Tarboro, June 8—W.C. Gulley, foreman of the Rocky Mount road district, and R.V. Tyler, a guard, charged with beating Joe Armstrong, negro convict, to death last week, were each sentenced to 20 years at hard labor in the state prison by Judge N.A. Sinclair, late this afternoon. The two men, who were formally indicted by an Edgecombe county grand jury this morning on charges of murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and threw themselves on the mercy of the court.
In passing sentence on the two men, Judge Sinclair stated that the prisoners, as officers of the law, had brought contempt upon the law by their barbarity. He characterized the crime as “one of the worst that ever has been committed in the state.”
Testimony introduced before Judge Sinclair was to the effect that Gully, who was foreman of the gang, used a stick an inch and a half in diameter and five feet long, and that Tyler used a strap with a heavy wooden handle. The beating, witnesses testified, lasted for half an hour, after which the negro was hitched to two horses and dragged for about 75 yards.
Physicians who examined the body testified that it was “horribly bruised with severe lacerations about the head.”
From the front page of the Messenger and Intelligencer and Ansonian, Wadesboro, N.C., Thursday, June 11, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn97064505/1925-06-11/ed-1/seq-1/
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