Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier: Notorious Killings and Celebrated Trials (review)

354Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary GettingAway with Murderon tL· TexasFrontier: Notorious Killings and Celebrated TriaL·. By Bill Neal. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2006. Pp. 320. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0896725790. $27.95, cloth.) Bill Neal, a longtime district attorney and criminal defense lawyer, has painstakingly researched some of West Texas's most celebrated trials during the late nineteendi and early twentiedi centuries. With an ear for a good story, he organizes his inquiry around the central question of how some defendants, in spite of evidence, routinely avoided guilty verdicts for their crimes. He concludes diat the explanation lies in the southern roots of many West Texas migrants, whose code of honor did not rule out self-help, coupled with a cultural context in which there was generally a high toleration for violence. Moreover, a "reverse minded" appeals court in the state paid close attention to technicalities in reviewing convictions, seeking to assert its power as an institution in the state. As Neal asserts, an increasingly professional bench and bar succeeded in "transplanting" legal culture toWest Texas where, as he notes in his conclusion, "the fragile plant ofjustice under duly enacted law finally took root and matured. Judge Blackstone finally oustedJudges Lynch and WincL·stef (p. 244). Chapters focus on such cases as die trial of Thomas Fulcher for die murder of"Old Man Beemer," the 1896 Wichita Falls bank robbery and murder of cashier Frank Dorsey, as well as some rather "funny" pardons from the Texas governor's office. "Off the Record" conclusions in each chapter—where Neal brings his legal training to bear on die interpretations of historical proceedings—are especially interesting. While entertaining reading, this study does not address the larger historiographical issues it raises. For example, do famous trials really help us understand the day-to-dayworkings ofcriminaljustice in WestTexas? Are diey typical? Moreover, Neal's transplantation thesis suggests an empty legal vessel into which good men bring impartialjustice dirough die establishment offormal legal systems, struggling against mob rule,jury nullification, or simply the outrageous personalities drawn to the frontier. Neal's own evidence, in fact, suggests the very political nature of those same transplanted institutions—whether law enforcement, die professional bar, the bench, or even the governor's office. What I think Neal misses here is an opportunity to situate die imposition of a certain kind of law and criminaljustice in relationship to die larger U.S. colonial project, a process so well documented by many recent historians of the U.S. West. In die final analysis, the appeal to personality over systemic explanation is a real limitation of diis study. The afterword illustrates this nicely. Here Neal analogizes notorious trials profiled in die book to contemporary examples such as the O. J. Simpson trial and the trials ofthe police officers accused ofbeating Rodney King. Illustrating how "racism, emotion and bias trumped overwhelming evidence and the law, enabling guilty defendants to get away with their crimes" (p. 245), these cases suggest to Neal that die problem is not with the system but in the "human frailties of those who operate die system" (p. 246). I was left wondering whether such analogies are fair, given the vast historical differences among these cases. Moreover, all these cases raise real structural questions about howjustice, fairness, 2??8Book Reviews355 and process operate in practice in a wider social, economic, and political context. Despite these limitations, I enjoyed GettingAway with Murder. It certainly reminds us that what counts as justice was as negotiated in late-nineteenth-century West Texas as it is today. California State University Monterey BayDavid A. Reichard Brokers ofCulture: ItalianJesuits in tL·American West, 1848-içiç. By Gerald McKevitt. (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. 448. Illustrations, notes, glossary, index. ISBN 0804753571. $60.00, clodi.) "Whether [San Francisco] should be called a villa, a brothel, or Babylon, I am at a loss to determine," wrote Jesuit missionary Michele Accolti during his labors in California during the mid-nineteenth century (p. 116). His disapproval of the city notwithstanding, Accolti gained a reputation for his tireless work among San Francisco's disparate communities. A Protestant minister recalled: Wheuier it was a dying foreigner in the sandhills...