A parent's worst nightmare is outliving a child. A parent's worst nightmare is sending a troubled child somewhere for his own safety and then learning he is dead. In November 2006, Lawrence and Patricia Keohane turned their son into police, with hopes that prison time wou......

One of the reasons Lawrence and Patricia Keohane felt so strongly about suing Lancaster County Prison after their son, Joseph, killed himself there was to persuade the county to improve conditions for other suicidal inmates. Kevin Allen, the Keohanes' Lancaster attorney, said he doesn't k......

If all goes as planned, Lancaster County Prison should have an acting warden by the end of the month. Paul Smeal, retired superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, has not yet been officially confirmed as the corrections official slated to come to Lancaster for t......

  Audai Umere Dutton graduated from Coatesville Area High School last June. Six months later, he stole a car and drove it to Downingtown. Police pursued and arrested him. In just 12 days, the defendant passed through Downingtown's Magisterial District Court and was transfer......

  York County's commitment to quickly moving criminal cases begins well before trial. The Sunday News observed the March 20 pretrial conferences at the York County Judicial Center, where five judges heard the status of 211 cases. A reporter also attended Lancaster County pr......

  The wide Susquehanna separates the counties of Lancaster and York. So does a measurable difference in their systems of processing criminal cases. The Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas uses what judges refer to as a hybrid system. The most serious cases are handl......

  In the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas, several different judges might handle a criminal case before it's resolved. But in the federal court system, the same judge follows a case from beginning to end. The 94 district courts in the federal system adopted an individ......

Can justice be undone by the speed of York County's criminal justice system? It's possible, said York District Attorney Tom Kearney. "There should be a balance to this," he said. "Justice should not be just a treadmill process. Our system is very effective in moving cases, but is there ......

  Northampton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Leonard N. Zito stepped into his courtroom at 9 a.m. sharp Thursday and surveyed the 90 defendants seated before him. It was arraignment day and the court had much work to do. Northampton County holds arraignment day twice a month......

Click on the links below to see the documents used in the Sunday News series "Justice Delayed."   Administrative Office Of Pennsylvania Courts research and statistics: http://www.pacour......

  Lancaster County's customarily collegial legal community is in the midst of a spirited debate over what to do about its criminal justice system. The district attorney, clerk of courts and some defense attorneys want the Court of Common Pleas to make fundamental changes in the ......

    Every Tuesday at noon, the 15 judges of Lancaster County's Court of Common Pleas gather in their meeting room on the third floor of the Duke Street courthouse to discuss court issues. In recent weeks, the judges have debated proposed changes to the criminal cour......

  At 9 a.m. Monday, Feb. 13, Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Judge David L. Ashworth surveyed the more than 50 lawyers in his courtroom and made an unusual announcement. "These are pretrial conferences for the 200 oldest cases," he said. "As you know, continuances will be......

  Should the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas collect and spend fees taken from convicts and violators of probation and parole? Or should all money retrieved from criminal offenders go into the county's general fund, to be distributed from there? The court and the Lan......

  Critics who call for reform of Lancaster County's criminal court system often point to its family court as a role model for efficiency. The local family court adopted the "one family, one judge" concept in 2000, at the suggestion of a judicial task force. In "one family, ......

  While individual calendaring — one judge overseeing each case from beginning to end — is the criminal court plan many critics of Lancaster County's current system prefer, it is not the only alternative management approach. Another comprehensive way of managing case......

Judge Michael A. Georgelis sometimes sat for less than 30 minutes in a courtroom during a two-week criminal court term. That was before he became president judge of the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas. "Judges were being underutilized," Georgelis recalled. "That's sinful. You jus......

  While the number of criminal cases winding their way through the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas continues to climb, one program kept 1,003 cases off last year's overcrowded court calendar. Alternative rehabilitative disposition allows mostly first-time offenders to avo......

  When running for office, 10 of the 15 Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas judges — including five of the eight now presiding over criminal court — supported the idea of one judge overseeing a case from start to finish. So why haven't these candidates-turned-judg......

