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The Saga of Reginald McFadden

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The Reginald McFadden commutation is a complex tale of mistakes, coincidences, and government officials courting fate. Regina Austin discusses.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 15, 2024

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This video video discusses the impact of Pennsylvania's clemency process, particularly focusing on the case of Reginald McFadden, who was sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) but was later granted commutation. McFadden's release in 1994 led to a series of violent crimes, prompting concerns in the state about the commutation process, which saw a significant decline in approvals following his release.

The speaker compares McFadden's case to that of Willie Horton, whose crimes during a weekend furlough in Massachusetts affected political campaigning and public perception of parole. As a result of McFadden's actions, Pennsylvania politicians changed the clemency process, adding a victim advocate to the Board of Pardons and creating a requirement for unanimous votes for future commutations.

Despite these changes, the text points out that broader systemic issues remain in assessing candidates for commutation. McFadden's release illustrated flaws in evaluating inmate rehabilitation and character, leading to fear and skepticism about granting future commutations. Reflections on McFadden's behavior after his release reveal a lack of true rehabilitation, as he quickly reverted to criminal activity.

The speaker emphasizes the need for reform in the commutation process, including suggestions for legislative changes to allow for fairer evaluations, provisions for lifers to achieve parole, and a more transparent system. Additionally, there's a focus on the importance of acknowledging the victims of crime and the society's responsibility to those incarcerated. The discourse also highlights the ongoing struggle against racial stereotypes in the criminal justice system and the persistent challenge of ensuring fairness and equity in clemency proceedings.

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Let me first set out, the, the context.

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Uh, in pen. In Pennsylvania,

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a life sentence means life without the

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possibility of parole.

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It's also known as LWOP and Death by Incarceration.

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Uh, a lifer who has demonstrated rehabilitation

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and has performed meritoriously, in service

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to the community may achieve release alive,

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through commutation of his sentence

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that requires an affirmative recommendation

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of the Board of Pardons.

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And a sign off by the governor.

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Between 1991

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and 1994, 285 lifers,

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including nine women were granted commutation.

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Between 1995

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and 2014, only six lifers were granted commutation.

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What happened? Well, one of the things that happened was

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that Reginald McFadden, who was serving an LWOP sentence,

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was commuted in 1994.

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Within 90 days of his release, he had killed

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and robbed a man, raped, murdered,

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and robbed an older woman, and raped, kidnapped,

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and robbed a second woman.

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And he was subsequently implicated in the murder of a third.

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Reginald McFadden is Pennsylvania's Willie Horton.

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Um, who is Willie Horton?

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William Willie Horton was the black

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Massachusetts man who was serving an LWOP sentence,

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who was given a weekend furlough from prison.

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He traveled to Maryland

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where he raped a white woman assaulted her partner

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and mad off with the man's car.

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His crimes sank the political fortunes of Democrat

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Governor Michael Dukakis, who was running

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for president in 1988.

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Dukakis political rivals, George HW Bush

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and Lee Atwater counted on the power

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of racial stereotyping

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and successfully used images of a

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wild looking Horton to link Dukakis with the threat

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that black criminals pose to law abiding white America,

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Dukakis one Bush, I'm sorry, Dukakis Lawson Bush won.

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Now in Pennsylvania,

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Reginald McFadden had a similar effect on the Governatorial

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campaign of Mark Single, who as Lieutenant Governor, served

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as chair of the pardoned board that voted

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to release McFadden Single lost the election to an opponent

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who ran on the slogan, life means Life.

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After that, he engineered the amendment

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to the Pennsylvania constitution, which added a victim

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advocate to the Board of Pardons,

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which already included the Lieutenant Governor,

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the Attorney General, and a corrections expert.

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And he engineered a, a unanimous vote requirement

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for future commutations.

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So politicians involved in the pardon process, mainly those

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who are interested in running for the highest offices

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in the State's executive branch,

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drew lessons from the impact

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of Mac Fadden on singles campaign, which

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also drew lessons from the impact

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of Willie Horton's saga.

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And as a result, Pennsylvania politicians

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who were involved in the Pardon process, chose not

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to risk their political fortunes on the potential law

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abiding behavior of communities.

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They refused to grant commutations

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and declared that they would not do so.

