Was the American West really violent? This question has been debated by historians for decades. Homicide, because it is an extraordinary form of criminal behavior, provides a natural beginning point to measure levels of lethal violence and assess the administration of justice in the American West. No other crime furnishes such heavy documentation in the form of coroner\u27s inquests, court records, and newspaper coverage that present the researcher with a clear picture of how the justice system works. This study verifies that African American and Native American defendants have significantly higher conviction rates than whites. Homicide rates, much higher than those in eastern cities, such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, show the existence of a subculture of violence within African American society in Douglas County, Nebraska, and the presence of a regional culture of violence within Las Animas County, Colorado, and Gila County, Arizona. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates the weakness of using indictment or information data as a measure of lethal violence. On the county level, when used with other documentation, coroner\u27s inquests provide the best method (accused/ratio) for evaluating historical bias within the criminal justice system
