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"Legal Lynching"

By PATRICK O'NEILL

Although the State of North Carolina has gone more than 11 years without an execution being carried out at Raleigh's Central Prison, there were years when executions were far more frequent in the Tar Heel State. 

October marks the 70th anniversary of the deadliest month of executions in state history. 

On Halloween, October 31, 1947, four men were put to death in Central Prison's gas chamber. With six more October 1947 executions -- including a single-day record five on Oct. 3, the total of 10 executions in a single month is a state record. The 23 executions in 1947 also tied the state record for a year. There were also 23 executions in 1936.

Not only were executions more frequent in the 20th century, but the time elapsed from crime-to-conviction-to-execution was swift. And that time period was even shorter for some African Americans, who were also the victims of vigilante lynchings that often occurred in response to rumors or lies.

 Today, there are inmates who have resided on the state's death row for 20 years or more. In 1947, a person accused of a capital crime could be convicted and executed in just a matter of months.

North Carolina has carried out 405 executions since Walter Morrison, a laborer from Robeson County, became the first person to die in the state's electric chair on March 18, 1910. Prior to 1910, executions were carried out by individual counties. More often than not, the victims were young black men. In fact, the 299 Central Prison executions of African Americans account for 74 percent of all of the executions.

There are no media accounts of why 10 executions -- all by lethal gas -- were carried out in a single month. Of the 23 executions in 1947, 17 were carried out in just five days, and 19 of the 23 victims were African American. Four were white men convicted of murder. Three were black men convicted of rape and one, Willie Cherry, 25, of Northampton County, was executed for burglary of a white couple's home.

Reporter James Whitfield of The Raleigh News & Observer reported on the 1947 executions, witnessing all of them. For the most part, Whitfield's accounts focused on the actual executions with descriptions of the final minutes of the lives of the condemned men. Whitfield gave little background information about the men, their families or the circumstances of their crimes and convictions. But his reports were telling in many other ways.

The N&O headline on the bottom of page 1A on Oct. 3, 1947 stated: "State to Take Five Lives through Executions Today." Whitfield's report opened with: "Five young North Carolinians who stirred their communities by murder and burglary, will file down Death Row into the gas chamber at Central Prison this morning in the largest execution yet -- conducted by the state."  

Because one of the condemned men,  Earl O'Dear, 23, who was white, jammed the lock on his cell door, two African Americans -- Jethro Lampkins, 20, and Richard McCain, 21, were executed together in the gas chamber's two wooden chairs. A sub-headline in the Oct. 4 N&O account of the executions read: "Negroes First." The report stated that Lampkins and McCain, "Negroes and natives of South Carolina led the death march and gave their lives for the murder of Thomas F. McClure."

Whitfield wrote: "Lampkins entered the gas chamber at9:37, stared through the glass partition at the witnesses and sat calmly as attendants adjusted the straps and placed the death mask over his face to black out light from his eyes for all time."

Also executed that day was Robert Messer of Jackson County. He and O'Dear were strapped into the execution chairs next.

Whitfield gave this eerie account of Messer's death: "[T]he gas was released at 10:43 and the noises that he made sounded like the low of a cow in a distant meadow."

An interview with an unidentified witness stated that Messer "had never been in school a day in his life."

Whitfield reported that: "Messer, an unmarried farmhand had been rejected by the Negro schools because of his white blood and the white schools had rejected him because of a trace of Negro blood."

"The boy has always been an outcast," said another unidentified man. "He never had a chance."

Under the sub-headline "Die Quickly," Whitfield wrote: "McCain, who was seated over the container from which the fumes were pouring, was the first to inhale the gas. His nostrils enlarged and he breathed hard to make death come quickly."

 Whitfield said Cherry, a native of Ahoskie, "could neither read nor write." 

Cherry was sentenced to death for breaking into the Rich Square home of J.G. Tarrant, who was a district manager of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

While The N&O reports offer scant information about Cherry's crime, a fuller account of his case was reported in The Jackson News, a Northampton County weekly that is no longer published.

