PA legislature poised to change statute of limitations for sexual assault

Rep. Mark Rozzi (D-Berks) as said his own abuse by a priest drove him to run for office in the first place, and to take on the commonwealth’s relatively restrictive statutes of limitations, reported WHYY-FM.

But for the last few years, he and supporters of his legislation have been in a bitter stalemate with Senate Republican leaders, who were worried that opening a window for retroactive lawsuits on old abuse cases — one of the key provisions in the package — might be unconstitutional, and would bankrupt churches.

A 2018 grand jury report on decades of alleged child sex abuse in Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic Dioceses added a sense of urgency to the negotiations.

The compromise that eventually won approval by the legislature was hammered out over the last year, and is mostly contained in two bills.

One would get rid of the statute of limitations for people to file criminal charges against their abusers. It would also extend the statute for civil suits to the victim’s 55th birthday. Those provisions would only apply to people who are abused when they are 23 or younger.

The second would amend the constitution to make it clear that retroactive lawsuits on old abuse cases are legal. It would create a two-year window for those suits, starting in 2021.

Some abuse victims have been dismayed by the compromise because amendments take two legislative sessions to pass. State Victim Advocate Jennifer Storm said it creates uncertainty.

“We could be looking at an extra four years, potentially, tacked on to this,” she said. “Survivors don’t want to wait. They would rather see it go to the courts in 2020 and let the courts decide.”

She added, though, that she considers the bill “progress.” And she said she’s confident legislative leaders — particularly Senate Republicans who have been opposed to the measure — are now committed to passing it.

Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R-Centre) said as much. The goal, he said, is to let victims heal.

“It may not be at the pace that some want, but at the same time I do believe it’ll begin a pathway for victims to seek a way to compensate for all the damages that have been done,” he said. “That’s important.”

During extended, emotional Senate floor debate, Katie Muth (D-Montgomery) was one of several lawmakers who pitched a slew of amendments that would have broadened the proposals to allow more abuse victims to sue, and would have passed a window for retroactive suits as a simple bill, instead of an amendment.

They all failed.

Muth urged her fellow lawmakers to look at this action as the beginning, not the end of Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations overhaul.

“This is a step in the right direction, but we’re leaving many behind,” she said. “Rape is the most underreported crime in the United States.”

Rozzi said he understands why some victims aren’t happy with his compromise.

But he added, “I have to be responsible for them and make sure the path I give them is successful. I don’t want to take them down a road that’s a dead end that’s ruled unconstitutional.”

The way he sees it, churches would probably move quickly to protect their assets if a window for retroactive lawsuits were passed—particularly churches that are already putting millions of dollars into internal compensation funds for victims.

If, for instance, a retroactive window were to open tomorrow, Rozzi estimated about three-quarters of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses “would file Chapter 11 reorganizational bankruptcy, and victims would probably see less compensation than they would through the compensation fund.”

Because the legislature is opting for a slower constitutional amendment, he said, churches will have time to “close these compensation funds out, take a step back, reorganize the church, and then the window will open in about a year and a half.”

A spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s Catholic Conference, a longtime opponent of retroactive abuse lawsuits, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The constitutional amendment that would open the retroactive lawsuit window cleared its first hurdle late Wednesday night: initial passage by the legislature. Lawmakers will need to pass it once more next session before it goes to voters in a statewide referendum.

The bill extending statutes of limitations going forward needs final approval by the House, which is expected to be a formality. Then it will head to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s desk, along with related measures that would clarify penalties for covering up abuse and make sure confidentiality agreements don’t prohibit victims from talking to police.

Wolf is expected to sign them soon.

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GateHouse: Football incident highlights problem of workplace violence

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

November 22, 2019

More than a week ago, 67,000 people witnessed, in person, a growing problem in this country - workplace violence.

In this case it was a member of the Cleveland Browns professional football club intentionally striking a co-worker, a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers football club, on the head with an object capable of causing serious bodily injury.

The object was a football helmet weighing between 4 and 6 pounds, swung with considerable force by a man standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 272 pounds.

In Ohio the legislature has defined assault as an act that "recklessly (or) knowingly cause(s) or attempt(s) to cause physical harm to another."

As of this writing, Myles Garrett, the Cleveland Brown who assaulted Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Mason Rudolph, has not been charged.

Garrett and Rudolph are professional athletes. Playing football is their job. They get paychecks, fringe benefits and time off. They go to lunch, they take breaks and they go home to their families every night - just like working men and women do every day nationwide.

They also, at times, face violence from co-workers in the workplace. In 2017, workplace assaults resulted in 18,400 injuries and 458 fatalities. Assaults include obvious violence like shootings, stabbings and bludgeoning as well as hitting, kicking, shoving and beating.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), "The best protection employers can offer is to establish a zero-tolerance policy toward workplace violence against or by their employees." To that end, the NFL did suspend Garrett indefinitely. However, the Cleveland police and the Cuyahoga County prosecutor have done nothing.

