Crime, Justice and Retribution in the American West, 1850-1900

Auteur

Jeremy Agnew, a biomedical electronics consultant, holds a PhD in engineering and has been involved in the design and manufacture of medical devices for more than 30 years. He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and has written several books on the Old West.

Texte du rabat

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.

Résumé
To provide a realistic account of criminal justice, this book provides a factual history of crime and punishment in the Old West from about 1850 to 1900. The focus is how criminals in the Old West came into conflict with the law and what happened after they were apprehended. The book describes the entire criminal justice process.