As we get closer to finding out if the Governor will approve LWOP, here is a preview of what we will see in a few years if it is approved. There is no such thing as LWOP.


Panel urges state to free older, ailing prisoners

Tuesday, June 14, 2005
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- Everybody gets older, including state prison inmates serving life sentences for murder.

When a lifer gets to be elderly, weak from a debilitating illness, or confined to a wheelchair, should he or she be considered for parole and released into the community -- to a nursing home, a hospice facility or the care of family members?

That's one recommendation in a 255-page report that an advisory committee gave yesterday to the Joint State Government Commission, a group of 14 House and Senate members.

"I suspect these recommendations will generate quite a debate in the general population," said David Hostetter, commission director.

Potential changes in sentencing laws "are probably the most difficult task we've given the joint task force to address," said Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, Judiciary Committee chairman.

One advantage to letting ailing, infirm inmates out of prison, a practice called "compassionate release," would be to promote humane treatment of longtime prisoners, those who have outgrown any ability to be "a threat to society," said the 47-member panel, called the Advisory Committee on Geriatric and Seriously Ill Inmates.

It has spent the last two years studying the problem.

Another argument for releasing elderly prisoners is that it would reduce the state's prison population, now at about 41,000. Reducing prison overcrowding would cut costs of the state Department of Corrections. It costs up to $64,000 a year to house sick, elderly inmates, compared with a cost of $30,000 a year for younger, healthier prisoners, the task force said.

"There is a rising geriatric population [in state prisons] which is costing Pennsylvania more and more each year," said Hostetter.

Prison populations around the country have been increasing over the past 25 years as more and more legislatures approved tough mandatory sentencing laws, responding to demands from the public for strict handling of criminals.

Not all members of the advisory committee liked the idea of paroling convicted killers. Some committee members who addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday conceded the report could be political dynamite. Releasing convicted killers -- even if they are old and sick -- could cause legislators to be viewed as soft on crime.

Greenleaf called release of the report "just the first step" and said it's too soon to say if any new sentencing laws will come out of it.

Currently, state law provides only two options for a judge or jury in first-degree murder cases -- the death penalty or a life sentence without possibility of parole.

The report recommends changing state sentencing laws "by adding the option for the jury or the judge to consider life with the possibility of parole in cases where the state is not seeking the death penalty."

The death penalty can be sought in murder cases with heinous circumstances, such as the intentional killing of a law enforcement officer, multiple killings or a gruesome killing involving torture.

Under the proposal, most inmates sentenced to life for first-degree murder could be considered for parole only if they had served at least 25 years in prison and had reached the age of 50. Also, the new rules would not be retroactive; they would apply only to future defendants.

The report cautioned that parole for murderers would not be automatic.

"Parole eligibility means that an inmate may be considered for parole. It does not mean that the inmate will be immediately released or ever granted parole," the report says.

A person convicted of first- or second-degree murder before he was 21 could be eligible for parole when he turns 45, provided he's served at least 25 years in jail, the report said.

Currently, because there is no "life with the possibility of parole" sentence, lifers can get out of prison only if their sentence is commuted by the Board of Pardons and the governor.

The report notes that in the last 11 years, only one life sentence has been commuted -- by Gov. Mark Schweiker, who served from October 2001 to January 2003. Govs. Tom Ridge and Ed Rendell have not commuted any life sentences.

That compares with 27 commutations by Gov. Bob Casey in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The main reason for the sharp drop in commutations was the case of Reginald McFadden, who had served 24 years of a life sentence when the Board of Pardons recommended a commutation and Casey signed it in 1994. McFadden was arrested three months after being released and charged with rape and two killings.

Lt. Gov. Mark Singel was on the Pardons Board and had recommended the commutation, which hurt him in his unsuccessful race for governor in November 1994.

"This is often cited as the beginning of the end for the commutation of life sentences," the report said, "as individuals became afraid of having their political careers end if they recommended or approved commutation."

"compassionate release" -- classic!

Several years ago I second chaired Prison Prosecutor extraordinaire Phil Hall and we prosecuted an older inmate in the medical unit at Central who had, inexplicably, attempted to slash the doctor's throat with a shiv. Fortunately, the Doc's quick reflexes and heavily starched shirt collar kept the razor blade imbedded in the toothbrush from hitting his artery in his neck and the Doc wasn't badly physically injured.

We never could figure out the why behind the crime, and I've come to believe that he was just a bad hombre who liked killing. He was an older inmate with numerous severe back problems, was being administered narcotic pain meds for back problems, and as a convicted child sex offender, was living in a medical ward that was probably the best place he could ever live in prison given the nature of his offense.

So there was no reason for him to assault the doctor during his visit. By doing so, he picked up a new life sentence stacked on his old one, was moved into a maximum security unit and out of the "elder care" dorm-like setting he was in.

So maybe all old codger prisoners aren't so harmless after all...

Easing the prison budget woes by taking the old, infirm and incapacitated murderers, rapists and robbers and place them side by side in a nursing home with our most precious family members who are not capable of self-defense. Sounds great, who exactly thought of this? I suppose that not a lot of nursing home patients are capable of rallying up support and voting enmass against this.

