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Sentenced (77)
While less than half of all those convicted, thirty-five of seventy-seven, were sentenced to more than a month in prison, the proportions varied by alleged offense. Just over half of those arrested for breaking windows and for looting received such a sentence compared with only one of those arrested for riot and one of those arrested for assault. The short sentences for assault reflected the failure of police to present evidence that those they had arrested had been involved in assaults, rather than part of crowds at the scene or, in the cases of James Hughes, targeting property. By contrast, the suspended sentences and probation given to those charged with riot was a decision of the sentencing magistrates in the Court of Special Sessions. The riot statute treated those who incited attacks on property, the charge against those arrested in the disorder, as guilty of a misdemeanor, for which they could be sentenced to up to a year in prison. No explanation for the lenient treatment of those men appears in any of the sources. It could be that as they were part of small groups in the midst of the disorder the magistrates did not consider them responsible for either starting the violence or its broader scope. While magistrates most often sentenced those arrested for alleged looting to terms of imprisonment, only rarely were those terms more than half the maximum punishment of one year. That pattern also applied to the sentences imposed by a judge in the Court of General Sessions. Putting aside Edward Larry, the only individual arrested during the disorder convicted of a felony, who had an extensive criminal record that determined his sentence to the State Prison, only one of the other eleven men sentenced in that court for alleged looting received a term longer than six months, and that was an indeterminate sentence of up to a year to the House of Refuge for seventeen-year-old Robert Tanner on the basis of his youth (which could have seen him released earlier).
That the sentences handed down in different courts did not differ as significantly as the statutes allowed offered further evidence of how the legal process diminished the violence of the disorder. The decisions to convict the seventy-seven individuals found guilty were evenly divided between the Magistrates courts and the two superior courts, with thirty-nine convictions in the lower court and thirty-eight in the Court of Special Sessions and Court of General Sessions. The misdemeanor offenses for which sentences were imposed in superior courts carried a maximum term of imprisonment of one year, twice that of the offense of disorderly conduct for which those sentenced in the Magistrates courts had been convicted. However, judges imposed sentences longer than six months on only five of the thirty-eight individuals charged with misdemeanors. In other words, even those charged with acts of violence received sentences that treated them as members of the crowds on the streets not participants in the disorder. That is not to say there were no differences between the sentences imposed in different courts. Just under half of those sentenced in the Magistrates Court were imprisoned for ten days or less. However, almost as many received terms of between one and six months. More of those convicted in higher courts received such sentences, and typically for longer terms, but as many of the longest terms were imposed in the Magistrates Court as in the Court of Special Sessions and Court of General Sessions. A term of one month was imposed on eleven of the fifteen in this group in the Magistrates Court, compared to only three of fifteen sentenced in the other courts. A term of three months was typical in those courts, imposed on four of those convicted in the Court of Special Sessions and four convicted in the Court of General Sessions. However, more sentences to terms around six months were imposed in the Magistrates Courts than in the other courts: two of five months and twenty-nine days (Preston White and Joseph Payne) and two of six months (James Lloyd and James Smith), compared to one of six months in the Court of Special Sessions (Henry Goodwin) and two of six months (Joseph Wade and Thomas Jackson) in the Court of General Sessions (the remaining sentence, in the Court of General Sessions, was of four months). Those sentences were for men arrested for alleged looting in five cases and an unknown offense in the case of James Lloyd. However, given that they had been convicted of disorderly conduct rather than a charge related to looting, such as burglary or unlawful entry, makes it uncertain that they remained associated with that violence rather than with the crowds of bystanders and spectators on the streets.
Given the wide variety of activities encompassed by the Disorderly Conduct stature, it is difficult to tell if the sentences imposed by magistrates were out of the ordinary. In the week leading up to the disorder, when the Harlem Magistrates Court docket book recorded thirty-six men and women as convicted of disorderly conduct, two individuals received three-month terms and three others six-month terms, including one charged with "jostling," placing the most severely punished acts in the disorder on a par with attempted pickpocketing. On the other hand, none of the remaining thirty-one sentences were for more than ten days, with fourteen for one to three days with the option to instead pay a fine and the sentences of eight suspended, casting the one-month terms given to those arrested during the disorder as a harsher punishment than was usual. Similar information on typical sentences in the Court of Special Sessions and Court of General Sessions was not available in the sources.
By the end of 1935, at most five individuals would still have been serving sentences for alleged offenses during the disorder, the four sentenced to indeterminate sentences (who may have been released before the maximum term) and Edward Larry. After the first anniversary of the disorder in 1936 only Larry remained in prison.