1886: John W. Kelliher lynched in Becker County, Minnesota

....According to John D. Bessler’s Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota, the Minneapolis Tribune took a vehement editorial line against this “barbarous and disgraceful act,” and urged that jails fit themselves out with “a Gatling gun, intended for business” as proof against Judge Lynch. However, the St. Paul Daily Globe demurred, editorializing that “Society owes it to itself to get rid of such tough characters as Kelliher” — and if attaining that end via lynch law was in principle less than ideal, “it was past all human endurance to have a defiant desperado walk the streets of a respectable town and shoot down its citizens in cold blood. Nobody is surprised that he was taken from jail by a mob and swung to the nearest tree. It would have been a surprise if it had not been so.”

it was past all human endurance to have a defiant desperado walk the streets of a respectable town and shoot down its citizens in cold blood.

Someone should try this in Chicago, with all the 'shoot down its citizens in cold blood'

John W. Kelliher was taken from his jail cell in Detroit, Minnesota, and lynched on the night of June 23, 1886, by a mob outraged by his murder of John Convay, the village marshall. A long, eye-witness account of the events was published in the “Detroit Record” on June 25. The lynching was also the subject of editorials in Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers.

http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/archives.cfm?article=917

I found a pdf of the story behind this. It is very interesting.

Detroit has been the center of great excitement, horrible scenes and
righteous indignation during the past week, which has culminated in
the cruel murder of one of our best young man; the seizure of the
public officers and capture of the county jail; and the lynching of one
of the vilest wretches who ever drew the breath of life, and a general
routing of a horde of pimps and prostitutes, who have infested our
city since last winter, and the burning of one of their houses of
prostitution.
The trouble was the direct result of the feud which had long existed
between John W. Kelliher, alias Big Red, or Reddy, and one Howard,
alias Bulmer, both gamblers and fancy men for houses of ill fame. The
men were very large, heavily built fellows, and after repeated scuffles
and knock–downs they again met last Tuesday evening and continued
hostilities.

(excerpt)

http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/Kelliher%20Lynching%20%281886%29.pdf

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