100 years ago in Eastern Washington: One of the San Quentin escapees got five years to life for shooting a local deputy – but to serve where?

S.P. Burt pleaded guilty to shooting deputy sheriff Dick Cashatt near Rosalia, Wash., and was sentenced to a term of five years to life at Walla Walla.

Left unsettled was the question of whether Burt and his accomplice Thomas Walton – who was sentenced a day earlier – would end up in Walla Walla or San Quentin.

San Quentin wanted both of them back.

They had escaped from that prison several years earlier. Both had been serving life sentences for murder at San Quentin.

Burt’s charges in this case stemmed from an incident in which he took local waitress Gladys Homer on a joyride in a stolen auto. She became scared of his reckless driving – and about where he might be taking her – and she jumped out of the speeding car, fracturing her skull.

After Cashatt pulled him over, Burt shot Cashatt in the lung. Both Homer and Cashatt were still recovering from their injuries.

From the Prohibition beat: Sheriff Thomas Barker of Ferry County was facing a retrial on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the Prohibition laws.

Barker and a co-defendant had already been tried once, but the jury in that trial found itself “hopelessly unable to agree” on a verdict.

Barker and several other Ferry County men were accused of aiding and abetting the shipment of large quantities of liquor from Canada into Ferry County. Federal authorities believed that Barker had zero interest in enforcing Prohibition laws in his county – and was actually cooperating with the bootleggers.