Bill Neal

In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these “nesters.” In August 1902 a famous hired assassin, Jim Miller, ambushed and murdered J. W. Jarrott. Who hired Miller? This crime has never been solved, until now. Award-winning author Bill Neal investigates this cold case and successfully pieces together all the threads of circumstantial evidence to fit the noose snugly around the neck of Jim Miller’s employer. What emerges from these pages is the strength of intriguing characters in an engrossing narrative: Jim Jarrott, the diminutive advocate who fearlessly champions the cause of the little guy. The ruthless assassin, Deacon Jim Miller. And finally Jarrott’s young widow Mollie, who perseveres and prospers against great odds and tells the settlers to “Stay put!”

When a thirteen-year-old boy strikes out on his own in 1885, leaving his Civil War– ravaged Mississippi homeland for the wild Red River borderland between North Texas and Indian Territory, the American West is a land beyond the reach of the law. Crime thrives in the absence of law officers, courtrooms, judges, and jails. Vigilante justice, the posse, and the hangman’s noose fill the void. But by the time the young man—now a veteran outlaw—dies by the gun in 1929 after a tempestuous career, the Old West has been largely tamed, its official legal systems firmly in place. Veteran defense attorney and prosecutor Bill Neal takes readers from Mississippi to the frontiers of West Texas, Indian Territory, New Mexico Territory, and finally the frozen Montana wilderness through a series of linked, true-life tales of crimes and trials. Tracing the struggles of incipient criminal justice in the Southwest through an engaging progression of outlaws and lawmen, plus a host of colorful frontier trial lawyers and judges, Neal reveals how law and societymatured together.

From the 1880s until after World War I, Texas prosecutions for adultery, fornication, rape, seduction, and sodomy were many, but formal penal codes seemed much too merciful to suit most southerners, who believed in direct and personal redress of such wrongs.“Unwritten law” seemed to justify the killing—or at least maiming—of almost anyone who by actual physical contact or inappropriate comment offended southern notions of female virtue, male honor, or the “sanctity of marriage.” Illicit sex is the catalyst in all the Texas murder trials recounted in Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law. Bill Neal explores the imaginative machinations of defense lawyers who extricated obviously guilty clients when there appeared no legal basis upon which to peg a defense. The courtroom triumphs and underlying strategies detailed in this book are remarkable and entertaining for lawyers, historians, and laypersons alike.

Almost half a century after the Boyce-Sneed feud in West Texas erupted in bloodshed in 1912, two Texas historians attempted to write about the affair. But no one would talk to them. Lewis Nordyke abandoned the idea, and C. L. Sonnichsen, another chronicler of Texas feuds, wrote that it was 'too soon to talk about the Boyce-Sneed affair.' Not until the 1990s did the whole story emerge, when descendants of the feuding families finally called a truce, opened the family archives, and shared family legends. And what a tale it proved to be-a classic saga of passion, violence, and revenge, of retribution but never redemption. The feud began with a torrid sex scandal at the core of a love triangle, featuring Lena Snyder Sneed, the high-spirited, headstrong wife; Al Boyce, Jr., Lena's reckless, romantic lover; and John Beal Sneed, Lena's arrogant, grim, and vindictive husband, who responded to Lena's plea for a divorce by having her locked up in an insane asylum on grounds of 'moral insanity.' The chase was on after Al rescued Lena from the asylum and the lovers fled to Canada. That's when the killings began. No one who knew the vengeful John Beal Sneed doubted for a moment that he would go after his wife's lover with lethal intent. But that was not enough to satisfy the enraged husband's blood lust. Frustrated by Al's escape to Canada, Sneed assassinated Al's aged and unarmed father, Colonel Albert Boyce, a wealthy Amarillo banker who had been the general manager of the huge XIT Ranch in the Panhandle during the late nineteenth century. Colonel Boyce's offense had been his successful effort to derail Sneed's attempt to railroad his son to the penitentiary on trumped-up criminal charges. Newspaper headlines predicted the upcoming murder trial would be the 'greatest legal battle ever fought in Texas Courts.' Sneed's well-paid legal team first earned him a mistrial. Before the retrial, Al Boyce, Jr. made a foolish mistake. He returned to Texas. Nothing could have pleased John Beal Sneed more. In the presence of witnesses, he shot Al in the back while he was strolling down the main street of Amarillo. Sneed was acquitted in his second trial for killing the father, and later acquitted for the killing of son Al Boyce, Jr., as well. His legal team skillfully invoked the self-help justice of the unwritten law that sanctioned the slaying by a husband of his wife's lover in order to 'protect the home.' Bill Neal, attorney and writer, tells the full story of this sordid affair with special analysis of the trial tactics that were so carefully crafted to resonate with the jurors of that era and ensure Sneed's acquittal. The Sneed affair is a story of the written laws of Texas struggling to gain ascendency over justice administered by Judge Winchester and Judge Lynch, as well as by the self-help justice condoned by the Honor Code's unwritten laws. There is nothing quite like a crime of passion played out during the courtroom drama of a sensational murder trial to illuminate the social history and the contemporary mores of any given society.

