The story goes that a young Eastern lawyer complained to an old Texas judge about the Texas way with crime. "I don't understand Texas justice," said the lawyer. "You will suspend sentence of a convicted murderer, but you wall hang a horse thief." The old judge rang a spittoon with a stream of tobacco juice. "Sonny," he replied, "I reckon that's 'cause we got men that need killin' but we ain't got no hosses that need stealin'."
It was against that frame of mind that Houston's citizens were up in arms last week. For Houston (pop. 901,922), with its booming pace and blooming wealth, has a blemish on its shiny pride: in 1957 it had the highest per capita murder rate in the whole country—about 15 per 100,000, or a total of 136 for the year.* What makes Houston so special? Says one cop simply: "Houston is a city of murder without motive."
Behind that statement is the fact that Texas customs (and lax grand juries) make it easier there than in any other state for a murderer to escape punishment. Of the 136 killings in 1957, only 27 cases went to trial. Only one defendant got the death penalty, and only one a life sentence. The rest got a variety of jail terms—and two of the terms, for five years each, were suspended.
In Texas, where most folks try hard not to forget the region's colorful, gun-smoking past, anybody may own a pistol without a license (but it is illegal to tote it). All that the most conscientious pawnbroker will demand of a prospective gun-buyer is a "certificate of good character." But the fact is, as Houston Post Reporter John Davis once wrote sardonically: "All you need to buy a $29.50 gun is $29.50."
Furthermore, Texas juries are traditionally soft on women murderers, even the one who was convicted in 1955 after she cut up her children, packaged them and stored the pieces in her refrigerator; she got a life sentence. Says Houston Criminal Lawyer Percy Foreman, who in one year defended 13 women charged with murdering their husbands, got twelve off free and the 13th a five-year suspended sentence: "I like to defend women in murder cases. Juries will turn a woman loose on evidence that they'd convict a man on."
Viewing the general condition with considerable alarm, members of Houston's Junior Chamber of Commerce organized a group bluntly called the Murdertown Committee, sent observers to Chicago (murders, first-half 1957: 131) to study crime-prevention methods. Other Houstonians, scanning the city's growing, two-fisted boomtown bustle, agree that the committee will have to work fast. At week's end Murdertown notched up its eleventh murder for 1958—a good head start on last year's record.
* New York City (pop. about 7,700,000) recorded 315 murders in 1956, a rate of four per 100,000.