Did Arizona ever list train robbery as a capital offense? Norman Lilley Forepaugh, Arizona Yep. The railroads wielded enough political pressure to get some territories to make train robbery a crime worthy of the noose. An epidemic of train robberies led the New Mexico Territorial Legislature to make train robbery a capital offense in 1887. Arizona followed suit in 1889. Even so, juries were reluctant to sentence an outlaw to hang if no one had been killed. In New Mexico, only one man, “


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