  Fifteen men dressed in head-to-toe chocolate brown fill the dialysis unit's chairs. Machines around the room buzz and whir, slowly filtering waste and fluid from the men's bodies, a job their failing kidneys can no longer handle. A small television fleetingly captures one......

  What's behind the increase of older inmates in the state prison system? Experts point to everything from aging baby boomers and longer life spans to overall prison population growth and a trend toward stiffer sentences. "Lifers" make up a sizable portion of the elderly st......

  Older offenders who responded to a Sunday News inquiry said they get little special treatment from prison staff or fellow inmates young enough to be their children or grandchildren. One possibility haunts older inmates more than any other: "We ... fear that we may die in here,......

 
EDWARD WILLIAM RAWLINGS
AGE: 87 CRIMES: Involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, corruption of minors and indecent exposure. Rawlings assaulted a young girl in Caernarvon Township over a four-year period beginning in 1984, when......

  Prescott House, the last group home for juvenile offenders of its kind in Lancaster County, closed in July following negative state inspections. Its future is uncertain. The group home's owner, Sylvester "Casey" Jones, closed the facility voluntarily, but if he reopens it......

In-home treatment programs for juvenile offenders are in. Group homes, increasingly, are out. The number of juveniles being sent to group homes or other juvenile correctional facilities has been declining in Lancaster County and in most parts of the country for the past decade. ......

  A national public policy organization reports that Lancaster County has the second highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges among American metropolitan areas with populations between 500,000 and one million. The Transportation for America report, released last week......

    Even when the armored truck didn't show up with her prize money, the elderly woman still refused to believe that she'd been scammed. The first too-good-to-be-true phone call came in June. The 83-year-old woman, who lives in a local retirement community, was told......

  Some companies that play an unintentional role in common scams are doing their part to warn seniors. Publishers Clearing House cautions website visitors that legitimate sweepstakes companies don't ask "winners" for money to claim a prize. That's against the law. And if a ......

  Shame keeps many seniors from reporting phone and mail scams. Victims don't want to tell their children, let alone a public agency, said Jacqueline Burch, the Lancaster County Office of Aging's executive director. "What we hear about is probably the tip of the iceberg," s......

  The 64-year-old Lancaster amputee depended on his personal care aide to help him bathe, dress and fix nutritious meals. But instead, police allege, the aide abused her patient's vulnerability and trust, neglecting him so badly that he developed skin ulcers deep enough to reach......

  Following are the first cases to be prosecuted by the new elder abuse unit: • Dorian Rodney Baldwin, 46, of Ephrata, is charged with two counts of theft for allegedly taking $62,600 from a 74-year-old woman. The Ephrata woman wrote checks to Baldwin from October 2009......

Every day more than 5,100 cars and trucks rumble across the worn surface of the 115-year-old steel truss bridge that carries Route 772 over railroad tracks through Mount Joy Borough. The span's trusses are pockmarked with rust spots. Exposed patches of metal create a checkerboard pattern on ......

  James "Jay" Hodapp Jr. was mild-mannered and good-natured. He had a sly sense of humor. One day he "planted" plastic flowers in the garden of his Manor Township home to tease his wife, who was allergic to the blooms. But Hodapp also was an alcoholic who suffered from clin......

  Physical abuse and sexual assault by correctional officers. Medical neglect. Mishandling of suicide threats. Illegal strip searches. Indifference of prison management. Those are complaints brought by county prison inmates or survivors in eight lawsuits settled with Lancaster C......

  At least seven lawsuits charging serious abuse by correctional officers or neglect by medical and other personnel at Lancaster County Prison are in the federal court system now. They include two cases in which prison inmates committed suicide and one in which an inmate died be......

Public safety radio in Lancaster County is part of a nationwide crazy-quilt pattern of emergency communications that hasn't lived up to its promises. The federal government has spent $7 billion over the past seven years trying to get all first responders in the country to communicate on t......

  This article is a follow-up to last Sunday's investigative report, "Buried under an avalanche of warrants." The reporter rode along last week with constables trying to serve warrants. Hard knocks on a front door shattered the 5 a.m. silence. "Open the ......

