A Million Stories

Evan M. Lopez

Last week, in one of his last political acts as governor, Ed Rendell announced the commutation of life terms for three long-serving felons — Keith Smith, William Fultz and Tyrone Werts — who had been sentenced to life in prison despite not having killed anyone. They were, however, accomplices in three separate crimes in which someone was killed — under Pennsylvania's felony-murder rules, that's good enough to make them de facto second-degree murderers.

Rendell explained his decision, noting that none of the men was the "actual killer," that the Pardons Board had recommended commutation, and that in some cases the "actual killer" had received a shorter sentence or been released. What he didn't explain was why he chose those three men, and no one else. There are no figures available on how many of Pennsylvania's 4,814 lifers fall under the same category, but the number is probably large.

And unlike other prisoners, criminals sentenced to life are ineligible for parole — whether they pulled the trigger or not, and regardless of how they conduct themselves in jail. For these prisoners, the only way out is commutation.

"The idea of reconciliation, of forgiveness, of grace, of giving a person a second chance is totally obliterated by the Pennsylvania state laws where people convicted for life are concerned," says Joe Heckel, a longtime activist with Fight for Lifers, an organization that advocates for lifers.

"I think it's wonderful that three men received commutations," he adds, noting that testimony before the Pardons Board revealed that two of the men had saved the lives of correctional officers while prisoners themselves. "But I can't think of why only three men deserve commutations and not many more."

Commutations, in fact, have diminished over the past few decades to a trickle. Under former Gov. Milton Shapp, for example, more than 300 life sentences were commuted from 1971 to 1978. But in 1997, the Pennsylvania Constitution was changed to require a unanimous decision for all commutations from a five-person Pardons Board that now includes a prison warden and a crime victim. Since then, only six commutations have been granted in Pa.

And don't hold your breath for more: Gov.-elect Tom Corbett who, as attorney general, was on the Pardons Board, didn't appear at four of six such votes during his tenure.

"Most of us now feel commutation is dead," Heckel says, "no matter what [lifers] do, however well they turn out, however respectable citizens they are inside the prison."

—Matt Stroud

Live and Let Die-alysis

The U.S. has one of the highest mortality rates for dialysis patients in the industrialized world. To make matters worse, a recent study found that dialysis patients were more likely to die while receiving treatment from for-profit chains than nonprofits. But for years, the government declined to release info on the performance of individual dialysis providers — until recently, when ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization, obtained the data through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The ProPublica data reveals mortality rates, how well infections are treated, and the likelihood of receiving a kidney transplant, among other factors. Most of Philly's 40 centers performed just fine, according to the government data. Some — like the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia — even passed with flying colors. But five Philly facilities received troubling scores:

1. Fresenius Medical Care, at 4216 Market St., has a transplant rate that's 49 percent worse than the government expected, meaning patients will have to wait longer than usual to receive their first kidney transplants. This, in turn, lowers their chance of survival.

2. The overall mortality rate at Albert Einstein Medical Center, at 5501 Old York Road, is 63 percent worse than expected. Its mortality rate for first-year patients is 42 percent worse.

3. The mortality rate at DaVita's Cobbs Creek, at 1700 S. 60th St., is 56 percent worse than expected.

4. The mortality rate at Fresenius' Fairmount location, at 1241 N. Taney St., is 52 percent worse than expected. Its first-year mortality rate is 66 percent worse, and its transplant rate is 84 percent worse.

5. Nearby, the Girard Dialysis Center, at Eighth Street and Girard Avenue, has a mortality rate that's 54 percent worse than expected, and a transplant rate that's 89 percent worse.

Now you know.

—Holly Otterbein

Kiosk-er the Grouch

Criticism of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) — the body that oversees Pa.'s state-controlled alcohol sales — isn't exactly hard to come by. But we've never heard of anyone delivering it with the passion, and surprising literary gusto, of David Wanamaker, president of the Independent State Store Union (ISSU), which represents 730 state liquor store managers.

His energy is understandable: Gov.-elect Tom Corbett has proposed selling off the state's wine and liquor stores to private buyers, which would presumably destroy his union.

Wanamaker's most recent comments, however, have been directed not at Corbett but at the PLCB itself, which, just before Christmas, shut down 30 wine-vending "kiosks" in supermarkets across the state. The kiosks — obtained via a single-bid contract with a company whose owner donated money to and worked for Gov. Ed Rendell's campaign — featured a built-in Breathalyzer, ID scanner and video link to live PLCB employees. It was all part of a pilot program to see whether Pennsylvania could offer wine in grocery stores — you know, like most states do (without resorting to automatic kiosks).

But the machines were having problems — among them, failing to dispense wine. Auditor general Jack Wagner has announced an audit of the kiosk system.

Wanamaker, however, declined to wait for that investigation's outcome to announce his verdict — at length and with veritably Shakespearean intensity: An open letter from the ISSU titled "'Rube Goldberg' PLCB Wine Vending Machine Boondoggle" calls the shutting down of the machines "proof of the intentional, internal sabotage of the state store system," for example, and calls the state's use of its legally entitled 30 days to respond to the union's Right to Know request for incidents of kiosk malfunction "an overt, deliberate attempt to stonewall" them, representing "deliberate sabotage" of the state stores.

In an article by trade publication Marketing Business Weekly consisting almost entirely of quotations from Wanamaker, he waxes even more poetic, calling the kiosks " paradigms of the state stores' destruction," and asserting that the PLCB's statewide computerized system is "an unparalleled disaster," and, what's more, that a $10 million contract to rebrand the PLCB is "unparalleled waste."

Despite his ire for the PLCB, though, Wanamaker is even more explicit in his defense of the state store system — the proposed elimination of which, he says in conclusion, "is paramount [sic] to an unfettered assault on the control system and the common good — internally and externally."

—Isaiah Thompson