Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), who is running against Dr. Mehmet Oz for the state’s open United States Senate seat, helped free a convicted first-degree murderer from prison in 2019.
In November 1973, Raymond Johnson, along with Kenneth Wayne Smith, lured 27-year-old Charles J. “Blinky” Jeffers to a residence in York County, Pennsylvania, where they shot and stabbed him to death before robbing him and attempting to dispose of his body.
According to accounts at the time, Johnson referred to himself as “a son of the devil” and had bragged about being a hit man who “had killed several people.”
A York County sheriff’s deputy testified in the murder trial that Johnson had threatened potential witnesses with murder if they testified in the case against him. Ultimately, Johnson was convicted in 1975 of Jeffers’ murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2019, as chair of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, Fetterman urged Gov. Tom Wolf (D) to free Johnson from prison even as the York County district attorney’s office opposed the commutation.
Fetterman said at the time that Johnson, while in prison, had “demonstrated 36 years of impeccable behavior” and thus deserved to be released at 68 years old. Three months later, Wolf granted Fetterman’s request and released Johnson from prison.
Formerly mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Fetterman has been a longtime advocate of emptying the state’s prisons. For instance, he has said he wants to release from prison close to 13,000 inmates across the state.
Likewise, Fetterman has said his number one priority is ending Pennsylvania’s law that allows courts to sentence convicted criminals to life in prison without parole. In 2021, he advocated for eliminating the state’s mandatory life without parole sentence for suspects convicted of second-degree murder.
Fetterman, as Breitbart News reported, has overseen the release of 13 convicted murderers while heading the Board of Pardons. Also, one of Fetterman’s appointees to the board sought to end mandatory life without parole sentences for first and second-degree murderers.
In 2019, Fetterman successfully lobbied the Board of Pardons to eliminate application fees for convicts seeking pardons. Also that year, he hired two former inmates convicted of murder who had their life sentences commuted.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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