Lynch Mobs: Mob Rule Overdue Process
When trust in makeshift courts or local authorities failed, frontier communities sometimes turned to lynch mobs. These groups, fueled by anger and impatience, took justice into their own hands—often with brutal results. One infamous incident was the 1882 lynching of John Heath in Tombstone, Arizona, where a mob stormed the jail and hanged him without a trial. Such acts bypassed legal process entirely, reflecting a dangerous reliance on collective emotion over law. For more, see Britannica.
