Capone Found Guilty

Boston Daily Globe

22 February 1884

You can find coverage of the trial in this post.

"Capone Found Guilty.

Both He and Santore Sentenced to Death - Probability that the Latter Will not Live to be Hanged. (Special Dispatch to The Boston Globe)

Bangor, February 21 - The jury in the murder trial of Raffaele Capone brought in a verdict at 4:50 this afternoon.  The court room was crowded to its utmost capacity.  When the verdict of murder in the first degree was announced the prisoner received it with a smile.  Carmen Santore, who was before convicted, was brought into court, and both men were sentenced.

There was an intensely dramatic scene before the sentence was pronounced.  Capone spoke through an interpreter some twenty minutes.  He said that Santore committed the murder; that he had planned to kill five other fellow-workmen; and that he had murdered a man in Italy.  Capone closed by saying: "Your laws can hang me; do as you please."
 
Santore told the same story that he told on the stand.  He said he fired one shot, but did not plan to kill Coscia.  He said he was not a murder in Italy, but a revolutionist.
 
Judge Emery, in sentencing the prisoners, spoke of the fact that both had had fair trials.  The sentence of death had to be pronounced through an interpreter.  Both were sentenced to be hanged on the first Friday in April, 1885, between the hours of 10 in the forenoon and 2 in the afternoon.
 
At the conclusion, Santore, the elder, broke down and cried like a child, not for himself, he said, but for his wife and child in Italy.  Capone kept his usual calm demeanor.  As he was leaving the prisoners' dock, he turned to the crowd, smiled, and waved his hat.
 
The murder of Coscia was one of the most brutal on record, and the general opinion is that both men received their just deserts.  The prisoners will be taken to Thomaston in a few days.  Santore probably will not live a year."

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