Jehu Young? Lancaster County constables are looking for you on seven warrants for unpaid parking ticket and traffic violations. And Maria Perez? The warrant you were issued in 2002, because you didn't make sure your child got to school? It hasn't gone away. Jehu and Maria are ......

  When Rick Gray campaigned against incumbent Mayor Charlie Smithgall in 2005, he criticized the Smithgall administration for its inability to reduce outstanding warrants —22,000 at the time — in the city and Lancaster Township. Five years later, according to informa......

The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office faces some of the same problems other law enforcement agencies encounter when trying to serve arrest warrants. People move and cannot be found, but arrest warrants — in some cases almost 50 years old — stay on the their books. But c......

Speeding is an easy problem to identify. But it's not so simple to solve. The district attorney's office and municipal police departments across Lancaster County report that excessive speed is a factor in most traffic fatalities they investigate. And nearly half of the fat......

Lancaster County traffic deaths dropped significantly in 2009. But local officials said it's too soon to tell whether the decline marks the end of a decade-long rise in traffic deaths here or is merely a recession-related aberration. Over the past 10 years, the number of traffic f......

First of two parts The first accident happened on a June evening in 2004, when five teenage boys stopped playing cards and set out with more than enough time to make an 11 p.m. curfew. Minutes later, a motorcyclist driving at least 23 mph over the speed limit slammed into......

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Route 772, near Route 283, Rapho Township
Issues: Speed, impaired drivers, curves Route 772 passes through a long corridor of farmland, connecting Manheim and Mount Joy. East of Mount Joy, limited-access Route 283 bisects the road, and around that in......

Route 30, Gap
Issues: Heavy traffic, speed, alcohol, crossover At 18,700 vehicles a day, the sheer volume of traffic on Route 30 near Gap makes it a challenging road to navigate. An endless stream of tractor-trailers, a small restaurant/service stati......

Route 272/Oregon Pike near St. Thomas and Suncrest roads, Manheim Township
Issues: speed, driver impairment Motorists routinely exceed the 45-mph speed limit on the busy 1.75-mile stretch of Route 272/Oregon Pike that runs from Valley Road to Oregon Dairy....

Route 230/North Market Street, near Zeager Road, northwest of Elizabethtown
Issues: speed, driver impairment, curve, narrow shoulder Since 2002, three young drivers have died on Route 230/North Market Street, just outside Elizabethtown. All three cra......

New Danville Pike (Route 324) north of New Danville, Lancaster and Pequea townships
Issue: speed, curves Since 2002, three people have died in crashes on a 1-mile stretch of Route 324, north of New Danville. The most recent crash was in December 2008. ...

In the last 10 years, 59 pedestrians died on Lancaster County roads. Nine of the deaths happened on stretches of 1.5 miles or less on three heavily traveled roads.   ROUTE 462/LINCOLN HIGHWAY, EAST LAMPETER TOWNSHIP Since 2000, drivers have st......

In summer 2005, the Lancaster County Commissioners announced plans for the county to borrow as much as $100 million, most of it to preserve additional farmland. The commissioners actually borrowed only $37.5 million over three years. They had said they anticipated that future boards of co......

Seven years ago, the Ephrata School District signed an agreement with the late Elam Lauver, whose farm had been the 11th ever preserved in Lancaster County in 1984. Under the contract, the district would build an access road to a new elementary school through the preserved land. In exchan......

What have county taxpayers and Lancaster Farmland Trust donors received in return for the tens of millions of dollars they have pumped into farmland preservation in Lancaster County? Beyond saving tens of thousands of productive agricultural acres forever, it is clear that they have helpe......

Don Ranck said he hasn't changed his mind about Lancaster County's farm preservation program since it began three decades ago. "I don't see any redeeming value in it," the Paradise Township farmer and chairman of township supervisors said bluntly. "Let the marketplace work. Keep g......

Gary Van Dyke, a large animal veterinarian who lives in the village of Churchtown, began discussing land preservation with farmers in Caernarvon Township more than a decade ago. "We talked about how we could do something different here," he recalled. "We can't afford the infrastructure th......

