Jail, Prison Release | featured news

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.

Casey Anthony has been released from a Florida jail, 12 days after she was acquitted of murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter.

Maine police are searching for a maximum-security inmate who was mistakenly released from the county jail.

Switzerland denied a request to release film director Roman Polanski, who was arrested in September after fleeing sentencing for a decades-old sex charge, a spokesman said on Tuesday.