Biography
Roy Vigil 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 10, 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.
Daily Worker, December 24, 1935: Page 6’s prisoner-relief appeal describes him as a Mexican-descended agricultural worker from the Colorado sugar-beet fields, recalls his death sentence and its commutation to life, and reports restrictions on letters to anyone outside his immediate family. Its rounded four-year chronology conflicts with the established September 1932 arrest chronology; it is not used to calculate an admission, birthdate or custody total. This source names Roy, not Ray Vigil, and does not independently resolve the separate Ray roster identity. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n309-NY-dec-24-DW-Q.pdf