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Now, legal scholars would say

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that granting constitutions is part

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of the constitutional obligation.

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Executives occupying these positions in order

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to ensure fairness and equity in the

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criminal justice system.

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But that view has not prevailed.

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So be that as it may, Reginald McFadden hovers like

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a ghost over the commutation process.

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Because I had heard so much about Reginald McFadden,

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I wanted to know more about him.

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I wanted to know why he was having

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such an effect on the process.

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And what I discovered was a saga worthy of a serial

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True Crime podcast.

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Uh, New York Times article, which was written in 1995,

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concluded that McFadden's release was the result of

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fatal misjudgments, of McFadden's character

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bureaucratic errors

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and fundamental flaws in Pennsylvania's pardons process.

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And that about sums it up.

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According to the research that I did, I know

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what happened, but I do not know why it happened.

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I cannot offer an explanation

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from the perspective of the state actors.

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So I have not written the definitive story on the saga

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of Reginald McFadden.

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I could not obtain access

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to all the relevant official documents

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because of exemptions in the state's right to no law.

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Some files were missing,

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or lost, so I couldn't read those.

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So I turned to members of the lifer community

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with whom I had worked previously to get some idea of

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who McFadden was and some idea of the times

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and culture, in the state prison system at the time.

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However, my access to these valuable collaborators

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and the quality of the information

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and our interaction, was limited by their incarceration

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and the means that I had of communicating with them.

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But here are the highlights of what I learned.

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First, McFadden murdered

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or was involved in the murder

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of an elderly Philadelphia grandmother.

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Um, there were three others who were involved.

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McFadden was 16 at the time. He had two trials.

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Um, his co-defendants pled guilty

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and got off light by the time the courts were through

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with McFadden.

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However, he had an LWOP sentence.

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He thereafter and,

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and fairly rapidly filed for communication of,

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I'm sorry, commutation.

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He had eight petitions for commutation.

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He got a positive vote from the board four times.

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He was turned down by three governors,

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and then he was ultimately granted commutation.

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The governor who signed, his, commutation,

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documents was Bob Casey, soon senior.

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But Bob Casey Senior was delayed in acting on McFadden's

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application because in 1993, Casey

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basically was dying

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and needed a double organ transplant.

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And so after fewer than 24 hours on the transplant

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transplant waiting list, he got the organs that he needed.

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And there's a story behind that as well.

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Now, the pardon board, when they agreed to

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permit McFadden to be released through commutation,

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wanted him to spend two years in community corrections.

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And they specified a minimum term of years for him

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that took the residency in community

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corrections into account.

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But because of the delay in Casey's acting on

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McFadden's case,

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McFadden had already served out his minimum term.

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When he got the sign off from Casey, the relevant

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Pennsylvania authorities, unsure of what to do

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and not asking whether the,

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other actors had anything to say about it, decided

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to release McFadden without his having spent any time in

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community corrections.

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McFadden was shipped to New York

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because he had petitioned to serve out the rest

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of his mandatory life on parole in New York.

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Why New York? Well, he had worked,

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to create a cadre of supporters

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among a loose knit group of suburban Islamic adherence,

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and they had agreed that they would be available to support

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and supervise him on parole.

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Unfortunately, they were ill prepared for the task.

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Uh, one of them said that it was like dealing

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with a 16-year-old in a 41 year old's body.

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He also said that McFadden was a case

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of arrested development

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and that he acted like a stubborn

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teenager resisting parental control.

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The jobs they supplied the places to live,

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the automobile they gave him were inadequate,

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and McFadden made his own way,

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but he also resulted back to the old pattern

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of criminal behavior.

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Nothing was working, and so he went off

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and committed crimes,

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but he did find a job for himself.

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He got a job

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and he was about to, to take it when he was arrested.

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Um, his dream job as a counselor at a facility

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for troubled use.

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Now, McFadden was not a model candidate for commutation.

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Indeed, he had planned an escape

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and was talked out of it by a prison staff member.

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He did not participate in life

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or run organizations inside the prison.

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He expressed, expressed none of the regard for his peers

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that makes communes

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or other communities consider the impact of their behavior

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outside of the potent penitentiary on those who remain

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inside the penitentiary.

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Um, one of the bits

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of fallout from the Willie Horton effect.

