Nation IN BRIEF : NEW YORK : Prison Avoided in 45-Year-Old Murder

A man who spent 45 years as a fugitive in the slaying of a Miami police officer will avoid prison under a plea bargain disclosed in a Manhattan court. Leroy Strachan, 63, will be sentenced in Florida to one year in prison for manslaughter, but will be credited with the 19 months he already has served in New York while fighting extradition. Strachan could have faced the death penalty if he had been tried for first-degree murder in the 1946 shooting of John Milledge, Miami’s first black police officer. Strachan, 17 at the time of the slaying, disappeared the day after the incident. He wound up in New York, where he lived in Harlem under his own name, working as an elevator operator. He married, raised three children and sang in a choir.