Presiding from 1875 to 1896 over the United States Court for the Western Judicial District of Arkansas, Isaac Charles Parker attained notoriety as the "Hanging Judge" responsible for law and order in Indian Territory. Popular accounts have portrayed him as a jurist driven relentlessly by a Biblical sense of justice to administer absolute authority over a lawless jurisdiction inhabited by bold outlaws.

"Let No Guilty Man Escape", the first new Parker biography in four decades, corrects this simplistic image by presenting Parker's unique brand of frontier justice within the legal and...