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So why then did they give McFadden freedom?

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Well, I can't say definitively,

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but there are at least three reasons

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that I can see from the file and from my research.

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Number one, McFadden was a, a juvenile.

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When he committed the crime, he was

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what we call a juvie lifer.

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He had a tough upbringing and

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All the developmental limitations of juveniles,

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and that might have been the reason why he was commuted.

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That was probably the reason why he got

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positive votes early on,

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but I'm not sure it's an explanation

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for why he was given commutation at the age of 41.

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Beyond that, right?

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He had cooperated with prison authorities in connection with

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first an assault on correction officers early in his

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confinement in the P-A-D-O-C system.

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And later on he cooperated in an investigation into the

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activities of the fruit of Islam, the

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part of the nation of Islam, that was viewed as a

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military enforcement arm.

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Um, and that cooperation

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may have made him a sympathetic figure,

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at least within the P-A-D-O-C system.

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Of course, his fellow residents considered him a snitch.

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And as one of my collaborators told me,

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when you reward people to lie, they tell you

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what you want to hear.

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Finally, and this may be the best explanation,

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the board was likely convinced by his rhetoric

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and believed in the sincerity of his portrayal of himself

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as an individual pursuing his own path

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through self-improvement.

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And by being an exceptionally devout non-black,

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Muslim, Muslim.

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And one member of the Board of Pardons did vote against him

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when he came up this final time,

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that was the Attorney General,

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and he found McFadden's narrative glib,

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lacking in remorse, a bunch

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of words drunk together and patronizing.

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Um, that's an assessment with which I agree.

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Um, but whatever it was,

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McFadden worked his magic on the Board of Pardons

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and the governor's representatives

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and ultimately the governor, I suppose.

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Um, what's interesting, of course, is

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that the Attorney General, supported the changes

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to the commutation process, the the constitutional changes

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to the commutation process up

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until the time he was sent to federal prison for mail fraud

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and wound up, representing the lifers in litigation,

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challenging the constitutional amendments,

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and he is now an advocate, for incarcerated people.

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In any event, the constitutional amendments to the

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commutation process did not address

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The defects revealed by the commutation

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of Reginald McFadden, but subsequent legislative

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and administrative changes did.

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Um, the process is more rigorous in terms of assessments

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and face-to-face interviews at every level of the process.

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Uh, a stay in community corrections is now mandatory,

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and the path to commutation

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can be widened depending upon who's in charge.

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Um, it certainly was widened when John Federman,

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who is now the Senator, was the Lieutenant Governor

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and chair of the Board of Pardons.

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But the impact of the Constitutional amendments, the impact

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of Reginald McFadden, the impacts

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of Willie Horton is still there.

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The process is burdensome and slow,

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and the single vote of a public official can still sink

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a worthy applicant for commutation.

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Now, I never talk about

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commutation and talk about my work

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with lifers without expressing a sentiment

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with which they agree, which is to say that we have

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to remember the direct victims and the friends and families

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or co victims of those who are at paying the ult

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who pay the ultimate price for Reginald McFadden's,

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brief, tragic Willie Horton bungled commutation,

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which is to say to pay the price for

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what happened in terms of the bureaucracy

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of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, right?

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But beyond that, Pennsylvania's lifers were also harmed.

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Um, the present system impinges upon their hope

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of earning a merciful release from prison

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through rehabilitation and redemption.

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It holds them collectively responsible for the conduct

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of McFadden

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and any other future yet to be

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identified commune who might defy predictions

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even under the present, more stringent regime

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of the commutation process.

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Um, now there are some things that are being considered to

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underact in part the

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burden on lifers and on the system,

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and on the use of commutation

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to keep our criminal justice system fairer,

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and more equitable.

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Um, lifers in Pennsylvania,

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have sought the passage of a law

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that would convert all life sentences to life with parole.

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Uh, alternatively, there are proposals to attach

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to all life sentences, a fixed minimum of years,

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which once served would create eligibility

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for parole consideration, which is to say 25 to life,

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30 to life, 15 to life

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15, 20, 30 would trigger parole consideration,

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not release, but control, but, but,

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but control of the release decision by the board,

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a parole and probation.

