HARTFORD — A lawyer for a Connecticut man who spent 48 years on the lam after escaping from prison asked Georgia officials to commute his client's 17-year robbery sentence because he is in poor health. Georgia officials now say they will review the case.
Seventy-one-year-old Robert Stackowitz was arrested Monday at his home in rural Sherman after his Social Security application turned up a fugitive warrant. He escaped in 1968 from a prison work camp in Carrolton, Georgia. He's now detained on $75,000 bail.
Stackowitz's lawyer, Norman Pattis, told The Associated Press on Friday that his client suffers from heart failure, bladder cancer and other ailments and that sending him back to Georgia to serve the remainder of his sentence would amount to a death sentence.
A spokesman for the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles says the board will examine Stackowitz's case upon his return to Georgia in a few weeks. His lawyer plans to ask the board for a pardon and prison sentence commutation.