Permit-to-purchase remained the law in Missouri for more than 80 years. The permit had to describe the weapon, its serial number, the maker’s name and other information.

This time, Missouri had a different governor: Arthur Hyde, a Republican.Ĭonsidered the most stringent firearms law in the nation, the measure championed by Allender provided that no one could acquire a weapon without a written permit from the local circuit clerk. The gun control measure, meanwhile, was resurrected by the Legislature in 1921. The rope broke on the first attempt a “ stouter rope” was used the second time.) On March 26, 1920, the day he was executed in the Butler County jail, Johnson reportedly said his real name was Adam Jackson and confessed. 23, 1920, took less than 3 hours from the presentation of evidence to the jury’s guilty verdict.

The first person sentenced to die under the newly restored death penalty was James Johnson of Poplar Bluff, a Black man accused of killing a farmer’s wife.

The Post-Dispatch, in a roundup of the views of leading “churchmen, educators and lawyers” (June 8, 1919), suggested the Lamar mob acted because the state wouldn’t: “Under the present law, Lynch could not have suffered a severer penalty than life imprisonment for his cold-blooded crime.” (The lynching of Lynch, a white man, prompted the NAACP to launch a nationwide campaign for a congressional investigation.) In 1919, in a special session, the Legislature reinstated capital punishment, compelled by the fear of extra-judicial killings.Įxhibit A was the lynching in Lamar of a man named Jay Lynch, who had been convicted in the death of the Barton County sheriff and the sheriff’s son. Louis Post-Dispatch applauded the end of capital punishment in an editorial (March 20, 1917): “Missouri is in good company in refusing longer to impose on its officials the repulsive duty of executing criminals.”Īnd then Missouri, a fickle state, reversed course - on both measures. Louis Coffin Co., signed the death penalty bill.* Gardner cited the opposition of several prominent businessmen who said the bill discriminated against Missouri merchants.īut Gardner, a Democrat whose business interests included the St. Frederick Gardner vetoed the gun bill, even though it had been championed by Sam Allender, the highly regarded chief of detectives for the St.

Lawmakers approved a sweeping gun control measure. In 1917, the Missouri General Assembly passed two groundbreaking pieces of legislation.

Missouri ghost towns near poplar bluff