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Um, that's not to say that there won't be pushback,

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there won't be political ramifications from wrong decisions,

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but the burden would not, fall on the executives

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and it would be lessened insofar

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as the lifers themselves are concerned.

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Other considerations,

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other alternative considerations include, legislative

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adoption of specific criteria for commutation,

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designation of a neutral arbiter

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or commutation council, to insulate politicians

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who vote in favor of commutation.

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So you, you pass, you pass the problem along

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and you get some insurance for that person.

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Mm-Hmm. Or the passage of another amendment to the state

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constitution to restore majority rule

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to the part of the process that is under the Board

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of Pardons, or to add members to the board of pardons

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who represent a broader spectrum of interest, maybe include,

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some folks who are involved in, criminal defense

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as opposed to, corrections,

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or in addition to a person from corrections.

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Um, I'm not confident

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that we can ensure that another politician

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won't be felt by the Willie Horton Effect in the

20:22.925 --> 20:25.485
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

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because I am not confident that there

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will never be another Willie Horton or Reginald McFadden.

20:36.465 --> 20:40.245
But, but given the price on the other side

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and the impact that it has

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on lifers,

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Their families, their communities,

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and our desire for fairness, equity, and,

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and mercy, the risk may be worth taking.

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Um, I have to say that I'm not sure

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that racial stereotyping of people

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who are incarcerated, particularly black

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and brown people who are incarcerated is likely

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to be erased, anytime soon,

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though we're working on it.

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Um, so with

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work, I suspect that Willie Horton

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and Reginald McFadden will not be ghosts of the system,

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forever, but it requires work.

00:00 - Let me first set out, the, the context. in pen. In Pennsylvania, a life sentence means life without the possibility of parole. It's also known as LWOP and Death by Incarceration. a lifer who has demonstrated rehabilitation

00:18 - and has performed meritoriously, in service to the community may achieve release alive, through commutation of his sentence that requires an affirmative recommendation of the Board of Pardons. And a sign off by the governor. Between 1991 and 1994, 285 lifers, including nine women were granted commutation. Between 1995

00:48 - and 2014, only six lifers were granted commutation. What happened? Well, one of the things that happened was that Reginald McFadden, who was serving an LWOP sentence, was commuted in 1994. Within 90 days of his release, he had killed and robbed a man, raped, murdered, and robbed an older woman, and raped, kidnapped, and robbed a second woman. And he was subsequently implicated in the murder of a third. Reginald McFadden is Pennsylvania's Willie Horton.

01:23 - who is Willie Horton? William Willie Horton was the black Massachusetts man who was serving an LWOP sentence, who was given a weekend furlough from prison. He traveled to Maryland where he raped a white woman assaulted her partner and mad off with the man's car. His crimes sank the political fortunes of Democrat Governor Michael Dukakis, who was running for president in 1988.

01:59 - Dukakis political rivals, George HW Bush and Lee Atwater counted on the power of racial stereotyping and successfully used images of a wild looking Horton to link Dukakis with the threat that black criminals pose to law abiding white America, Dukakis one Bush, I'm sorry, Dukakis Lawson Bush won. Now in Pennsylvania, Reginald McFadden had a similar effect on the Governatorial campaign of Mark Single, who as Lieutenant Governor, served

02:41 - as chair of the pardoned board that voted to release McFadden Single lost the election to an opponent who ran on the slogan, life means Life. After that, he engineered the amendment to the Pennsylvania constitution, which added a victim advocate to the Board of Pardons, which already included the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General, and a corrections expert. And he engineered a, a unanimous vote requirement for future commutations.

03:19 - So politicians involved in the pardon process, mainly those who are interested in running for the highest offices in the State's executive branch, drew lessons from the impact of Mac Fadden on singles campaign, which also drew lessons from the impact of Willie Horton's saga. And as a result, Pennsylvania politicians who were involved in the Pardon process, chose not to risk their political fortunes on the potential law

03:53 - abiding behavior of communities. They refused to grant commutations and declared that they would not do so. Now, legal scholars would say that granting constitutions is part of the constitutional obligation. Executives occupying these positions in order to ensure fairness and equity in the criminal justice system. But that view has not prevailed.

