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Paul Warner, newest U.S. magistrate in Utah

l Age: 56

l Education: Bachelor's degree in English in 1973; law degree in 1976; master's degree in public administration in 1984, all from Brigham Young University

l Military: Served as a trial lawyer in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Navy.

l Career: Stints as a defense attorney and a prosecutor with the Utah Attorney General's Office. Worked 17 years as a federal prosecutor, the last 7 1/2 years as the U.S. Attorney for Utah.

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Paul Warner officially began a new phase in his legal career Friday, when the once longest-serving U.S. Attorney in the nation took his oath to become Utah's newest federal magistrate.

Making the shift from prosecutor and advocate to an impartial judge is a challenge Warner, 56, said he welcomes.

"Timing is everything in life and it was my time," he said. "I'm excited about the opportunity."

Warner says his career has been motivated by the desire to seek justice and help those injured by crime. At Friday's investiture, Richard Lambert, the head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, noted his former boss also cautioned prosecutors that their job was to exercise judgment because "the power to indict is the power to destroy."

Warner was appointed as U.S. Attorney under President Clinton and then under the current President Bush. He worked under three attorneys general during his tenure.

He was sworn in Friday by U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell. As magistrate, Warner will handle civil and criminal cases in their early stages, including presiding over arraignments and detention hearings.

In an interview on his last day as prosecutor, he recalled two of his high-profile cases - the 1995 disappearance of Spanish Fork teenager Kiplyn Davis and the 1997 death of Patricia Bottarini, who fell several hundred feet off a cliff in Zion National Park. In both cases, families asked Warner for help after investigations seemed to be stalled.

Their pleas struck a chord. Warner convened grand juries to probe whether federal crimes had been committed. Under federal law, no homicide charge could be brought, but the grand juries issued perjury indictments against five men in the Davis case and a wire fraud indictment against Bottarini's husband.

James Bottarini was acquitted by a jury in 2000. Two defendants in the Davis case have pleaded guilty and the other three are awaiting trial. Since then, a state murder charge has been filed against one, Timmy Brent Olsen.

"We did our duty," said Warner, who once again credited the police officers, FBI agents and prosecutors in the two cases. "We saw a need and responded to it."

He added: "We didn't always get the results we wanted, but we did the best we could."

In another widely publicized case, his office prosecuted Charlissa Sireech for the 2004 beating of her grandsons, 4-year-old Jose Rodriguez and 3-year-old Emilio Rodriguez. Jose suffered permanent neurological injuries; Emilio recovered from his physical injuries but has been psychologically scarred.

The victim-witness section of the U.S. Attorney's Office helped the children's other grandmother travel to Utah to be with them and got other assistance for the family.

"Those boys needed help," Warner said. "In my position you get to see the victims firsthand. I try to use my position to try to bring a measure of justice."