Workplace violence, co-worker assault, is commonly prosecuted - even when there are few witnesses and conflicting versions of the event. Recently, on a single day in suburban Philadelphia a 22-year-old man was arrested for hitting a co-worker in the head with a 12-inch metal bar at a construction site. After speaking with all the parties involved, police determined that a verbal altercation turned into a physical altercation.

The same day, Philadelphia police were told that employees of a lawn care business were cutting grass at a home when one of the employees stopped working. The employee was fired. Police said the fired employee hit his supervisor in the back of the head and then four more times in the face. He then kicked him in the face and fled.

This past week, an employee at a Domino's Pizza in Friendswood, Texas assaulted a co-worker who revealed the plot of a recently released movie. The employee was charged with assault after police were called to the shop and interviewed the victim and other employees.

Yet, in this case where a stadium full of people, and millions more witnessed the assault in real-time with many millions more having watched a video of the assault, law enforcement officials have shrugged shoulders.

Prosecutor Michael O'Malley told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that his office was not involved in the incident. Apparently, O'Malley doesn't have a television, computer, iPad or cellphone. He added that he would conduct a review for potential felony charges if the city police or prosecutors ask him to do so.

"If there were to be an investigation, it would be initiated at the city level," O'Malley said in a statement.

Football is a violent game. Every game, enormous men run into one another with great speed and force. Players assume the risk of serious injury every time they step on the field.

However, a quarterback, or any other person at work for that matter, does not assume the risk of being intentionally hit on the head with a dangerous object and ignoring such conduct sends the wrong message.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Urban and rural Pennsylvanians talk criminal justice reform

People from Adams and Philadelphia counties are hoping their shared views on the criminal justice system can make a difference, reported WITF-FM.

About 30 people came together at recent workshops run by Urban Rural Action (URA), a nonprofit group that aims to bridge the divide between people in rural and urban America.

URA partnered with the Pennsylvania Prison Society to try to build a consensus on criminal justice reforms.

“We live very differently oftentimes in urban and rural America, and when you’re able to understand the needs and the different dynamics, you’re able to better understand especially how state policies can change,” said Adams County organizer Chad Collie.

The group agreed on a set of points that include prioritizing rehabilitation over punishment, planning for re-entry after incarceration, and ensuring inmates under 18 are not held in facilities for adults.

“When you give yourself some time to talk and do that in a respectful manner, we can come to a balancing point on a lot of subjects, one of those being criminal justice reform,” Collie said.

Collie said he hopes the consensus statement from the workshops can be used to raise awareness and influence policy at the state level.

He said they plan to continue discussions on issues such as gun violence.

Collie added the workshops inspired the formation of two new groups in Adams County: one focused on re-entry services and another to examine the cash bail system.

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Thiel College-The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty-Comment No. 6

Why is the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons so important to juvenile criminal justice jurisprudence?  Explain in detail the decision's impact beyond the death penalty.

'Serving Time': Illinois using confinement as a form of discipline in schools

In Pennsylvania the Department of Corrections recently agreed not to use solitary confinement on death row inmates.  In Illinois, school districts use a form of solitary confinement on students, often very young students with disabilities, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

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PA settles with ACLU regarding solitary confinement for death row inmates

After nearly two decades in death row solitary confinement in a Pennsylvania state prison, Jimmy Dennis could no longer endure the humiliation of being strip-searched and shackled to move between the cage of his 8-by-12-foot cell, the cage of a work station in the law library, the cage of the small, fenced-in exercise yard, and the cage of a stall in the secure visiting room, where his daughter would cry when she saw him in handcuffs and chains on the other side of a glass barrier.

So, in 2008, he stopped leaving his cell.

 “I went for years with no shower, no library, no nothing,” said Dennis, who was released from prison in 2017 after a federal judge found that he was wrongly convicted of killing a teenage girl for her gold earrings in 1992 because prosecutors withheld key evidence. But he still has not recovered from the trauma. “It’s like chipping away at your soul on so many different levels, and you feel like you’re literally suffocating in your own skin.”

The Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections has agreed to sweeping changes that will allow the 136 people sentenced to death to enjoy many of the same rights as those in the general population: to be out of their cells 42.5 hours a week or more, to use the phone at least 15 minutes each day, and to have contact visits with family who have, in many cases, not hugged their loved ones in decades, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.

To settle a civil-rights lawsuit filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh-based Abolitionist Law Project, and two law firms on behalf of those housed on death row, the department also agreed to provide resocialization assistance as well as physical and mental health evaluations.

“This settlement brings Pennsylvania out of the penological dark ages and makes it a national leader in treating all incarcerated persons humanely,” Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections, Susan McNaughton, said the proposed settlement “formally memorializes many of the reforms that the DOC had already instituted.”