Henry Beiler was one of the first Amish farmers in Lancaster County to preserve his land forever. In separate transactions in the 1980s, he preserved half of his Upper Leacock Township livestock, dairy, hog and crop farm with the county's Agricultural Preserve Board and the other half wit......

As financial resources dwindle, both the county's Agricultural Preserve Board and the private Lancaster Farmland Trust are spending more time and resources monitoring hundreds of existing easements. Acquiring easements is the part of the preservation process everyone hears about. But keep......

The Environmental Protection Agency recently presented a "smart growth achievement award" to the Lancaster County Planning Commission. But the county's chief planner, James Cowhey, said the community as a whole deserved the award from the federal agency because it is "preserving agricultu......

Dave Bender agrees with the generally held view that mandatory drug testing gives students a way to resist peer pressure. Sort of. "But I will disagree — to my grave — that that's the best we can do for kids," said the director of Compass Mark, an organization that pro......

Manheim Township School District is considering adopting a random drug testing program. According to Stephanie Roy, a parent who chairs a subcommittee of the Manheim Township Community Life Task Force, her committee is seeking more public input before making a recommendation to the school......

When Penn Manor High School implemented its drug testing policy, Roanna Witmer decided to opt out of extracurricular activities. Not because she was afraid she'd get caught using drugs. For her, it was a matter of principle. "It was because I don't do drugs at all," the 2009 Penn ......

Robert Frick wasn't in favor of mandatory student drug-testing programs. The superintendent of Lampeter-Strasburg School District said he saw what other districts were doing and thought, "Testing the kids ... involved in extracurriculars didn't make sense. They're usually too busy to be i......

Synthetic pesticides don't belong on organic produce. But studies published in Consumer Reports and academic journals show that conventional pesticides occasionally end up on organic salad greens or apple skins, due to past soil contamination, drift from neighboring farms or actions of un......

As a small farmer marketing his own produce, one Leola-area Amish man  couldn't always sell his entire harvest. But that changed once his farm was certified organic. "Now I sell it all, at a very decent price," said the man, who is now a member of the Lancaster Farm Fresh co-......

Only foods produced and processed by certified operations, according to National Organic Program standards, can be sold, labeled or represented as organic. Operators who knowingly violate NOP regulations face a civil penalty of up to $11,000. (Operations with annual organic sales of $5,00......

To find out if a farmer or producer is certified organic: The majority of state and local operations are certified by Pennsylvania Certified Organic (paorganic.org). Other certifiers who work with local growers and producers include Global Organic Alliance Inc. (...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture accredits 100 domestic and international agencies to certify organic farms and operations. Certification hinges on an annual inspection. Individual certifiers determine exact experience and training requirements for the inspectors they hire. Penn......

Lancaster General Health, the county's largest employer, operates by far the largest of Lancaster County's hospitals, serving a population area of nearly 1 million. Its profits in 2008 topped $100 million. It made more money than all but two other hospitals in Pennsylvania. Is it ......

Executive director Joseph R. Morales Sr. says the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition is committed to operating transparently. But he won't reveal the names of his camera-monitoring staff, saying he fears they would become targets for unwanted attention or even criminal retaliation....

The Lancaster Community Safety Coalition's efforts to screen its camera-monitoring staff appear largely successful. The records of most staff members background-checked by this newspaper show only minor blemishes, such as parking tickets. But there is one exception. Junell R. Wrigh......

The Lancaster Community Safety Coalition's 19-member board of directors is intended to represent a cross-section of the city's residents. According to the coalition's bylaws, five members come from city government. The mayor appoints representatives from his office, the police bureau, fir......

The snapshots of anonymous faces navigating city streets are at once mundane and riveting. A man slowly enters a crosswalk, leaning on a cane. A woman hauls groceries and a toddler from her car. A taxi careens through a narrow alley. Today, like any other day, thousands of residen......

What's legal when it comes to cameras?   EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: What Lancaster'......

Surveillance cameras are only the most visible of the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition's crime-prevention initiatives. The group's three-pronged approach also includes mobilizing neighbors and using strategic design elements, like lighting and plantings, to improve safety. The......

The Lancaster Community Safety Coalition's video-monitoring program is the largest, but not the only camera surveillance program in the city.   ...