Prison, Inmate | featured news

Stephen Slevin's 22 months in solitary left him traumatized and weak, but he'll soon be a multimillionaire for his suffering.

The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastoy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway's capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I'm taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I'm exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. "I'm Petter," he says.

Faced with the daunting task of evaluating more than 34,000 drug cases handled by a Massachusetts chemist accused of misconduct, prosecutors and defense attorneys are starting with 1,140 cases of people who are already serving prison sentences based on potentially tainted evidence.

The attorney for an Ohio death-row inmate set for execution says the condemned man is sorry for killing two strangers 23 years ago and wants to give their families justice.

Attorneys for a 486-pound Ohio death row inmate claim that the execution procedure "simply will not work" on their client and will cause him a "torturous and lingering death." Ronald Post, 53, was sentenced to death in 1985 for the shooting death of Helen Vantz, a desk clerk at a motel in Elyria, Ohio.

After 49 years behind bars, the nation's longest-serving female inmate is free. Betty Smithey, 69, whose prison term began following her conviction for the murder of a 15-month-old Phoenix girl in 1963, appeared at a parole hearing Monday morning and by that afternoon walked, with the aid of a cane, out of the gates of the Perryville state prison.

At least 382 people died in the fire in central Honduras and there are new questions about exactly what happened that night in the overcrowded prison... Outrage over the fire increased after the president of the country's supreme court admitted that only 40% of the inmates in the prison had been convicted. The majority were awaiting trial or waiting for charges to be filed against them.

A forensic official in Honduras says a fire that swept through a prison has killed at least 272 inmates.

A Vermont prison inmate who makes stationery and license plates has gotten the best of the state police by adding the image of a pig to the state decal on their cruisers.

Orange County prosecutors plan to argue at a parole hearing Wednesday that an ex-model convicted of killing her husband and then cooking and eating parts of his body two decades ago has not reformed and should remain behind bars.