Skippack Township is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 14,408 in 2022 according to the Census Bureau. This represents a 5.1% increase from the 2010 Census.
Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.
The Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of the city, and was operational from 1829 until 1971. The penitentiary refined the revolutionary system of separate incarceration first pioneered at the Walnut Street Jail which emphasized principles of reform rather than punishment.
Sullivan Correctional Facility is a New York State maximum security prison correctional facility for male prisoners located in Fallsburg, New York. It is operated by the New York State Department of Correctional Services.
Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision maximum security state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannemora, although its name is derived from its location in Clinton County, New York. The southern perimeter wall of the prison borders New York State Route 374. Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief, a church built by inmates, is located within the walls. The prison is sometimes referred to as New York's Little Siberia, due to the cold winters in Dannemora and the isolation of the upstate area. It is the largest maximum-security prison and the third-oldest prison in New York. The staff includes about 1,000 officers and supervisors.
The State Correctional Institution – Graterford, commonly referred to as SCI Graterford, known prior as Eastern Correctional Institution, Graterford Prison, Graterford Penitentiary, and the Graterford Prison Farm, was a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections prison located in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, near Graterford. The prison, located on Graterford Road off of Pennsylvania Route 29, was about 31 miles (50 km) northwest of Philadelphia.
The 1982 Wilkes-Barre shootings was a spree shooting which occurred in the United States on September 25, 1982, carried out by George Emil Banks, a former Camp Hill prison guard. Banks fatally shot 13 people in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Jenkins Township. The victims included seven children – five being his own – their mothers, some of their relatives, and one bystander.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Troy Michael Kell is an inmate on death row in Utah. Kell was sentenced to life in prison by the State of Nevada for the 1986 murder of James "Cotton" Kelly. He was transferred to the Utah State Prison as part of a prisoner exchange program shortly after his conviction and on July 6, 1994, Kell attacked and killed inmate Lonnie Blackmon at the Utah Department of Corrections Gunnison facility. Kell stabbed Blackmon a total of 67 times while his associate, Eric Daniels, held Blackmon down. Kell was sentenced to death by firing squad for the murder.
Timothy Wayne Krajcir is a convicted American serial killer from West Mahanoy Township, Pennsylvania who has confessed to killing nine women: five in Missouri and four others in Illinois and Pennsylvania.
In the United States, life imprisonment is amongst the most severe punishments provided by law, depending on the state, and second only to the death penalty. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 20,000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012. Many U.S. states can release a convict on parole after a decade or more has passed, but in California, people sentenced to life imprisonment can normally apply for parole after seven years. The laws in the United States categorize life sentences as "determinate life sentences" or "indeterminate life sentences," the latter indicating the possibility of an abridged sentence, usually through the process of parole. For example, sentences of "15 years to life," "25 years to life," or "life with mercy" are called "indeterminate life sentences", while a sentence of "life without the possibility of parole" or "life with no mercy" is called a "determinate life sentence". The potential for parole is not assured but discretionary, making it an indeterminate sentence. Even if a sentence explicitly denies the possibility of parole, government officials may have the power to grant an amnesty to reprieve, or to commute a sentence to time served.
TheInside-Out Prison Exchange Program (Inside-Out) is an international educational program based in Philadelphia at Temple University. Inside-Out was established by Lori Pompa in 1997 to bring traditional college students and incarcerated persons together in semester-long courses to explore and learn about issues of crime and justice from behind prison walls. The program was founded on the hypothesis that incarcerated and non-incarcerated students might mutually benefit from studying together as peers.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) is the Pennsylvania state agency that is responsible for the confinement, care and rehabilitation of approximately 37,000 inmates at state correctional facilities funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The agency has its headquarters in Hampden Township, Cumberland County in Greater Harrisburg, near Mechanicsburg. In October 2017, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a "memorandum of understanding" that allows the PADOC and the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to share like resources and eliminate duplicative efforts. All parole supervision now falls under the jurisdiction of the PADOC; while parole release decisions remain under the jurisdiction of the PA Board of Probation and Parole. The two agencies remain separate. With the passage of the 2021-2022 Pennsylvania budget, this merger became official and permanent.
Marsy's Law, the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, enacted by voters as Proposition 9 through the initiative process in the November 2008 general election, is an amendment to the state's constitution and certain penal code sections. The act protects and expands the legal rights of victims of crime to include 17 rights in the judicial process, including the right to legal standing, protection from the defendant, notification of all court proceedings, and restitution, as well as granting parole boards far greater powers to deny inmates parole. Critics allege that the law unconstitutionally restricts defendant's rights by allowing prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence under certain circumstances, and harms victims by restricting their rights to discovery, depositions, and interviews. Passage of this law in California led to the passage of similar laws in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio and Wisconsin, and efforts to pass similar laws in Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania. In November 2017, Marsy's Law was found to be unconstitutional and void in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Montana for violating that state's procedure for amending the Montana Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as Montana under its own state constitution in 2021.
Jason Keel Sweeney was a construction worker from Fishtown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who at the age of 16 was murdered by four teenagers for his paycheck on May 30, 2003. The perpetrators included a girl he was dating and his best friend since childhood. Due to the manner in which Sweeney was murdered, the ages of the teens involved, and the seeming indifference of the perpetrators, the crime received national media coverage.
Joseph Ligon is an American convicted murderer and former prisoner. He was America's longest-serving prisoner who was convicted to a life sentence as a minor. At 15, he was found guilty of murder by association and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. After the US Supreme Court had ruled in 2016 that all juvenile life sentences without parole were retroactively unconstitutional, he was released in 2021, having spent 68 years in jail.
The State Correctional Institution – Phoenix is a state prison in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with a Collegeville postal address, in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Operated by Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, it was named after the phoenix bird.
Donald Broadnax is an American serial killer. Originally convicted and sentenced to 99 years imprisonment for fatally shooting a friend in Birmingham, Alabama in 1977, he was released on work release in 1996, whereupon he murdered his wife and her grandson. For the latter crime, Broadnax was convicted and sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution.
Robert Ronald "Mudman" Simon, also known as Bobby Simon, was an American outlaw biker, convicted murderer and member of the Pennsylvania-based Warlocks Motorcycle Club. He had formerly been sentenced to death by the state of New Jersey on May 6, 1995, for his part in the fatal shooting of Franklin Township police sergeant Ippolito Gonzalez. However, he was ultimately beaten to death at New Jersey State Prison by a fellow death row inmate before he could be executed.
Reginald McFadden was an American serial killer who committed a series of rapes and two murders in Rockland and Nassau counties, New York in 1994, which started only 92 days after his parole from a rape-murder committed as a juvenile in Pennsylvania. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the latter crimes, his case brought on changes to the parole system and clemency applications for juvenile offenders in the state of Pennsylvania, as well as similar reforms in New York.
Gottschalk, Marie. "Days Without End: Life Sentences and Penal Reform." Prison Legal News. N.p., 15 Jan. 2012. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.
Mauer, Marc, Ryan S. King, and Malcolm C. Young. "The Meaning of "Life": Long Prison Sentences in Context." The Sentencing Project (2004): 8. Open Society Foundations. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.
