CRIME: 36 Men in Flight

Lunch hour was over. The convicts—134 of them—sprawled in two long rows stretching from the prison chuck wagon. Four hard-eyed mounted riflemen watched them. Six other armed guards waited near by. The stockade—Cummins Prison Farm in southeast Arkansas—was three miles away. Here were pea fields where the convicts had been working all morning. They were a tough crew, murderers, robbers, rapists, kidnappers—men like Frank Conley, who at 34 had a 21-year sentence for robbery and kidnapping; like Percy Loftin, who at 25 faced life plus 52 additional years for murder, robbery and...