BOSTON (AP) - A Black man convicted of murder in 1972 is free from prison after a Boston judge reduced his sentence because Black jurors were excluded from his trial.
Arnold King spent 49 years in prison for the murder of John Labanara, a mayoral campaign aide who was 26 when King shot him in his car during a robbery in downtown Boston. An all-white jury had sentenced King to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On Thursday, Superior Court Justice Janet L. Sanders vacated King’s conviction on first-degree murder and reduced it to voluntary manslaughter, the Boston Globe reported. She sentenced him to 20 years in prison, which he has already served.
King’s attorney in April had requested the sentence reduction and King’s release on bail. He had been released from prison in April, the newspaper reported, as he waited for a decision by prosecutors and the judge on a possible sentence reduction.
The Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement Thursday that her office assented to the sentence reduction. “The issues being raised in the Arnie King case speak directly to Boston’s documented and painful history on race relations,” Rollins said.
“John Labanara was murdered and his family has lived and will continue to live with that awful fact,” Rollins said. “The man who killed Mr. Labanara, however, did not receive a fair trial as afforded and required by our Constitution. Racism undid this verdict and conviction.”
King’s attorney David Nathanson told the newspaper the exclusion of Black jurors was wrong.
“Today’s reduction of the verdict is a compromise in the interest of freedom, of finality, and allowing Mr. King to take responsibility for the harm he caused, which is important to him,” Nathanson said in an email to the Boston Globe.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.