Few men in the annals of the American Old West represent the phrase “frontier justice” as well as Judge Isaac C. Parker, the infamous “Hanging Judge” of Fort Smith, who ruled over the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas with an iron hand from 1874-1895.
During his 21-year tenure on the bench, Parker presided over 160 cases that resulted in the sentence of death and 79 of those men met their final fate at the end of a hemp rope attached to the wooden and mortar gallows that defined and justified the nickname “Hell on the Border” on the Arkansas-Indian Territory border.
In later life, Parker was quoted as saying, “I never hanged a man, the law did,” and it was the keen sense of adherence to the law that allowed the court to operate and clean up what had become a lawless civilization in the years after the Civil War.
These are the tales of men executed under the judicial watch of Judge Issac C. Parker.
April 17, 18875 - Williams Phillips
On April 17, 1885 William Phillips was executed at Fort Smith. He had been found guilty by a jury of murdering his father-in-law, William Hill, in the summer of 1884.
The victim was asleep at the time.
The two men had a history of conflict. An earlier argument had also resulted in gunfire, with Phillips wounding Hill in the ankle.
(Austin Statesman) FORT SMITH, ARK., April 17.-
"William Phillips was hanged at 3 o’clock to-day, for the murder of William Hill. Phillips was hopeful until just before the execution.
The President had commuted the sentences of the other four men to be executed, which led Phillips to expect a commutation of sentence. At eleven o’clock this morning the United States Marshal received a telegram that the President declined to interfere in Phillips’ case.
This news was immediately communicated to Phillips, who was so confident of reprieve that, for a while, he seemed unable to realize the situation. Phillips rested well last night, ate breakfast this morning, and at noon ate a hearty dinner sent him from a restaurant. He strangely asserted his innocence to the last. He said Hill’s son, Bob, who was at first arrested with him for the murder, did the killing. “Although I am about to appear before Almighty God, I swear that I am as innocent of this crime as the unborn babe.” At three o’clock the death warrant was read and immediately afterwards Phillips shook hands with his fellow-prisoners, bidding them an affectionate farewell. Then he marched to the gallows in the court-house yard, whereon sixty-four others have been executed for murders in the Indian Territory.
After ascending the scaffold, the condemned man’s spiritual adviser offered up a prayer, and at 3:21 the drop was sprung, and he died without a struggle, with a prayer on his lips."