This title presents the 'honor defense' in six celebrated murder trials, 1896-1977. From the 1880s until after World War I, Texas prosecutions for adultery, fornication, rape, seduction, and sodomy were many, but formal penal code seemed insufficiently stringent to southerners, who often sought other redress. 'Unwritten law' seemed to justify the killing - or at least maiming - of almost anyone who by actual physical contact or inappropriate comment offended southern notions of female virtue, male honor, or sanctity of marriage. Illicit sex is the catalyst in all the Texas murder trials recounted in ""Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law"". In each account the victim, at least in the perception of the defendant, had committed some sexual misconduct. In every case, the defendant opened fire with premeditated intent to kill. And in all the resulting trials, the defense relied at least in part on unwritten law. Bill Neal explores the imaginative machinations of defense lawyers who extricated obviously guilty clients when there appeared no legal basis upon which to peg a defense. Typically defense attorneys outmaneuvered prosecutors and judges, whose efforts to rein in excesses met with little success. These courtroom triumphs and underlying strategies are remarkable to lawyers, historians, and laypersons alike.

In 1916, in the tiny West Texas town of Benjamin, a gunman slips into a courtroom and murders the defendant. In 1912, in Fort Worths finest hotel, a young man kills an old gentleman in cold blood in the middle of the lobby. The verdict in both of these murderers trials? Not guilty. The explanation? This is Texas. Laws passed by politicians in far-off Austin meant little to Westerners living on the Texas frontier. Sagebrush justice relied less on written statutes than on common sense, grass-roots fairness, and vague notions of folk law drawn from the Old Souths Victorian code of chivalry and honor. In this very different time and place, a murderer might go free based on the following reasoning: The son-of-a-gun is guilty all right, but we must turn him loose. He owes me for a pair of boots, and if we convict him Ill never get my money. Inexperienced prosecutors, a lack of modern crime-detection methods, unavailability of witnesses, an acceptance of violence in society, and a laissez-faire attitude toward trial tactics all conspired to make guilty verdicts a rarity. In this first volume of a planned trilogy, Neal presents the evidence that shows how easy some folks found it to evade justice in the frontier West.

When a thirteen-year-old boy strikes out on his own in 1885, leaving his Civil War-ravaged Mississippi homeland for the wild Red River border land between North Texas and Indian Territory, the American West is a land beyond the reach of the law. Crime thrives in the absence of law officers, courtrooms, judges, and jails. Vigilante justice, the posse, and the hangman's noose fill the void. But by the time the young man - now a veteran outlaw dies by the gun in 1929 after a tempestuous career, the Old West has been largely tamed, its official legal systems firmly in place. In this companion volume to ""Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier"", veteran defense attorney and prosecutor Bill Neal takes readers from Mississippi to the frontiers of West Texas, Indian Territory, New Mexico Territory, and finally the frozen Montana wilderness through a series of linked, true-life tales of crimes and trials. Tracing the struggles of incipient criminal justice in the Southwest through an engaging progression of outlaws and lawmen, plus a host of colorful frontier trial lawyers and judges, Neal reveals how law and society matured together. Virtually an anecdotal textbook, ""From Guns to Gavels"" follows a bloody trail from the Wild West through the decade after World War I, when the gavel-wielding, black-robed Judge Blackstone at last gained ascendancy over Judge Winchester and Judge Lynch.