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The Appeal: Death by incarceration in Pennsylvania

Yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board looked at two overlapping injustices in Pennsylvania: the large number of people sentenced to die in prison and the use of this sentence against people who are considered accomplices to a crime but did not kill anyone and are convicted of felony murder. It also discussed a mechanism for addressing these problems: the state’s clemency process, sidelined for decades but now experiencing a revival through the leadership of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, writes Vaidya Gullapalli of The Appeal.

A sentence of life in prison is an extreme punishment, yet these sentences are common in the United States. The Sentencing Project has found that 1 in 7 people in prison in the U.S. are serving a life sentence or what, by virtue of sentence length, is its equivalent. There are more people sentenced to die in prison than there were people in prison in the early 1970s.

Pennsylvania is one of the worst U.S. states on the matter of life without parole sentences. There are more than 5,300 people in prison for life in the state. (In absolute numbers, only Florida has more people in prison for life.) These sentences have been incredibly concentrated, with more than half of those people sentenced in Philadelphia. And while life without parole sentences have been used disproportionately against Black and Latinx people across the country, Pennsylvania is even worse than the national average on this measure.

These numbers are the product of the tough-on-crime sentencing laws that swept the nation in the ’80s. In commentary for the Inquirer in January, Ashley Nellis of the Sentencing Project and co-author of “The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences,” identified three sets of laws that contribute to Pennsylvania’s flood of life sentences. First, a life sentence in Pennsylvania is automatically a life without parole sentence. (It is one of only five states where parole is not available for anyone sentenced to life in prison.) Second, life sentences are automatic for anyone convicted of first- or second-degree murder. This includes felony murder, in which a person who is considered an accomplice to murder but did not kill anyone, which is second-degree murder. Finally, the state charges children as young as 14 as adults, resulting in, as Nellis wrote, “the nation’s—and the world’s—largest population of lifers who were juveniles at the time of their offense.”

The problem has been clear for some time. State lawmakers have introduced bills to restore parole eligibility for some people sentenced to life in prison. There have also been legislative efforts to address the injustice of felony murder sentencing. These bills have not yet passed in the legislature.

At the local level, in Philadelphia at least, there has been an attempt to correct the practice of overcharging that contributed to so many people being sentenced to death in prison. For too long, at the local level, district attorneys have used harsh sentences as a tool to extract pleas and have made bringing the highest charges possible the default. These charging decisions, made by prosecutors with full information about sentence lengths (unlike jurors, who lack this information at trial), make extremely long sentences the norm. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is trying to change this, introducing a policy of carefully considering the full spectrum of charges available in homicide cases and evaluating which is most appropriate on a case-by-case basis.

These necessary efforts all address the front-end and the flow into the prison system. But as is the case nationally, it is important to couple these efforts with mechanisms to release the people who are already in prison. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. Fetterman, chairperson of the state Board of Pardons, has made restarting the clemency process, including for people convicted of violent crimes, a priority. Since Governor Tom Wolf took office, he has granted commutations to 11 people who had been sentenced to die in prison. In September, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons recommended commutations for nine people in prison for life. In Philadelphia, the DA’s office Conviction Review Unit examines cases for unjust sentencing as well as wrongful convictions.

The work to address Pennsylvania’s incarceration system has been underway for a long time. The movements that propelled Krasner to Philadelphia DA have also envisioned the review of extreme sentences. People who have lost loved ones both to homicides and to the prison system have described themselves as “dual victims” and called for an end to life without parole sentences.

Last year, the Philadelphia-based Abolitionist Law Center issued a report on life without parole sentences in Pennsylvania and recommendations for ending the practice.

“The situation of permanent imprisonment for more than 5,300 people in Pennsylvania is untenable,” the authors wrote. “It does not have to be this way. In the vast majority of the world, it is not. DBI [death by incarceration] sentences are another peculiarly U.S.-based phenomenon. Around much of the world such sentences are not permitted, and where they are they are not imposed at anywhere near the levels that they are imposed in this country. The racial demographics of DBI sentences are a scandal and a human rights travesty.”

And these sentences do not just affect people in prison. They afflict families and cripple communities. “The consequences of DBI sentencing extend far beyond the prison walls,” the authors continued. “The total absence of redemptive opportunity hardens punitive attitudes in society by legitimating the most destructive and divisive impulses within people: fear, vengeance, racism, and cruelty.”

To fight to end death by incarceration sentences, they wrote, is also to fight for a society ordered around different values. “Ultimately, the fight to abolish DBI sentences is a fight over what type of society we want to live in, whether we will organize around values of restoration and redemption and healing or continue down the path of fear and stigma and vengeance. The fight is about how much injustice people will tolerate from the government.”

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