By more modern standards, Cherry's case is shocking, not only because his primary charge was burglary, but because his arrest (April 25, 1947) trial ((June 25) and execution (Oct. 3) all took place in less than six months. Cherry may have also escaped being lynched after the local sheriff moved him to Central Prison for "safekeeping" following his arrest.

A report in the May 1, 1947 edition of The Jackson News noted a mob went to the local jail the night after his arrest with the intent of lynching Cherry.

"Feeling against the alleged rapist ran high in the Rich Square section all day Saturday (April 26), and aroundeleven o'clock Saturday night twelve or fifteen automobiles with approximately forty or fifty men converged on the jail at Jackson with the intention of 'getting' the Negro and lynching him. Cherry had been spirited away by Sheriff  J.C. Stephenson, however, and the mob dispersed."

While The Jackson News accounts mention "attempted rape" and Cherry was convicted of "intent to commit rape," another report states, "that rape was not accomplished," and that "Mrs.Tarrant fought her attacker with all her strength." 

No by-lines are used in The Jackson News stories, which also report that Mrs. Tarrant "was taken to a hospital in a nearby city, suffering from shock and nervousness."

Other unusual events in Cherry's case portend a strong bias against the defendant. The Jackson News coverage of the crime reported that because Cherry's break-in happened in darkness, Mrs. Tarrant "did not see her attacker clearly, and that she identified Cherry by his voice after he had been arrested." 

The Jackson News' June 26 coverage of Cherry's two-day trial in Northamption Superior Court reports that both Tarrant and Cherry were brought separately to the home of a local Rich Square doctor the day following Cherry's arrest (or perhaps the same day since Cherry was arrested after midnight on April 26) and the following account is reported: "Mrs. Tarrant identified Cherry's voice as that of her assailant the following day at the home of Dr. (R.B.) Outland of Rich Ssuare (sic). Cherry was in the kitchen of the Outland home and Mrs. Tarrant was in the breakfast room, each out of sight of the other, at the time when the prosecuting witness identified his voice."

Making this account more unusual is the fact that R.B. Outland was the physician who was "called to the Tarrant home shortly after the crime was committed."

 In testimony for the prosecution, Dr. Outland (who also had the same last name as Rich Square Police Chief E. Frank Outland, who also testified for the prosecution) is quoted as testifying that "he found Mrs. Tarrant suffering from hysteria and that he found scratches and bruises on her face, neck and body." 

Trial testimony states that Cherry stole $15.11 in cash and a "partly-filled," three-year-old bottle of brandy from the Tarrant home, items that were recovered.

Chief of Police Outland testified that Cherry had confessed to him that he and a codefendant, James (Dick) Boone, 21, "had planned to rape and rob Mrs. Tarrant." 

Cherry, who testified in his defense, told the court that he was under the influence of alcohol and did not remember the crime.

The Jackson News account stated: "Cherry took the stand at 12:20. The substance of his testimony was that he was drunk and did not know what he was doing at the time the crime was committed." 

Chief Outland testified that Cherry and Boone had consumed a lot of beer and whiskey in the "Bluebird Cafe" where they met prior to the break-in. "The Negroes then went to another cafe and drank more beer," stated The Jackson News report. 

  Mrs. Tarrant, whose first name is never reported, took the stand in Cherry's capital trial twice, but in an unusual procedural move, trial judge H.S. Burgwyn removed journalists from the courtroom during Tarrant's testimony.

 "During Mrs. Tarrant's appearance on the witness stand, Judge Burgwyn cleared the courtroom of all spectators, news reporters included," stated The Jackson News account. "Only the jury, officers, attorneys, court officials and the defendant were allowed to remain in the courtroom."

 The Jackson paper reported that Cherry's defense attorney E.N. Riddle, asked only one question during the trial.  "He asked Mrs. Tarrant if she detected alcohol on the breath of her assailant. She replied, 'yes'."

