Frontier Justice highlights eighteen crimes and subsequent punishments of the most interesting, controversial, and unusual executions from an era when hangings and shootings were a legal means of capital punishment. Chapters include: the bungled hanging of Tom Ketchum who was beheaded by the noose; the unique trigger for the trapdoor used to hang Tom Horn; "Big Nose" George Parrott who was skinned, pickled, and made into a pair of shoes; the double trials of Jack McCall, assassin of Wild Bill Hickok; the hanging of a woman-Elizabeth Potts; the shooting of John D. Lee of Mountain Meadows Massacre infamy; and the only use of a double "twitch-up" gallows; etc. Each action-packed chapter includes biographical information, the pursuit, the investigation, legal maneuvers, trial information, and rarely-seen photographs.

More Frontier Justice in the Wild West; Bungled, Bizarre and Fascinating Executions reveals the details of more than two dozen instances of frontier justice from the era of the Wild West. The events chosen are unique, have some surprising twist, serve as a landmark or benchmark event, or just stand out in the annals of western justice.

Has chapters on range wars, the Johnson County war, troubles between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers, fence cutting, cattle thieves, horse thieves, road agents, violence against and from Mexican Americans and Indians.

Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a classic for everyone interested in history and what is was like in the Old West. Get swept back to a time when sheriffs did their best to keep order in a lawless land. Read about the likes of Tom Horn, the "Apache Kid", "Bucky" O'Neill, Tom Nickson, and many more!

Western movies are full of images of swaggering outlaws brought to justice by valiant lawmen shooting them down in daring gunfights before riding off into the sunset. In reality it would not have happened that way. Real lawmen did not simply walk away from a gunfight--they had to face the legal system and justify shooting a civilian in the line of duty. Providing a more realistic view of criminal justice in the Old West, this history focuses on how criminals came into conflict with the law and how the law responded. The process is described in detail, from the common crimes of the day--such as train robbery and cattle theft--to the methods of apprehending criminals to their adjudication and punishment by incarceration, flogging or hanging.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

In a chilling scene in the film Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood as the gunman stands over a wounded Gene Hackman, the sheriff, aiming a rifle at his head. "I don't deserve this, to die like this," says Hackman. Eastwood replies, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it," cocks his rifle, and fires point blank at his helpless victim. This scenario dramatically brings home to the viewer what historians have long debated and hundreds of other films and books suggest: the turn-of-the-century West was a violent time and place. Ranchers, miners, deputy sheriffs, teenagers and old men, occasionally even housewives and mothers found themselves at the business end of a shotgun or a .38 revolver. Yet, since western historians tend to portray violence as essentially episodic--frontier gunfights, range wars, vigilante movements, and the like--solid data has been hard to come by. As a beginning point for actually measuring lethal violence and assessing the administration of justice, here at last is a detailed and well-documented study of homicide in the American West. Comparing data from representative areas--Douglas County, Nebraska; Las Animas County, Colorado; and Gila County, Arizona--this book reveals a level of violence far greater than many historians have believed, even surpassing eastern cities like New York and Boston. Clashing cultures and transient populations, a boomtown mentality, easy availability of alcohol and firearms: these and many other factors come under scrutiny as catalysts in the violence that permeated the region. By comparing homicide data, including coroner's inquests, indictments, plea bargains, and sentences across both racial and regional lines, the book also offers persuasive evidence that criminal justice systems of the Old West were weighted heavily in favor of defendants who were white and against those who were African American, Native American, or Mexican. Packed with information, this is a book for students and scholars of western history, social history, criminology, and justice studies. Western history buffs will be captivated by colorful anecdotes about the real West, where guns could and did blaze over anything from love trysts to vendettas to too much foam on the beer. From whatever perspective, all readers are sure to find here a well-constructed framework for understanding the West as it was and for interpreting the region as it moves into the future.