CLEMENCY FOR BOY
Life Sentence For Murder
(NZ. Press Assn.—Copyright) ALBANY (New York). February 8.
Governor Nelson Rockefeller has commuted to life imprisonment the death senter.ce of an 18-year-old boy, who was due to die in the electric chair next week.
The Puerto Rican boy. Salvatore Agron. a gang member known as the Capeman because of the clothing he wore, had been convicted of murdering two 16-year-old youths in 1959. The killings were the •equel of a series of battles by youthful gangs in New York City slum neighbourhoods.
Agron’s lawyers argued that society was partly responsible for the crime and said the youth had lacked rational control at the time of hie act.
They also said Agron was the child of a broken home. His early Kfe in Puerto Rico and New York had been “squalid and heart-rending.” One of the lawyers, Mr S. Polier, said that since Agron entered the death house at Sing Sing prison 18 months ago he had become very religious and had learned to write.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 14
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171CLEMENCY FOR BOY Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 14
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