Central States, Lawman and Outlaws Historic Association: Fontier Justice and Jails

FRONTIER JUSTICE AND JAILS

Photo Courtesy of Emory Cantey

"The Land of the Desperado—The Frontier of the Old West—The Great Unsettled Regions—The Desperado of the Mountains—His Brother of the Plains—The Desperado of the Early Railroad Towns.

There was once a vast empire, almost unknown, west of the Missouri river. The white civilization of this continent was three hundred years in reaching it. We had won our independence and taken our place among the nations of the world before our hardiest men had learned anything whatever of this Western empire. We had bought this vast region and were paying for it before we knew what we had purchased. The wise men of the East, leading men in Congress, said that it would be criminal to add this territory to our already huge domain, because it could never be settled. It was not dreamed that civilization would ever really subdue it. Even much later, men as able as Daniel Webster deplored the attempt to extend our lines farther to the West, saying that these territories could not be States, that the East would suffer if we widened our West, and that the latter could never be of value to the union! So far as this great West was concerned, it was spurned and held in contempt, and it had full right to take itself as an outcast. Decreed to the wilderness forever, it could have been forgiven for running wild. Denominated as unfit for the occupation of the Eastern population, it might have been expected that it would gather to itself a population all its own.

It did gather such a population, and in part that population was a lawless one. The frontier, clear across to the Pacific, has at one time or another been lawless; but this was not always the fault of the men who occupied the frontier. The latter swept Westward with such unexampled swiftness that the machinery of the law could not always keep up with them. Where there are no courts, where each man is judge and jury for himself, protecting himself and his property by his own arm alone, there always have gathered also the lawless, those who do not wish the day of law to come, men who want license and not liberty, who wish crime and not lawfulness, who want to take what is not theirs and to enforce their own will in their own fashion."
From;
THE
STORY OF THE OUTLAW
A STUDY OF THE WESTERN DESPERADO
WITH HISTORICAL NARRATIVES OF FAMOUS OUTLAWS;
THE STORIES OF NOTED BORDER WARS;
VIGILANTE MOVEMENTS AND ARMED CONFLICTS ON THE FRONTIER BY EMERSON HOUGH

JUDGES AND JURIES

Judge Wells Spicer's OK Corral Decision
There was Justice in The West

The evidence taken before me in this case, would not, in my judgment, warrant a conviction of the defendants by trial jury of any offense whatever. I do not believe that any trial jury that could be got together in this territory, would, on all the evidence taken before me, with the rule of law applicable thereto given them by the court, find the defendants guilty of any offense.

It may be that my judgment is erroneous, and my view of the law incorrect, yet it is my own judgment and my own understanding of the law as I find it laid down, and upon this I must act and decide, and not upon those of any other persons. I have given over four weeks of patient attention to the hearing of evidence in this case, and at least four-fifths of my waking hours have been devoted, at this time, to an earnest study of the evidence before me, and such is the conclusion to which I am forced to arrive.

I have the less reluctance in announcing this conclusion because the Grand Jury of this county is now in session, and it is quite within the power of that body, if dissatisfied with my decision, to call witnesses before them or use the depositions taken before me, and which I shall return to the district court, as by law required, and to thereupon disregard my findings, and find an indictment against the defendants, if they think the evidence sufficient to warrant a conviction.

I conclude the performance of this duty imposed upon me by saying in the language of the Statute: "There being no sufficient cause to believe the within named Wyatt S. Earp and John H. Holliday guilty of the offense mentioned within. I order them to be released."
-Judge Wells Spicer's decision

Photo by the Author
The nature of the western frontier made swift and decisive justice a necessity.