True Tales of Frontier Justice

Book review by Si Dunn, Special Contributor, 1/21/2007. Denton writer Si Dunn reviews books about Texas and the Southwest for the Dallas Morning News.

 

Abilene writer Bill Neal has seen both sides of the modern criminal justice system. During his four-decade legal career in West Texas, he has prosecuted many cases as a district attorney. And, as a self-described "country lawyer", Mr. Neal has defended numerous individuals charged with crimes.

Throughout it all, he writes in Getting Away With Murder On The Texas Frontier : Notorious Killings and Celebrated Trials, he has remained "fascinated with our criminal justice system and how our criminal laws, as well as the practice of criminal law, originated and evolved." In particular, he has collected tales, memoirs, news reports, transcripts, and other accounts of some of Texas' most famous (and infamous) murder trials from the 1880's to the early 1930's.

His book, fortunately, is not a rehash of well-known cases. He also has prospected for trials that received little or no publicity in their day. In doing so, he has turned up some nuggets that illustrate how the Texas frontier relied heavily on an ad hoc legal system where "common sense, grassroots fairness, and rather vague notions of folk law derived in large part from the Old South's Victorian code of chivalry and honor" outweighed statutes enacted in Austin.

Hollywood has given the world enduring images of American frontier justice. Those on-screen depictions of shootouts, hangings, and other forms of mayhem and execution have sometimes been close to reality. Yet, as Mr. Neal's extensive research shows, murder convictions were a rarity in the early days of frontier Texas criminal justice, for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, the raucous saloon trials depicted in westerns are tame compared to what sometimes happened in real courtrooms.

There were cases where murderers escaped the noose because they owed someone money or a pair of boots, and collecting the debt was considered to be more important than executing the offender. In one well-witnessed Fort Worth shooting, the defendant was found not guilty of deliberate, cold-blooded murder because, in the words of the jury foreman, "This is Texas".

Legal training and law degrees were rarities on the frontier, and criminal defense attorneys were the only lawyers who made money, the author notes. Not surprisingly, sharp-witted opportunists and flashy showmen soon were drawn to the courtroom stage to battle young, inexperienced, untrained prosecutors w ho often were so poor they had to live in their courthouses. Juries frequently were stacked with the defendant's friends or with bribed jurors or with jurors who faced violence or death if they voted to convict. Witnesses often were scattered for miles, and sometimes were threatened, bought off or killed to prevent them from testifying. Evidence was usually sparse to non-existent. And sheriffs had no budgets, technology, or manpower for investigations.

The West Texas settler's basic sense of values also weighed heavily in how justice was dispensed, Mr. Neal points out. "Trials of livestock thefts usually drew bigger crowds of spectators than murder trials." Meanwhile, anyone caught stealing a horse was lucky to live long enough to have a trial.

Despite his book's "Texas" title, the author could not resist crossing into Oklahoma territory for one truly outrageous 1893 courtroom session. Sam Houston youngest son, Temple, was defending a cowboy who eyewitnesses said had murdered a prominent rancher and, worse, stolen his horse. When Temple Houston discovered that the jury had been stacked with the victim's friends, he first drew them close with a spellbinding story, then suddenly whipped out his Colt revolver and opened fire on them at close range. He was shooting blanks, of course, but the stunt caused the jurors to flee the jury box and also sent the judge diving for cover. Rather than getting arrested, Temple Houston got a mistrial for his client on a technicality : the jury was not supposed to leave the jury box. Then he got a new jury and an acquittal.

Getting Away With Murder On The Texas Frontier is an entertaining and often fascinating circuit ride through a legal system that has evolved greatly in recent decades, yet still displays flashes of its checkered past.