the governor’s reward, for the arrest and conviction of any person violating the act. It was also provided that any person who should send, circulate, exhibit or put up any threatening notice or letter, should upon conviction thereof be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, and be imprisoned in the county jail not less than three nor more than twelve months. In any prosecution under the act it should be no exemption for a witness that his testimony might incriminate himself; but no such testimony should be used against him in any prosecution except for perjury, and he should be discharged from all liability for any violation of the act so necessarily disclosed in his testimony.[289] By the Texas law, which was enacted at a special session of the legislature, it was provided that whenever two or more persons should combine together for the purpose of mob violence, and in pursuance of said combination should “unlawfully and wilfully take the life of any reasonable creature in being by such violence,” such person should be deemed guilty of murder by mob violence, and upon conviction thereof should be punished by death or confinement in the penitentiary for life, or according to the degree of murder, to be found by the jury. It was made the duty of the district judges to give this law specially in charge to the grand jury at the beginning of each term of court, and prosecution for murder under the act might be commenced and carried on in any county of the judicial district in which the offense should be committed, except the county of the offense. It was also provided that if any sheriff, deputy sheriff, constable, chief of police, city marshal or other officer in the State should permit or suffer any person in his custody charged with crime to be killed by one or more persons, or should permit or suffer any such person to be taken from his custody and killed by one or more persons, he should be deemed guilty of official misconduct, and be removed from office, proceedings for removal to be conducted by the attorney-general in accordance with the provisions of the act, such cases taking precedence in all courts of all other cases. Pending trial such officer should be temporarily suspended from his office and should judgment be rendered against him he should not thereafter be elected or appointed to that office. The final section of the act reads as follows: “The fact that there is no adequate law in this State for the suppression of mob violence, creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity that the constitutional rule requiring all bills to be read on three several days be suspended, and that this act take effect and be in force from and after its passage, and it is so enacted.”[290]