "force of the county") to help maintain the peace. The main judicial duty of the sheriff is to execute processes and writs of the courts. Officers of this name also exist in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In England the office of sheriff existed before the Norman Conquest (1066).
The office of sheriff did not appear suddenly. It's prolonged development began over 1000 years ago in England, arising simultaneously as local government structure evolved. This form of government allowed early English people to be divided into smaller units subject to the considerations of a national interest and central authority of the king. The formation of the units was crucial to the central authority because the population was scattered and Saxon kings had no large standing armies, a centralized court system, or the ability to finance a government appropriately. The small unit management therefore became crucial to a national development of government. While these shires (counties) were in the developmental and refinement stage, a custodian was chosen by the fellow members of the hundreds to be their "gerefa" or guardian. Later this title was to become known as "reeve". The combination of the unit known as scir or shire and the administrative title of reeve would eventually develop into the word "sheriff". With the exception of king, no English institution is older than this office. The earliest mention of a position somewhat like a sheriff was in the 970s during the reign of King Edgar.Wessex King Cnut wrote a letter with one of the earliest uses of the term "sheriff" in 1027, mentioning abuses already associated with the office:
I command all the sheriffs and reeves over my whole kingdom, as they wish to retain my friendship and their own safety, that they employ no unjust force against any man neither rich nor poor, but all men of noble or humble birth shall have the right to enjoy just law, from which there is to be no deviation in any way, neither on account of the royal favour nor out of respect for any powerful man, nor in order to amass money for me.
Duties of the king's reeve were very miscellaneous, including both administration and judicial business. It was inevitable as time went on the King's reeve should grow in importance at the expense of the alderman, and that finally he should take the alderman's place and become the principal officer of the shire under the name of "sheriff" or "shire reeve".As mentioned by Cnut, sheriffs over the years were accused of various acts of tyranny, and the king was forced to limit his power by keeping appointments to one year, and also demand an accounting afterward. Plucknett describes the battle for power between the burgeoning sheriffs and the crown:
At the time of the Norman Conquest the sheriff, as the King's representative, enjoyed much judicial power, causing the Crown great anxiety, for there was no effective means of controlling him, except an occasional remedy of discharging him when popular unrest grew too strong. A number of attempts were made to find a check upon his powers as a royal judge. Sometimes the Crown appointed a permanent justiciar to sit in the county; the office of coroner was developed in order to serve as a check upon the sheriff; by the Great Charter (Magna Carta) it was finally declared no sheriff should for the future hold pleas of the Crown. This definitive solution robbed the sheriff of a great deal of his ancient power...
Sheriffs secured control over the hundred by appointing bailiffs. His influence further increased by means of the "Sheriff's Tourn". Twice a year local meetings were held, attended by the sheriff or his deputy, at which there came to meet him the reeve and his four best men to undergo a searching examination at his hands. They laid before them the most suspicious members of their community; those suspected of grave matters were arrested by the sheriff and held for the King's Justice, while less serious offenders were amerced by the sheriff. By the close of the middle ages the Justices of the Peace took over for the tourns.
Another jurisdiction was exercised by the sheriff in the county court in virtue of a royal writ addressed to him, beginning with the word iusticies, "do justice upon" the defendant "so that rightly and without delay he render" to the plaintiff, e.g. a debt which he owes. Other writs were also "viscontial", giving the sheriff jurisdiction, although not drawn in the form justicies. The implication seems clearly that down to the middle of the 13th century a large part of the nation's litigation was in the county court. In this type of proceeding the sheriff was a judge in the modern sense, and the county court was merely the occasion upon which he exercised his jurisdiction. So complicated a situation could only result in confusion, and in fact it is very difficult to disentangle the two branches; The classical doctrine as described by Coke makes the suitors judges of the court in almost all cases. Thus was fulfilled the ancient policy of the crown in reducing the judicial importance of the sheriff at every possible opportunity.
Since the 16th century, the duties of sheriffs in England dealt chiefly with judicial issues, enforcement of debt, and service of process. John Howard, high sheriff of Bedfordshire, became a social activist for penal reform. He exercised the traditional, but usually neglected responsibility of visiting prisons and institutions. He was shocked at the conditions, particularly that jailers received no salary but made their living from prisoners in the form of fees. Many prisoners who had been discharged by the court system still remained in custody because they could not pay the discharge fees owed to their jailers. Howard inspected prisons, prison ships, and houses of corrections throughout Europe and the US, finding all the facilities overcrowded, undisciplined, dirty, and ridden with disease. Thousands of prisoners were dying annually of diseases. Howard's graphic descriptions of prison conditions horrified the English people. In 1779, he drafted the "Penitentiary Act," based upon principles of secure and clean facility. Howard believed prison should not just be a place for industry and labor but also a place for contrition and penitence--a place that reformed inmates through the inculcation of good habits and religious instruction. All prisoners were to have healthy diets, access to conveniences that allowed for good hygiene, and all prisoners were to be provided with uniforms.
Since mid-16th century until the present, England's sheriffs have had little political clout or government importance compared to the wealth of power enjoyed during medieval times. The justice of the peace relieved the last vestiges of the position's former judicial duties. The Lord's Lieutenant removed its military importance and appointment powers of the office were taken away from the king and transferred to parliament. This removed all of the king's previous opportunity for political patronage, once so important to the position. The serious decline of the office might have been the death of the sheriff if it had not been for England's colonization. Finding new life on different soil would allow this faltering office to flourish in a transplanted environment. Invigorated in the New World, the office of sheriff would find a whole new potential.
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Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.