He Needed Killin’

When people have had enough.

Ken Rex McElroy

In certain of the more, shall we say conservative states, there is a little known and seldom talked about legal defense that influences investigations, grand juries, juries and judges to refuse to enforce the letter of the law. In some places in the country, there is a principle that justifies even murder. The defense is, quite simply, “He needed killin’.”

And this isn’t something that just existed in the Wild West of the late 1800s, although the princi...