Gay rights activists asked New York State Governor Mario Cuomo to appoint a special prosecutor to the case, citing the fact that Staten Island District Attorney William L. Murphy had been the only one of the city's five district attorneys to oppose the city's anti-gay-discrimination law when it was passed in 1986. Also, in that same year, Murphy had prosecuted a carjacking case that resulted in Taylor, then 16 years old, being adjudicated a juvenile offender when he could have been tried as an adult, and Sarlo receiving a sentence of 1½ to 4½ years, the minimum then possible on the charges for which he had been indicted. In both the 1986 carjacking case and the Zappalorti murder, Taylor, in statements he made to the police, cited animosity toward homosexuals as a motive for the crime. (The victim in the 1986 case was attacked near a boardwalk in the South Beach area reportedly frequented by homosexuals, and Zappalorti's sexual orientation was common knowledge in the neighborhood where both he and Taylor resided.) Sarlo, however, denied harboring such sentiments. The Zappalorti case never went to trial, because on December 5, 1990, after extensive "plea-bargaining" negotiations, both Taylor and Sarlo plead guilty to charges of second-degree murder. (In New York State at the time, first-degree murder applied only if the victim was a law-enforcement officer or the killer was already serving a life sentence for a previous murder.) It is reported that the district attorney's office was reluctant to go to trial because of fears the defendants might have attempted to use the gay panic defense, and may have garnered considerable sympathy from a potential jury in culturally conservative, heavily Roman Catholic Staten Island. Pursuant to the plea agreement, Taylor received a prison sentence of 23 years to life while Sarlo was sentenced to 18 years to life. On May 30, 1997, Sarlo killed himself at the maximum-security Wende Correctional Facility outside Buffalo. Taylor was also incarcerated at a maximum-security institution, and was denied parole in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. The 1990 killing of James Zappalorti was recognized as the first anti-gay hate crime in New York City since police began categorizing such crimes in 1980. One of Zappalorti's nephews was hospitalized for his own gay-bashing in 1993 at age 22, in nearby Rossville, Staten Island. The murder and subsequent attacks led to increased efforts to pass a statewide hate crime law, which was supported by Mayor David Dinkins and John Cardinal O'Connor and ultimately enacted in 2000.