WHYY: “Dannielle Hadley remembers the moment a superintendent knocked on her cell door at Muncy State Correctional Institution last year.

‘She said, “I think you should sit down,”‘ Hadley said. ‘She read the paper to me and said that Governor Shapiro signed my paper, and I was commuted.’

Hadley first walked through Muncy’s gates roughly 38 years ago. She was a 23-year-old sentenced to life without parole for first-degree murder. She said she was scared and had no idea what would happen next. Her role in the crime was handing the man who would later commit the murder handcuffs to restrain the victim.

Nearly four decades later, Pennsylvania commuted the life sentences of two women, Hadley and Marie Scott, on the same day….

For thousands of people serving ‘death by incarceration’ sentences in the state, these two pathways represent the difference between dying inside and coming home, said Rupalee Rashatwar, a staff attorney at the Abolitionist Law Center.

‘They’re the only two vehicles that currently exist,” Rashatwar said. “And they just don’t give meaningful pathways for freedom.'”

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