Wolf commutes life sentences of 2 Pennsylvania inmates

HARRISBURG. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s governor on Thursday commuted the life sentences of two inmates, including a woman who said she let her newborn drown in a portable toilet because she was afraid of how her parents would react to the birth.

Democratic Gov. Wolf issued one order in the case of Tina Brosius, 43, who had been convicted of first-degree murder of the infant in a suburban Harrisburg park.

Wolf also commuted the life sentence of Raymond Jordan, 58, for a 1985 stabbing homicide in Philadelphia.

Both will be released to a halfway house, where they will be for a year before they can seek release on parole.

Brosius was sentenced to life in 1995. She testified that she thought the child was stillborn because she did not feel it move during pregnancy and it did not make a sound when dropped into the toilet.

“I didn’t look at it or touch it,” she said in 1995. “It didn’t make a sound. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what am I going to do?’”

Officials say she is the first female inmate in Pennsylvania to have a life sentence commuted since 1990.

Jordan pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, robbery and conspiracy for killing and taking $400 from a man form whom he had sought a loan.