A Close Shave for the Barber of Dodge City

Sweeney was not around to share in the Gang’s triumphal sweep of the April 3, 1877, municipal election, led by new Mayor James “Dog” Kelley. In fact, if the story in the Dodge City Times is to be credited, Sweeney was not around anywhere but had been crushed beneath the wheels of an engine near Cascade Station, Calif., his body too badly mangled to be shipped back to Kansas for burial. A letter sent to Mayor Kelley is given as a source for the report, and some suspicions about the authenticity of it arise since Sweeney was still on the run, wanted for forgery, and in January 1877 John Tyler had won a personal judgment for $250 against him and Bessie when it was ruled they had obtained the deed of conveyance to the barber shop by fraud.

Tyler’s victory in the civil suit with the Sweeneys turned out to be crucial to his fate, since it secured title to a building he could then use as collateral to hire an impressive team of defense lawyers. He had another stroke of good fortune in January when Judge Peters agreed to move the trial (already postponed once due to the illness of Tyler’s attorney) out of Ford to Pawnee County 75 miles north. Though a core of influential merchants backed Tyler, he ran the risk that the pool of eligible jurors in and around Dodge would be prejudiced against him. His chance of acquittal or a reduced sentence was much better in a venue where passions were not inflamed or memories sharp.

Eventually jailed for about a month while he awaited trial in Larned, the seat of Pawnee County, John Tyler had his day in court on June 12, 1877. The case caused a stir in the community, if for no other reason than, as the local paper said, “It is seldom more than one or two negroes are seen in Larned at one time.” But on the 12th, a half-dozen appeared at the courthouse, a veritable invading army, and yet nearly outnumbered by Tyler’s phalanx of attorneys. The legal talent was a star-studded ensemble: the venerable Sam Wood, an old hand at arguing before the Kansas Supreme Court; Joseph Waters of Topeka, attorney for the A.T. & S.F. Railroad; A.A. Hurd of Great Bend; and Daniel M. Frost, once a state representative for Ford County and a staunch foe of the Ring. Frost would later become editor of the Ford County Globe and carry on a war of words and, on occasion, fists with the Ring’s political progeny, the Dodge City Gang.

The trial was as anticlimactic as it was brief. The Pawnee County Herald summarized the outcome:

In the case of the State vs. Tyler (colored), in which there was a change of venue from Ford to Pawnee County, the proceedings were quashed on the grounds of a defect in the information.

The prisoner confessed, we believe, to the killing of a white man, but plead [sic] that it was accidental; that in attempting to shoot a colored man he by mistake killed the wrong man. It does seem strange that in case a man premeditatedly attempts to murder a man and by mistake kills the wrong man that he should go unpunished. It would seem that he was even more guilty for having killed an innocent man than he would have been had he killed his intended victim, for aside from the crime of murder he was guilty of a criminal carelessness in the use of a deadly weapon.

The Herald’s reasoning may have been sound, but it went unheeded. The defect in the information, the legal document instituting criminal proceedings, turned out to be none other than the misspelling of Lawrence’s last name as “Lieurance.” The error seems to have come about because the county district attorney who originally charged Tyler retired from office, and for some reason the new D.A. or more likely his clerk—William F. Sweeney!—wrote over the correct spelling, thus inadvertently opening a loophole for Tyler to slip through.

The case could have been re-filed, but by now the third Ford County district attorney in little over a year, Mike Sutton, had no taste for it. He was connected to the Gang and was politically astute. Already audible was the gnashing of teeth over the expenses to which the case had put the county—above $350—and the Gang newspaper, the Times, placed the blame squarely on the previous administration, several of whom had been Tyler’s bondsmen:

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