Early in 1896, McIntire rejected a last-minute insanity defense appeal of the Park County rancher Benjamin Ratcliff, who murdered three members of his local school board with whom he had quarreled over the education of this three children. After McIntire refused to intervene, Ratcliff was hanged at the Colorado State Penitentiary at Cañon City. He claimed that he had committed the murders to uphold the honorable reputation of his family.[1]
References
^Laura King Van Dusen, "Benjamin Ratcliff: Park County Pioneer, Civil War Veteran, Triple Murderer; What Happened and Why", Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past (Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2013), ISBN978-1-62619-161-7, pp. 127-134.