Legal Executions in the Western Territories, 1847– 1911
by R. Michael Wilson, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, N.C., 2010, $95.
Author R. Michael Wilson goes where other researchers fear to tread due to the daunting amount of work involved, the unpleasant subject matter or both. After serving 24 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Wilson began in the late 1990s to research legal and extra-legal executions, massacres, stagecoach and train robberies and prisons in the Old West. Along with his dozen books, he has written five articles for Wild West. In his latest book, he details the crimes and trials that led to executions by territory—Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. For instance, the New Mexico section opens with the April 16, 1847 (when New Mexico was an occupied part of Mexico), hanging of Antonio M. Trujillo for treason. More than 50 executions later, the section concludes with the January 13, 1908, hanging of Martine Amadorr for shooting a Mexican woman who rebuffed his advances. To produce his case histories, Wilson examined court records and personal accounts but mostly newspapers. “We are truly indebted,” he writes, “to those newspaper editors who relished the ‘sordid details’ to boost subscription rates.” In his preface, Wilson concludes that the death penalty is no deterrent to murder. (“If there is a justification for the infliction of death as punishment, it must be to prevent future murders by the same criminal.”)
Originally published in the October 2010 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
