Murder in The Morning Appeal and the Carson City Daily 1900 & 1920

Murder, being one of the most reported crimes, appears frequently in both The Morning Appeal and Carson City Daily Appeal. During The Morning Appeal’s and the Carson City Daily Appeal’s runtime, a person in the state of Nevada, as stated in the Statutes of the State of Nevada 23^rd session in 1907, would be charged with murder when the same person willingly

• poison, or lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, shall be deemed murder of the first degree; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree[1]

Punishment of a person that was convicted of first or second degree murder in Nevada

• Every person convicted of murder in the first degree shall suffer death or confinement in the State Prison for life …every person convicted of murder of the second degree shall suffer imprisonment in the State Prison for a term of not less than ten years, and which many be extended to life. 195[2]

Manslaughter, another form of murder, is defined as

• the unlawful killing of a human being without, malice express or implied, and without any mixture of deliberation. It must be voluntary, upon a sudden heat of passion, caused by a provocation apparently sufficient to make the passion irresistible; or involuntary, in the commission of an unlawful, or lawful act without due caution or circumspection[3]

A person convicted of manslaughter would

• Be punished by imprisonment in the state for at term not exceeding ten years[4]

According to Randolph Roth the United States have some of the highest homicide rates in the world during the 19^th century. It is up for debate as to why this is. Wither or not it is due to the long history of racial divide or an abundant number of available firearms and other weapons it is without a doubt that Murder is one of, if not the, most common crime. In addition, Roth also points out that many murders come from long standing relationships. Meaning the offender knows the victim of the murder one way or another.

Nearly all murders reported in both The Morning Appeal and the Carson City Daily Appeal do not sensationalize much. They purely give facts about the events. But, on rare occasions both give a sensationalized rendition. In The Morning Appeal these sensationalized stories tend to be local events and in the Carson City Daily Appeal they tend to be more out of the ordinary stories.