COVID-19 continues to have an impact in prisons across the nation. One inmate who has died from COVID-19 was reportedly in jail for a crime he did not commit.
On April 14, the Pennsylvania Innocence Project reported that Rudolph Sutton, 67, was the first prisoner in Pennsylvania to die after contracting the coronavirus. An inmate at SCI-Phoenix in Montgomery County, Sutton was being assisted by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project to fight for an early release.
The Pennsylvania Innocence Project released a statement following Sutton’s death.
“One of the greatest concerns in our system of justice is that there are wrongly convicted innocent people in prison,” Nan Feyler, executive director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, said in the organization’s press release. “That concern becomes a tragic failing when such a person dies – all the more so when swift action can prevent a person’s death from happening.”
Lisa Graybill, who serves as deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, recently spoke with rolling out about the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons and what can be done to reverse this trend.
“COVID-19 enters facilities from the outside,” Graybill said. “It comes in with staff members or vendors or people being transferred in. Once it gets in, it spreads so rapidly. There is a lack of availability of personal protective equipment, so they’re just sitting ducks.”
