As United States dominance spread westward during the 19th century, the question of The administration of justice in the new territories was a serious problem as a result of the lack of a judicial and police system that could approach the one that prevailed in the more civilized regions of the east of the country.
In many cases, justice was applied directly by citizens who did not have the time or desire to wait for visits from authorities who used to be hundreds of miles away (the word lynching derives from what is known as «Lynch Law», which consisted of applying justice without waiting for a judicial conviction). And there was also no guarantee that a trial would take place, because most judges were somewhat arbitrarily appointed and were individuals with little or no legal training who dispensed justice in bars or saloons and in many Sometimes they only sought to profit by imposing fines on alleged offenders. The best known case of this peculiar type of justice was that of Roy Bean who from his saloon in Langtry (Texas) imposed "the Law West of Pecos", according to the sign that he wore in the saloon along with another that said "Beer icy”.
However, there was one judge who did have a solid legal background and who imposed justice so strictly that he earned the nickname "The Hanging Judge." This judge was Isaac Parker. Born in 1838 in Ohio, he was practicing law when the Civil War broke out. After the conflict he resumed his career and in 1875 was appointed by President Grant as a district judge in Fort Smith, Arkansas. At that time, criminals roamed freely throughout the territory, assaulting farmers and ranchers.
Influenced in his sense of justice by his Methodist religious beliefs, within two months of taking office he had prosecuted 91 attorneys for disloyalty in defending their clients.
Parker served him in Fort Smith for twenty-one years, during which he held trials Monday through Saturday. It is estimated that he instituted more than thirteen thousand trials, with 344 death sentences, although not all of them were carried out, because in some cases the sentence was commuted to prison; but in more than 160 cases the execution by hanging did take place.
The most notorious case and that earned him the nickname "judge of the gallows" occurred on May 10, 1875 when he sentenced eight defendants for murder to be hanged in a single day. One of them died while trying to flee and another had his sentence commuted for his youth so that "only" six of the inmates were sentenced to be hanged on September 3, 1875 in a ceremony that became a real event. for the public and for the national press; the atmosphere was like that of a fair day in a time and place where amusements were few and where a sixfold hanging was an unprecedented spectacle. The six condemned (Daniel Evans, Samuel Fuilt, the Indian Smoker Man Killer, John Wittington, James Moore and Edmund Campbell) went up to the scaffold and the sentence was carried out by the executioner George Maledon.
According to Judge Parker, he did not send any man to the gallows, but the law did; In addition, all the executions were public, since for Parker "the lesson given to someone else's head, contrary to what it might seem, produces healthy dissuasive effects."
Isaac Parker held his position until shortly before his death on November 17, 1896. Whoever wants to know more about this and other stories of the turbulent American West can read the interesting book "A Brief History of the Wild West, Gunslingers and Outlaws" by Gregorio Doval. The same author, also within the appreciable collection «Brief history» has published the books «Brief history of the cowboys», «Brief history of the conquest of the West» and «Brief history of the North American Indians», which I strongly recommend.
Image| Isaac Parker