Texas already has begun moving in this direction. We already have such medical release laws and apply them to several hundred inmates each year, all in the name of saving money. One bill would have expanded this release to sex offenders.

A SECOND CHANCE FOR "LIFERS" IN PRISON
A groundbreaking program to prepare select Colorado prison "lifers" for a chance at freedom hit a snag just before its unveiling last week, highlighting the often delicate balance between victims' rights and corrections reform.

The program, called Lifeline after its Canadian prototype, identifies lower-risk inmates serving life sentences under older state laws. Lifers already released and doing well on the outside will mentor them through a six-month to one-year curriculum aimed at readying them for community corrections and parole review.

But the initial group of six candidates was quickly trimmed to four in the wake of objections from victim advocates and law enforcement officials familiar with two of the cases.

Those inmates - Michael Corbett and John Huckleberry - slipped through an initial screening but were removed from consideration after the Colorado Department of Corrections' victim services department red-flagged them, said Tim Hand, assistant director of adult parole and community corrections and Lifeline's driving force.

Since 1990, life sentences in Colorado have offered no chance for parole. For Lifeline, Hand and his staff drew from inmates sentenced under previous laws and narrowed the search to men who are at least 45 years old, have served 20 years of their sentence and have a good institutional track record.

Sex offenders aren't eligible.

Colorado is the first state to attempt such a model, which has drawn praise from some corrections experts based on its 15-year run in Canada.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4245174

1. They are in prison for life
2. They are low risk offenders
3. Why do those two sentences not add up?

Cutting all medical care would also save alot of money, and it would address the overcrowding concerns by reducing the length of a life sentece.

It seems to me that medical care in the prison is much cheaper than medical care in a private nursing home. I would also assume that someone who has been incarcerated for some time would be indigent and qualify for medicare and medicaid. So, actually letting them out would cost more money and we would place these offenders in nursing homes that are full of helpless individuals who may be taken advantage of by their new neighbors. I believe a cell with steal bars provides a much more nuturing environment that most nursing homes anyway.

quote:

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Originally posted by James H.:
It seems to me that medical care in the prison is much cheaper than medical care in a private nursing home. I would also assume that someone who has been incarcerated for some time would be indigent and qualify for medicare and medicaid. So, actually letting them out would cost more money and we would place these offenders in nursing homes that are full of helpless individuals who may be taken advantage of by their new neighbors. I believe a cell with steal bars provides a much more nuturing environment that most nursing homes anyway.

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Actually, it's my understanding that prison inmates are ineligible for medicare/medicaid, which is one reason prison systems are so hot to move them out into halfway houses or other non-prison housing -- the feds won't pick up the tab until the inmate is out from behind bars.

Yet another chapter in the saga of money vs. justice.

That same ineligibility is putting pressure on the mental health system to look for ways to do "outpatient" treatment so that the government can collect those benefits. Again, a financial rule is altering a medical decision.

I have two questions. One - does anyone really believe that LWOP means LWOP in this age of enlightened compassion and so-called evolving standards of decency? And two, why would any state look to Canada for their sentencing schemes?

It strikes me funny (not ha-ha funny, but funny none the less)that defense lawyers and people will use the argument about cost to sway sympathy toward a guilty defendant and the options for his punishment.

John Wayne Gacy or Howard Guidry or Ponchai Wilkerson or some other murderous degenerate might say,"Hmmm, I will abduct and kill that youngster over there and several others like her, and then when I'm caught, my lawyer will impress upon the public that it will cost too much to punish me, and if they do punish me, it will be THEIR fault, THEIR damnation, THEIR loss of money -- why not give it a go?"

Folks, the taxpayers don't make the facts that bring a lawbreaker into his behavior. He does. If it costs to punish him, then it costs. But I don't think it's a real great argument to regular folks like me when a defense lawyer puts the responsibility for a defendant's crime on my shoulders.

Exit only, don't forget the tip jar.

Curtis Ballard rides a motorized wheelchair around his prison ward, which happens to be the new assisted living unit - a place of many windows and no visible steel bars - at Washington's Coyote Ridge Corrections Center.

Details.

[Note how the same organization that promoted LWOP -- ACLU -- is now using the same math to promote parole. If you didn't see it coming, well...]

As housing and medical care costs for them continue to rise, one Texas senator, among other people, want the geriatric inmates released so the state can shed that part of the $465.7 million it spends annually on inmate medical care.

...


Rissie Owens, presiding officer of Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said there long has been a misconception that offenders are entering the Texas prison system young and staying until they are old. In reality, many enter prison late in life to begin serving their sentences for crimes they committed late in life, Ms. Owens said.

"Forty-five percent of all prison and state jail inmates received have been 55 and older at the time they entered prison to serve their sentences," she said. "It also appears that these older inmates are serving sentences for violent offenses as almost 6 percent of those 55 and older have sentences for crimes ranging from homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, sexual assault of a child, robbery and assault/terroristic threats."

Ms. Owens said numerous factors are reviewed during parole decisions.

"Age is one factor, but we do not just focus on the age of each offender," she said. "The numbers indicate that there have been more offenders received at TDCJ in the age group 55 to 60 than any other age group at the time of prison entry."

Ms. Williams said offenders who have committed rape, murder or other violent crimes usually are ineligible for parole, despite their medical conditions.

Details.