In perhaps his greatest departure from protocol, in his instructions to the jury, Judge Burgwyn appeared to encourage the jury to find Cherry guilty, something the 12 jurors did in just 30 minutes of deliberation.

 Following the verdict, Burgwyn immediately sentenced Cherry to death without benefit of any pre-sentence investigation or discussion of mitigating factors, such as that Cherry was likely drunk when he committed the crime.

The Jackson News account of Burgwyn's jury instructions stated: "In his charge, Judge Burgwyn stated that during the past year 36,000 murders, 33,000 rapes and six lynchings were listed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. He remarked that none of these crimes were excusable from any standpoint, and stated that if as much or more emphasis of publicity had been placed upon the 36,000 murders and 33,000 rapes as were placed upon the six lynchings, there would have been less rape and murder."

Apparently, Judge Burgwyn either did not know or did not care to mention to the jury the mob that had gathered to lynch Cherry, or the fact that another Rich Square African-American man, Goodwin "Buddy" Bush, had avoided another lynching attempt in May, 1947 by escaping from the trunk of a car that was transporting him for the purpose of lynching.

Bush, who was taken from the Jackson jail by a white mob, with the cooperation of the jailor, who agreed to be locked in Bush's cell to make it appear he had been overpowered by the inmate.

 Following an investigation demanded by Gov. Gregg Cherry, eight men, including the jailor, were arrested for the Bush lynching attempt, but the charges were later dismissed against all eight men. Bush was also later exonerated on the bogus charge that he had tried to rape a white woman, whom he had simply startled by mistake. Bush's story and his escape from the lynch mob was recounted in the children's novel, "The Legend of Buddy Bush" written by Shelia P. Moses.

The N&O reporter Whitfield gave this account of Cherry's execution, the fifth of the morning of Oct. 3. 

"The gas was released at 11:18 and Cherry was pronounced dead at 11:27 and a half, causing only nine and a half minutes to be consumed in paying for a crime that shocked Eastern North Carolina, especially Rich Square where Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant were held in the highest esteem."

Whitfield said Cherry never made eye contact with the 35 witnesses -- many apparently there to support the Tarrants -- "and kept his head toward the floor," which "brought the remark, 'He can't face us' from one North Hampton County man."

Whitfield also quoted a prison chaplain who said: "Cherry took the reality of impending death more calmly than the other four."

On Halloween, four African American men -- J.C. Brooks, 29; Grady Brown, 27; and Thurman Munn, 25 all of Henderson, and Lester Stanly, 27 of Edgecombe were executed for murder.

The N&O headline, which only rated page 12A coverage, stated: "Killer's Pay With Their Lives in State's Gas Chamber."

Whitfield wrote: "Four Negro murderers died in the State's lethal gas chamber yesterday, one less than N.C.'s execution record for single day set with five executions on October 3."

Whitfield reported that Brooks and Brown, "who died hard," could be heard singing hymns in the cells as witnesses waited for the executions to begin. 

One witness to the executions of Brooks and Brown, C.E. Livingston of Hendersonville "left the gas chamber two minutes after the men began dying with the comment that, 'I've seen enough of this,'" Whitfield wrote.

Whitfield also wrote that Bob Weinrich, editor of the Tarboro Southerner, "covering his first execution, collapsed within minutes before the men were pronounced dead. He saw the next two die however, from start to finish."

In the Cherry case, the second defendant, Boone, was given a life sentence for first degree burglary for assisting Cherry with the break in.

Even in death Cherry was abandoned. Perhaps because of a lack of funds or a lack of transportation, no one from his family went to Central Prison as to visit him before he was executed. 

The Jackson News reported: "Although they were notified of the execution, Cherry's mother and sister, residents of Portsmouth, Va., never visited him after he was convicted of the crime and they did not claim his body after the execution, which after 36-hours interval goes to a medical school."