Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1921-07-27
House SENATE
PROBE BODY
ENDS, ENDS, SESSIONS SESSIONS
House Committee To Re
sumo Probe Alone
Tonight

Separated from the political ma
chine of the prison farm and board
Tuesday night, the house penitentiary
! committee will continue It's examina-
tlon of witnesses tonight, when fur
| ther startling evidence relative to
transactions of commissioners ana
conditions at the institution may be
presented.
Dissolution of the two committees
came at midnight last night after
Chairman r. W Campbell, who heads
the senate body was presiding, had
repeatedly refused to recognize mem
bers of the house who desired to
make motions. Instead of recogniz-
ing the house legislators, Senator
Campbell called those whom he de-
sired to take the floor to come to
him, and asked that they seek pos
session of the floor. -s=--
Representative Jones Perryman,
chairman of the house committee, i'm
mediately launched another attack on
the methods of the presiding officers
and the alleged effort to whitewash
the proceeding, succeeding finally in
separating Jne DOQleS.
The house committee, it was learn
ed this afternoon, will not base its
decision on the evidence of Arnold
Worley, but will consider it along
with other matter in its possession
and now being investigated
The Worley letter to the attorney
general of the United States which
was not read last night, was releaz-
ed for publication by Chairman Per
ryman this afternoon.
After outlining the alleged policy
Of the prison farm relative to CEN
sorship of mail and charging that l;
was almost impossible for an inmate
to describe conditions in the penten-
tiary to the outside world on account
of the warden destroying The letters
Worley launched into history of
his experiences in tie prison and
chain gangs of several counties.
an 1915" the statement rea0s,
while at the state farm, APPLIED
20 the state courts for a writ of la
beas corpus and asked 10 H. bkought
into court that | might exercise my
right to inform against the officers
| had found that gambling was per-
mitted to be openly carried on; that
both the liquor and narcotic laws
of the state and federal government
were being violated and that prison
commissioners and state farm officials
had laid themselves liable as acces-
sOrics after the fact to what | regard
ed as wilful and coWardly murder
of a convict by means of the lash
by one c. c. Cotes, deputy warden
of Fulton county.
MY investigation revealed that
one Catlin, a white man, | believe
from New Jersey, whom | had known
in iail as having had no control of
his bowels and had been sent to Full
ton county changing for hard labor,
when. helpless as he was, he had
been inhumanely beaten, and then,
several days later, carried TO the farm
in a closed car At night.
"The mans skin had been Deat/n
off of him, and he was beck and
blue from head to foot, according to
! all witnesses. Subsequently, | learn
/ ed that the man was synthetic, and
/ a paralytic, and that a rubbet sheet
| had been put on his bed prior to the
beating in November or December,
/ 1917, with an instrument likely to
produce death, with which he was
struck from sixty odd to eighty odd
times. and from which he died Jan
uary or February, 1918, without ever
having left his bed. D. 0. CoSe5 adj
mits to striking this invalid only thir-
teen times.
Il had to instruct the petition TO
the warden for mailing or fling. II
he ever mailed it, have never heard
from it. just subsequent !, was
.raltreated, deprived Of my notes, ,he
/ list of witnesses, ard among other
things my copy petition"
Worley then described how he
! had been transferred to Crawford
/ county, where he was confined in 3
1 cage with diseased mau. He de-
! ciared that at this camp gambling
/ and liquor trafficking were practiced.
/ He charged the warden with having
], had him removed to-. Upson county
4 - i n \