Trenton Bureau
The inmate is 84 and was hospitalized with COVID-19 last year. He’s showing signs of early-onset dementia. He’s kept a clean disciplinary record for more than half of the nearly 50 years he’s been in prison.
He saw the prospect of freedom several years ago when a state panel of judges granted him parole, but a technicality kept him locked behind bars.
A team of advocates and lawyers have tried for months to convince Gov. Phil Murphy through a back channel to use his executive power to let him spend what may be his final days at home with one of his daughters, but they said the front office has stopped responding to their entreaties.
The inmate is 84 and was hospitalized with COVID-19 last year. He’s showing signs of early-onset dementia. He’s kept a clean disciplinary record for more than half of the nearly 50 years he’s been in prison.
He saw the prospect of freedom several years ago when a state panel of judges granted him parole, but a technicality kept him locked behind bars.
A team of advocates and lawyers have tried for months to convince Gov. Phil Murphy through a backchannel to use his executive power to let him spend what may be his final days at home with one of his daughters, but they said the front office has stopped responding to their entreaties.
He's 84 and battled COVID. Should Sundiata Acoli get out of NJ prison? dailyrecord.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyrecord.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Trenton Bureau
Johnell McCoy served nearly two years in prison and in a halfway house before a New Jersey appeals court threw out his convictions, citing errors made by a judge and a prosecutor who "embellished" testimony during his trial.
"I fought for my life, to come home to my family, to come home to my kids," McCoy, 42, said in a recent interview. "It was a whole nightmare.”
The lengthy appeal wasn't the only nightmare McCoy faced in New Jersey's criminal justice system.
As the appeal slogged through the court system, the coronavirus swept through state prisons. McCoy and his lawyers asked courts and corrections officials about a dozen times to release him. They cited three health conditions that make McCoy especially vulnerable to COVID-19.
Trenton Bureau
Coronavirus cases within New Jersey prisons are climbing again as state officials are making their plan to vaccinate more than 12,100 inmates and the thousands of staff that come and go each day.
Garden State prisons got hammered by the virus, giving the state the unwanted distinction of the highest prison death rate in the country. And with the first vaccines delivered to the state last week, officials are figuring out where prison inmates fit in the rollout plan.
Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday that they would be in phase 1B, after the state's about 650,000 front-line health care workers and certain long-term care facility residents.