A Pennsylvania man who had been serving life for second-degree murder died over the weekend, 12 days after being granted a medical transfer from prison to a facility that could better treat his condition, including quadriplegia, reported The Associated Press.
Ezra Bozeman, 68, died on Saturday at the UPMC Altoona
medical center, Ryan Tarkowski, communications director for the Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections, confirmed on Tuesday.
He had been jailed for 49 years before an Allegheny County
judge granted his request for compassionate release last month.
Bozeman had been on life support. He had a back injury that
had been misdiagnosed for several years, according to his lawyer, Dolly Prabhu,
and he required extensive medical care after he became paralyzed from the chest
down after surgery.
An aide to Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen
Zappala, whose office had opposed the release, said they had no comment on
Bozeman’s death.
Prabhu, with the Abolitionist Law Center, described Bozeman
as “the sweetest, sweetest person.”
“He was always, always so optimistic,” Prabhu said Tuesday.
“And he was confident that it wasn’t a matter of if he gets out, it was when he
gets out.”
Bozeman had been
convicted in 1975 in the shooting death of Morris Weitz, a dry-cleaning
business co-owner, during an attempted robbery. He had maintained he was
innocent.
Pennsylvania’s compassionate release law covers incarcerated
people who are seriously ill and expected to die within a year. The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette reported that about 50 people have been granted compassionate
release over the past 15 years.
Prabhu said it is common
for prisoners seeking compassionate release to be close to death, which she
said is a consequence of the terms of Pennsylvania’s law on compassionate
release. She said there are “hundreds of Ezra Bozemans” in the state’s prisons,
and prisons are not equipped to care for very sick, elderly people.
“We have such harsh sentencing laws, and so we have so many
elderly people right now incarcerated,” Prabhu said. “And compassionate release
is one of the few avenues they have in getting out and getting the care that
they need.”
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