04:25 - So be that as it may, Reginald McFadden hovers like a ghost over the commutation process. Because I had heard so much about Reginald McFadden, I wanted to know more about him. I wanted to know why he was having such an effect on the process. And what I discovered was a saga worthy of a serial True Crime podcast. New York Times article, which was written in 1995, concluded that McFadden's release was the result of

05:04 - fatal misjudgments, of McFadden's character bureaucratic errors and fundamental flaws in Pennsylvania's pardons process. And that about sums it up. According to the research that I did, I know what happened, but I do not know why it happened. I cannot offer an explanation from the perspective of the state actors. So I have not written the definitive story on the saga of Reginald McFadden.

05:40 - I could not obtain access to all the relevant official documents because of exemptions in the state's right to no law. Some files were missing, or lost, so I couldn't read those. So I turned to members of the lifer community with whom I had worked previously to get some idea of who McFadden was and some idea of the times and culture, in the state prison system at the time. However, my access to these valuable collaborators

06:14 - and the quality of the information and our interaction, was limited by their incarceration and the means that I had of communicating with them. But here are the highlights of what I learned. First, McFadden murdered or was involved in the murder of an elderly Philadelphia grandmother. there were three others who were involved. McFadden was 16 at the time. He had two trials. his co-defendants pled guilty

06:48 - and got off light by the time the courts were through with McFadden. However, he had an LWOP sentence. He thereafter and, and fairly rapidly filed for communication of, I'm sorry, commutation. He had eight petitions for commutation. He got a positive vote from the board four times. He was turned down by three governors, and then he was ultimately granted commutation.

07:20 - The governor who signed, his, commutation, documents was Bob Casey, soon senior. But Bob Casey Senior was delayed in acting on McFadden's application because in 1993, Casey basically was dying and needed a double organ transplant. And so after fewer than 24 hours on the transplant transplant waiting list, he got the organs that he needed. And there's a story behind that as well. Now, the pardon board, when they agreed to

08:07 - permit McFadden to be released through commutation, wanted him to spend two years in community corrections. And they specified a minimum term of years for him that took the residency in community corrections into account. But because of the delay in Casey's acting on McFadden's case, McFadden had already served out his minimum term. When he got the sign off from Casey, the relevant Pennsylvania authorities, unsure of what to do

08:48 - and not asking whether the, other actors had anything to say about it, decided to release McFadden without his having spent any time in community corrections. McFadden was shipped to New York because he had petitioned to serve out the rest of his mandatory life on parole in New York. Why New York? Well, he had worked, to create a cadre of supporters among a loose knit group of suburban Islamic adherence,

09:31 - and they had agreed that they would be available to support and supervise him on parole. Unfortunately, they were ill prepared for the task. one of them said that it was like dealing with a 16-year-old in a 41 year old's body. He also said that McFadden was a case of arrested development and that he acted like a stubborn teenager resisting parental control. The jobs they supplied the places to live,

10:06 - the automobile they gave him were inadequate, and McFadden made his own way, but he also resulted back to the old pattern of criminal behavior. Nothing was working, and so he went off and committed crimes, but he did find a job for himself. He got a job and he was about to, to take it when he was arrested. his dream job as a counselor at a facility

10:40 - for troubled use. Now, McFadden was not a model candidate for commutation. Indeed, he had planned an escape and was talked out of it by a prison staff member. He did not participate in life or run organizations inside the prison. He expressed, expressed none of the regard for his peers that makes communes or other communities consider the impact of their behavior outside of the potent penitentiary on those who remain

11:17 - inside the penitentiary. one of the bits of fallout from the Willie Horton effect. So why then did they give McFadden freedom? Well, I can't say definitively, but there are at least three reasons that I can see from the file and from my research. Number one, McFadden was a, a juvenile. When he committed the crime, he was what we call a juvie lifer.

