For the slaying of Jesse Vanderburg in September of last year, Martin Bost, aged Cabarrus county farmer, Friday afternoon was sentenced to serve five years in the State prison by Judge Henry P. Lane, sitting in Cabarrus Superior Court. Bost was found guilty of manslaughter in a verdict rendered Thursday afternoon.
Counsel for Bost gave notice of appeal, bond being fixed at $15,000.
Court adjourned for the week after Judge Lane had passed sentence on Bost. Earlier in the afternoon he sentenced several other prisoners who had been found guilty or who plead guilty to various charged.
The sentence given to Bost is the same he received when found guilty on a similar charge in Cabarrus Court last year. The second trial was necessitated by a Supreme Court decision which found error in the judge’s charge to the jury.
Bost contended that he shot Vanderburg in self-defense as the latter advanced on him with an axe. The State contended that Bost shot without due deliberation, and that Vanderburg gave him no cause for shooting. A dying statement made by Vanderburg that he “did not know why Martin shot me” was among the testimony offered by the prosecution.
Counsel for Bost pleaded with Judge Lane for a light sentence, one of the defense lawyers, J. Lee Crowell contending that the fact that Bost and his family are separated was one reason his client was found guilty.
Judge Lane in passing sentence intimated that he would have given the defendant a longer sentence were he not an aged man. Bost testified that he is 65 years of age.
Due to the prominence of the Bost and Vanderburg families, the case aroused unusual interest.
From page 2 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Saturday, October 24, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-10-24/ed-1/seq-2/
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