Inmate

Citing gross prosecutorial misconduct and evidence suppression, a Philadelphia judge on Friday vacated the Oct. 3 execution sentence of Terrance Williams and ordered that he be granted a new penalty hearing. The ruling by Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina indefinitely put the brakes on an execution decades in the making. Williams' first-degree murder conviction is unchanged by the ruling, meaning that the jury at his new penalty hearing will determine if he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.

A former corrections officer is now headed to jail for smuggling contraband in and out of a federal prison in southern New Jersey where he worked. Job Brown, 39, of Bridgeton, was recently sentenced to a year and a day in prison. He also must serve three years of supervised release once he's freed. Brown had pleaded guilty in June to accepting bribes, admitting that he received $3,600 between January and March 2012. Prosecutors say Brown smuggled in tobacco and vitamin supplements to a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton and smuggled out about 900 postage stamps for the same inmate.

A Camden man faces a potential sentence of 60 years in prison after being convicted by an Atlantic County jury Friday of robbing a woman in a casino parking garage three years ago. Authorities say Dashand Chase, 23, and an accomplice netted $150 in the holdup on Aug. 4, 2009. Chase also was convicted of bribery and witness-tampering charges related to his attempts to thwart prosecution after his arrest. The victim, a 39-year-old woman from Egg Harbor Township, told authorities that two masked men, one with a gun, approached her as she was getting out of her car in the garage at Bally's Atlantic City Casino around 9 p.m. She said she was punched in the mouth by one of the assailants.

FIVE MONTHS before Terrance Williams, at age 18, murdered the man whose slaying has landed him on Pennsylvania's death row, he murdered another man. Between those murders, Williams pulled an armed robbery, court records show. Before that, at age 16, Williams broke into the Mount Airy home of an elderly couple on Christmas Eve. He woke them by pressing the muzzle of a rifle against the woman's neck, threatened to blow her head off, fired the gun three times above the couple and ransacked their home before fleeing with valuables, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Lawyers for condemned Philadelphia killer Terrance "Terry" Williams Tuesday afternoon asked the state Board of Pardons to reconsider Williams' petition for clemency, citing purportedly inaccurate information a prosecutor provided the board at the hearing on Monday. Though the board voted 3 to 2 for clemency for Williams, 46, who is scheduled for execution on Oct. 3, a unanimous vote was needed for the nonbinding recommendation to be sent to Gov. Corbett. In a letter to the board, Williams' lawyers asked for reconsideration because of the way Assistant District Attorney Thomas Dolgenos answered a question from pardons board member Harris Gubernick.

OBA JACKSON says Philadelphia's prisons were so overpopulated recently that he didn't have room even to pray. At the end of last year, Jackson was living in a crowded three-man cell. As a Muslim, he needed space for bowing and standing. But, he said, his cell mate wouldn't let him move furniture to do that. To make matters worse, he said, his cell mate hit him, and when he tried to file a complaint, he was told there was "no paperwork. " Jackson is one of hundreds of recent inmates, represented by the law firm Williams, Cuker and Berezofsky, who have sued the city.

COLUMBUS, OHIO - A condemned Ohio inmate who weighs at least 480 pounds wants his upcoming execution delayed, saying that his weight could lead to a "torturous and lingering death. " Ronald Post, who shot and killed a hotel clerk in northern Ohio almost 30 years ago, said that his weight, vein access, scar tissue and other medical problems raise the likelihood that his executioners would encounter severe problems. He's also so big that the execution gurney might not hold him, lawyers for Post said in federal court papers filed Friday.

DEFENSE ATTORNEYS for the Philadelphia man scheduled to be executed on Oct. 3 persuaded a judge Friday to schedule a hearing to hear testimony from witnesses whom the attorneys allege covered up evidence during the condemned man's 1986 trial. The ruling, made over the objections of city prosecutors, was a ray of sunlight for Terrence Williams, 46, who is on deck to become the first person executed in Pennsylvania in 13 years. He is on death row for the June 1984 murder of Amos Norwood, 56, a West Mount Airy chemist whom Williams beat to death with a tire iron, set on fire and robbed.

Two Delaware County inmates were mistakenly released from the prison in June, officials have confirmed. One of the pair told The Inquirer he was let go even after he alerted prison officials that he was ineligible for release. Seven inmates walked out of the privately run lockup in error in 2010. County officials issued a statement that the council had been informed there were "inappropriate discharges" from George Hill Correctional Facility in Thornbury Township. County spokeswoman Trisha Cofiell said the two inmates were returned to custody within 12 hours.