Ross Mc Swain, San Angelo Standard Times, 11/05/2006

 

Laws passed by politicians in far-off Austin meant little to folks living on the Texas frontier. In the sagebrush country, the law of the Winchester and the Colt pistols was relied upon, along with good common sense and grass-roots fairness.

 

All this is explained neatly in a new book, "Getting Away With Murder On The Texas Frontier : Notorious Killings and Celebrated Trials", by veteran Abilene lawyer, Bill Neal, who has some 40 years of experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney in West Texas courthouses. Neal's book, published by Texas Tech University Press, is priced at $27.95 plus sales tax. It is 320 pages, numerous end notes, 49 photos, and two maps. Cactus Book Shop here has just received some copies, and it is also available from Texas Press by calling (800) 832-4042.

 

For a retired newspaper man, Neal's stories about some unlikely murders and murder trials brought back memories of strange trials this writer covered as a reporter in which obviously guilty defendants were turned loose because of some glitch in the law.

 

The stories gathered by Neal came about during his many years of being a courthouse lawyer when he had spare time to look up the cases stored away in court clerk offices. Most of the stories have never been published, and each is supported by a wealth of primary research.

 

A sampling of the cases : in 1916, a gunman slips into the courtroom and murders the defendant in the tiny West Texas town of Benjamin ; in 1912, in Fort Worth's finest hotel, a young man kills an old man in cold blood in the middle of the hotel lobby. the verdict in both cases was "Not Guilty". the explanation ? "This is Texas."

 

Much of western Texas had no law enforcement, and the laws on the books were not always fully understood. Neal says sagebrush justice relied less on written statutes than on common sense, grass-roots fairness, and vague notions of folk law drawn from the Old South's Victorian code of of honor and chivalry.

 

Murderers, horse and cattle thieves and other felons might go free for the following reason : "The son-of-a-gun is guilty all right, but we must turn him loose. He owes me a pair of boots, and if we convict him I'll never get my money." Others went free because of inexperienced prosecutors, a lack of modern crime detection methods, unavailability of witnesses and the acceptance of violence in society.

 

One of my favorite chapters in Neal's book is "...And The Perpetrator Walked, A Sampler of Misfires, Mistrials, and Manipulations". As Neal says, early courts were no-holds-barred, which was proved by the famous frontier attorney Temple Houston, youngest son of Texas hero Sam Houston, when he fired blanks in the courtroom while making his final arguments to the jury. The tale has been told before, but Neal's version is the best that I can recall.

 

He also relates Houston's courtroom antics in freeing a prostitute, including excerpts from Houston's closing remarks to the jury that made Minnie Stacy a free woman. The argument was so eloquent that the woman turned her life around and got involved in Christian activities.

 

Another interesting case Neal explores is sex and the unwritten law as it was applied on the frontier. Many people walked out of the courtroom after being found innocent of killing their spouses.

 

For collectors of Southwest and Texas frontier history, this book needs to be on your bookshelf.