11:50 - He had a tough upbringing and All the developmental limitations of juveniles, and that might have been the reason why he was commuted. That was probably the reason why he got positive votes early on, but I'm not sure it's an explanation for why he was given commutation at the age of 41. Beyond that, right? He had cooperated with prison authorities in connection with first an assault on correction officers early in his

12:25 - confinement in the P-A-D-O-C system. And later on he cooperated in an investigation into the activities of the fruit of Islam, the part of the nation of Islam, that was viewed as a military enforcement arm. and that cooperation may have made him a sympathetic figure, at least within the P-A-D-O-C system. Of course, his fellow residents considered him a snitch. And as one of my collaborators told me,

13:03 - when you reward people to lie, they tell you what you want to hear. Finally, and this may be the best explanation, the board was likely convinced by his rhetoric and believed in the sincerity of his portrayal of himself as an individual pursuing his own path through self-improvement. And by being an exceptionally devout non-black, Muslim, Muslim. And one member of the Board of Pardons did vote against him

13:42 - when he came up this final time, that was the Attorney General, and he found McFadden's narrative glib, lacking in remorse, a bunch of words drunk together and patronizing. that's an assessment with which I agree. but whatever it was, McFadden worked his magic on the Board of Pardons and the governor's representatives and ultimately the governor, I suppose.

14:14 - what's interesting, of course, is that the Attorney General, supported the changes to the commutation process, the the constitutional changes to the commutation process up until the time he was sent to federal prison for mail fraud and wound up, representing the lifers in litigation, challenging the constitutional amendments, and he is now an advocate, for incarcerated people. In any event, the constitutional amendments to the commutation process did not address

14:51 - The defects revealed by the commutation of Reginald McFadden, but subsequent legislative and administrative changes did. the process is more rigorous in terms of assessments and face-to-face interviews at every level of the process. a stay in community corrections is now mandatory, and the path to commutation can be widened depending upon who's in charge. it certainly was widened when John Federman, who is now the Senator, was the Lieutenant Governor

15:32 - and chair of the Board of Pardons. But the impact of the Constitutional amendments, the impact of Reginald McFadden, the impacts of Willie Horton is still there. The process is burdensome and slow, and the single vote of a public official can still sink a worthy applicant for commutation. Now, I never talk about commutation and talk about my work with lifers without expressing a sentiment

16:14 - with which they agree, which is to say that we have to remember the direct victims and the friends and families or co victims of those who are at paying the ult who pay the ultimate price for Reginald McFadden's, brief, tragic Willie Horton bungled commutation, which is to say to pay the price for what happened in terms of the bureaucracy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, right? But beyond that, Pennsylvania's lifers were also harmed. the present system impinges upon their hope

17:00 - of earning a merciful release from prison through rehabilitation and redemption. It holds them collectively responsible for the conduct of McFadden and any other future yet to be identified commune who might defy predictions even under the present, more stringent regime of the commutation process. now there are some things that are being considered to underact in part the

17:41 - burden on lifers and on the system, and on the use of commutation to keep our criminal justice system fairer, and more equitable. lifers in Pennsylvania, have sought the passage of a law that would convert all life sentences to life with parole. alternatively, there are proposals to attach to all life sentences, a fixed minimum of years, which once served would create eligibility

18:22 - for parole consideration, which is to say 25 to life, 30 to life, 15 to life 15, 20, 30 would trigger parole consideration, not release, but control, but, but, but control of the release decision by the board, a parole and probation. that's not to say that there won't be pushback, there won't be political ramifications from wrong decisions, but the burden would not, fall on the executives and it would be lessened insofar

19:02 - as the lifers themselves are concerned. Other considerations, other alternative considerations include, legislative adoption of specific criteria for commutation, designation of a neutral arbiter or commutation council, to insulate politicians who vote in favor of commutation. So you, you pass, you pass the problem along and you get some insurance for that person. Mm-Hmm. Or the passage of another amendment to the state

19:39 - constitution to restore majority rule to the part of the process that is under the Board of Pardons, or to add members to the board of pardons who represent a broader spectrum of interest, maybe include, some folks who are involved in, criminal defense as opposed to, corrections, or in addition to a person from corrections. I'm not confident that we can ensure that another politician won't be felt by the Willie Horton Effect in the

20:22 - Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, because I am not confident that there will never be another Willie Horton or Reginald McFadden. But, but given the price on the other side and the impact that it has on lifers, Their families, their communities, and our desire for fairness, equity, and, and mercy, the risk may be worth taking. I have to say that I'm not sure

21:04 - that racial stereotyping of people who are incarcerated, particularly black and brown people who are incarcerated is likely to be erased, anytime soon, though we're working on it. so with work, I suspect that Willie Horton and Reginald McFadden will not be ghosts of the system, forever, but it requires work.

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