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Sentences in the Court of Special Sessions (26)
However, just over 40% of those convicted in the Court of Special Sessions had their sentences suspended, a far higher proportion than the one in ten in the Magistrates courts. That group included all of those who had been charged with riot convicted in the Court of Special Sessions (the outcome of two cases is unknown). All six men, as well as the five men facing the charge who the judges released, had been sent to the court by the grand jury, who had determined that their actions did not warrant a felony charge. So while their conviction cast the men as participants in the disorder, suspending their sentence indicated that the judges did not see them as significantly contributing to provoking the violence any more than the members of the grand jury had. By that measure, none of those arrested was judged responsible for inciting the disorder.
At the other extreme, three of those convicted of looting received indeterminate sentences of up to one year. Only two men convicted in the Court of General Sessions received sentences as long or longer, also after having been convicted of looting. In the case of John Henry, it was his youth that explained his sentence. As he was only sixteen years of age, the judges in the misdemeanor court sent him to the House of Refuge, a juvenile reformatory on Randall's Island. The other two men were adults sent to the penitentiary. Louis Cobb had an extensive history of imprisonment that would have led to his sentence. So too likely did the other man, Nathan Snead, but unlike Cobb, whose record is in the sources because he had been sent to the court from the grand jury, Snead was referred directly from the Magistrates Court, so did not generate the same evidence. Overall, the sentences imposed on those arrested for for looting in this court were consistent with the overall pattern, providing a proportion of the terms of one month and longer in keeping with the misdemeanor charges with which it dealt. Elva Jacobs, one of the two Black women sentenced in the court, appears to have received a sentence consistent with those of Black men. Jacobs had her sentence for looting suspended, as did three Black men, a third of those sentenced for looting in the court.
By contrast, the judges imposed a term of one month in the Workhouse on Rose Murrell, while sending three of the Black men convicted of breaking windows to the Workhouse for the longer term of three months and suspending the sentence of one other. While three Black men and one white man received the same one-month term after being arrested for breaking windows, they had been convicted of disorderly conduct and sentenced in the Magistrates Court, likely treated as members of the crowd not participants in the violence. Murrell, however, had been convicted of participating in the violence. While her gender is the most obvious explanation for that difference, it may be that Murrell caused less damage than the men. No details of the cost of replacing the windows are provided in any of these cases.
Two white men, Harry Gordon and Jose Perez, were among those sentenced in the Court of Special Sessions. However, neither of their sentences appear in the available sources, so it is not possible to assess if judges treated them differently than the Black men who made up the bulk of those sentenced.