At night in the camping places, some of which were along the old road in the Escalante desert, McCarty studied his law books while companions played cards or "told yarns".

[1] McCarty was assistant United States prosecuting attorney in the Beaver district of the Utah Territory, which included his then home county of Sevier.

In 1895 he was elected judge of the Sixth district, which embraced the counties of Sevier, Wayne, Piute, Garfield and Kane.

In 1900 he was reelected to the Sixth district bench and had served two years of his four-year term when, in 1902, he was elected to the state supreme court.

4 of the Free and Accepted Masons of Utah, having been initiated sometime during the year prior to the 1897 Proceedings of that Grand Lodge where he is listed as an Entered Apprentice;[3] he remained an Entered Apprentice through the next year, but is not recorded in the Grand Lodge's Annual Proceedings as having continued through the other two degrees of Masonry.