Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Laughter is the Best Medicine - Tell us a joke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WayHaw who wrote (17986)	2/2/2001 11:24:44 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 62558

Tax Dollars Hard at Work....... Friday February 2 9:51 AM ET State Ponders Pardon for Billy the Kid dailynews.yahoo.com SANTA FE, N.M. (Reuters) - It may not rank with the controversy stirred by former President Clinton (news - web sites)'s last-day-in-office pardons, but a New Mexico lawmaker is kicking up historical dust by seeking a posthumous pardon for gunfighter Billy the Kid. One of the most notorious outlaws of the Old West, Billy left a divided legacy for his role in a bitter 1870s feud over trading rights known as the Lincoln County War. Some view him as a latter-day Robin Hood, while to others he was just a vicious ``cop-killer.'' Some 120 years after Billy was sentenced to hang for killing a New Mexico sheriff, Democratic state Rep. Ben Rios said on Thursday he was asking the state Legislature and governor to pardon the outlaw at the behest of Billy's descendants. ``It would give the family peace of mind,'' said Rios, whose proposal before the state House of Representatives says the Kid's actions ``to this day evoke emotions ranging from admiration to disdain,'' but that the wounds should be healed after more than a century. The motion has raised an uproar from descendants of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady, who was gunned down by Billy and his gang in April 1878. ``If Billy the Kid is pardoned, it means that he was right to shoot William Brady in the back 16 times,'' said Bennett Brady, 70, the sheriff's great-grandson. Brady, who lives in Roswell, New Mexico, said he would ask his state representative to oppose the motion, which would have to pass the Legislature before it could go to Gov. Gary Johnson for final action. Johnson, a Republican, rejected several earlier petitions to pardon Billy the Kid during his six years in office, the governor's spokeswoman said. ``The governor's position has been that the intent of a pardon is to restore civil rights lost because of a felony conviction, and since Billy the Kid is dead, he is not in need of those civil rights,'' spokeswoman Diane Kinderwater said. Rios said he was acting at the request of an anonymous constituent in Las Cruces whose family descended from Billy. Billy, born around 1860 in New York City as Henry McCarty or William H. Bonney, was sentenced to hang for Brady's murder in April 1881, but escaped, shooting two deputies to death, before he was gunned down that July by Sheriff Pat Garrett. New Mexico Assistant Attorney General Joel Jacobsen, who wrote a 1994 history of the outlaw and the Lincoln County Wars called ``Such Men as Billy the Kid,'' said Billy was part of a conflict between a local oligarchy and the farmers and peasants it often exploited. ``To this day, a lot of people in New Mexico sympathize with Billy the Kid,'' Jacobsen said. ``He is an ambiguous figure, which is what makes him so interesting. He was both someone who stood up for the oppressed against corrupt local politicians and a cop-killer,'' he said. Jacobsen said the Lincoln County Wars centered on a trading monopoly held by a powerful cartel with territorial and federal connections, whose trading rights meant it controlled much of the livelihood of the local people. Billy worked for Englishman John Tunstall, who sought to challenge that monopoly. In 1878, Tunstall was murdered in cold blood as he drove some horses between his ranch and Lincoln. Billy, who survived the attack, then staged a series of counter-attacks with his gang ``the Regulators'' on agents of the monopoly holders. Brady was killed in the course of those attacks, Jacobsen said.