This culture of violence also extended to state legislatures. The year before Graves killed Cilley, a representative in the Arkansas House insulted the Speaker during debate, and the Speaker responded by murdering him with a bowie knife right there on the House floor. “Expelled and tried for murder,” Freeman writes, “he was acquitted for excusable homicide and reelected, only to pull his knife on another legislator during debate, though this time the sound of colleagues cocking pistols stopped him cold.”
