October 18, 2017 | Samantha Melamed | Philadelphia Inquirer
It is closing in on a year since Thomas Vaughan, 73, watched his grandson Zion step out the front door of his Yeadon home for the last time. Zion, a popular Penn Wood High School senior and a linebacker on the school’s football team, was killed less than a block from his home by a single gunshot to his back.
At the time, police told reporters there was no apparent motive. They still have not arrested a suspect.
October 16, 2017 | Samantha Melamed | Philadelphia Daily News
It is closing in on a year since Thomas Vaughan, 73, watched his grandson Zion step out the front door of his Yeadon home for the last time. Zion, a popular Penn Wood High School senior and a linebacker on the school’s football team, was killed less than a block from his home by a single gunshot to his back.At the time, police told reporters there was no apparent motive. They still have not arrested a suspect.
Yet when Vaughan applied to the state Victims Compensation Assistance Program for the $6,500 in funeral expenses available for homicide victims, the application was rejected. The reason: His grandson, who had no criminal record, had been involved in an illegal activity that caused his murder.
September 27, 2017 | Samantha Melamed | The Philadelphia Inquirer
Twenty-four hours a day for 10 weeks, inmates in maroon uniforms with “D.O.C.” stamped on the backs held a death vigil over Frank Rodriguez. His colon cancer was terminal, but he refused to die — not behind the barbed wire and bars of Graterford Prison.
Like most states, Pennsylvania has a compassionate-release law, a way out for dying inmates. Rodriguez, who was so weak he needed help eating, bathing, and turning on his side, qualified. But successful petitions are exceedingly rare and excruciatingly slow.
Rodriguez had not committed a violent crime. He was locked up on a parole violation — smoking marijuana — for the underlying offense of stealing a $1 lemonade from a 7-Eleven store in 2013.
September 8, 2017 | Susan Colón | The Standard-Journal
LEWISBURG — More than 200 people attended an event by the Lewisburg Prison Project and co-hosted by Bucknell University this week.
Rebecca Armstrong, outreach coordinator for the Lewisburg Prison Project, suggested a student/community event that would address the issue of incarceration and mental illness. The freshman book this year was “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. The book addresses the continued growth of incarceration and correlations due to race and socioeconomic status. Two excerpts from the book are, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” and “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”
August 3, 2017 | Shelley Bradbury | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
After 20-year-old Keyshawn Givens was beaten so severely in the Allegheny County Jail that he was sent to a hospital on July 25, jail officials decided not to tell his family about the incident.
No one from the jail alerted the inmate’s listed emergency contact, jail Deputy John Williams said in a statement this week, because officials determined the injuries were not serious or life-threatening, and because of security concerns.
June 15, 2017 | Sarah Anne Hughes and MK Slaby | The Incline
From energy to entertainment to the environment and more, our seventh Who’s Next class is filled with young legal experts working across Pittsburgh.
One works for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Another works to protect constitutional rights of those who are incarcerated. Others have opened their own firms. And multiple started in other careers before going to law school.
June 13, 2017 | Marcia Moore | The Daily Item
Seriously mentally ill inmates at the U.S. penitentiary at Lewisburg are being given word games and Sudoku puzzles instead of treatment and medication, according to a class action lawsuit filed against the federal bureau of prisons.
The suit, filed by the DC Prisoner’s Project of the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, claims prisoners received minimal interaction with counselors, often just a minute or two each week and through cell doors.
Men with lifetime histories of schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder, depression and other serious mental conditions often receive no treatments at all and are held in cells, often with another inmate, for 23 hours or more a day. Instead of treatment, the suit alleges, these inmates receive Sudoku puzzles, word games and coloring pages.
February 4, 2017 | Marcia Moore | The Daily Item
Due to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' plans to limit the time inmates can spend in the SMU program, the Lewisburg Penitentiary now houses about 500 fewer inmates. Dave Sprout, a paralegal with the Lewisburg Prison Project, believes that this change will lower the number of violent incidents that take place due to the amount of cell space this change frees up.
