Rocky Mount, June 8—Sentences of 20 years each were given to W.C. Gulley and R.V. Tyler, foreman and guard respectively, on the Rocky Mount road district, by Judge N.A. Sinclair, in Edgecombe county court at Tarboro late today when they submitted to manslaughter as an outgrowth of the death of Joe Armstrong, negro convict, who died Thursday within 30 minutes after he had been whipped and otherwise punished by the two men.
The trial of the case offered one of the most striking instances of speedy justice in the annals of the county. A grand jury summoned by special order of Judge Sinclair this morning returned true bills against the men, who had previously [been] blamed for the negro’s death by a coroner’s jury, and at the same time launched a sweeping and vigorous investigation, upon the jurist’s instructions, into conditions at the camp to which Gully and Tyler were attached.
The actual trial of the two men was taken up about the middle of the afternoon, and they entered a plea of submission to manslaughter charges. Judge Sinclair heard the evidence, which was primarily the same as that given at the coroner’s inquest when witnesses testified that Gulley and Tyler had beat the negro with both a whip and a stick, hitched his body heavily shackled to a pair of mules and dragged it about 75 yards and then one of the men struck him with his fist when he failed to get up as ordered.
After hearing the evidence Judge Sinclair immediately passed sentence giving each of the defendants 20 years the maximum for manslaughter. In commenting on the case the jurist declared that the crime sounded almost like second degree murder, and then gave them the maximum allowed by law to the charge to which they had submitted.
From the front page of The Beaufort News, Published in Carteret County, Thursday, June 11, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068210/1925-06-11/ed-1/seq-1/
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