Like any state, New Mexico has its share of strange laws.
For example, we may be the only state that has an official question: “Red or Green,” referring to our choice of chile on our favorite Mexican food dish.
And I’m pretty sure we’re the only state that has an official aroma: “the smell of roasting green chile.”
And there’s the 1953 law that stipulates that election ties are to be resolved by a game of chance — usually a poker hand.
That law was most recently used in 2021 when two candidates for town council of the tiny Village of House (population approximately 80) in eastern New Mexico received exactly the same number of votes — 17 each. Each of the two candidates drew cards and when the incumbent’s 9 topped the challenger’s 6, the race was decided.
There are several other strange laws in New Mexico that you can find on this website:
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/state-pride/new-mexico/crazy-laws-nm
My favorite on this list was one which stipulated that “idiots” were not allowed to vote in New Mexico. That might be particularly appropriate in this election year, depending of course, on how each party defines someone as an “idiot.”
What brought all of this to mind was a story last week in the Albuquerque Journal about the ghost town of Shakespeare, which you’ve driven by if you’ve traveled to Tucson, Phoenix or San Diego from Las Cruces. It seems the town, just shy of the border with Arizona west of Lordsburg, once had a vigilante law enforcement code which provided that anyone convicted of being a “damned nuisance” could be hung. That severe outcome happened to a “real bad man” named Sandy King. King earned his reputation when he went to a local general store to buy a silk handkerchief to celebrate his arrival in the town of Shakespeare. When the store clerk asked for payment, King drew his pistol and shot off the man’s little finger.
A former resident of Shakespeare named Emma Marble Muir wrote an article about the incident for the New Mexico Magazine several years ago.
“The jury could see no homicidal intent in this, for Sandy could have shot him through the heart more easily; but could not consider it an accident,” Muir wrote. “So after deep thought, the jury convicted him of being ‘a damned nuisance.’ In that day and place it was just as great a crime to be ‘a damned nuisance’ as a horse thief.
King, along with a real horse thief named “Russian Bill” were subsequently hung together on the streets of Shakespeare.
I suspect we all know someone who we consider to be “a damned nuisance.” So now you can tell them this story next time they annoy you, in hopes that it will tone down their attitude.
aero-cordero.com 