Biography
Candelario Montoya was a Spanish-speaking sugar-beet worker convicted with two other young laborers of murdering farmer George Arnold near Brighton, Colorado. He was arrested and jailed on September 11, 1932. The International Labor Defense campaigned for the three, known as the Brighton Boys, and argued that the case rested on coerced confessions. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the convictions in September 1933. Governor Edwin Johnson commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment in November 1933, citing an element of doubt. In December 1953, he was still imprisoned at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City.
