Ezra Bozeman was convicted of second-degree murder in 1975.
The jury came to that decision 10 months after the crime occurred, when Morris Weitz was shot and killed during a robbery at a dry cleaner’s shop in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park neighborhood.
Bozeman was sentenced to life in prison. He has maintained for 49 years that he is innocent. He has appealed to the state Supreme Court. He has filed eight Post Conviction Relief Act petitions.
None of that matters. Not really. Not anymore.
Those in his corner say he has been a model prisoner, counseling and mentoring others.
That doesn’t matter either.
Bozeman’s doctor says the inmate is dying. Since February, he has been a quadriplegic. After 49 years locked in a cell, he is now locked in his own body.
But that doesn’t matter to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office either.
In a hearing Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney Ronald M. Wabby Jr. argued against compassionate release for Bozeman.
The reason? Wabby said there’s “no evidence to support their petition.”
Allegheny County Common Pleas President Judge Susan Evashavik DiLucente will be scheduling another hearing to take testimony from Bozeman’s physician. Perhaps that will suffice.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, the former Pennsylvania attorney general, supports the release. The judge says she is inclined to agree.
Bozeman, 68, would not be released to go on a crime spree. Quadriplegics cannot move any of their four limbs. He can move nothing below his neck. He requires a colostomy bag. His attorney spoke of a pressure sore that reaches bone because the medical staff at SCI-Laurel Highlands cannot provide the kind of care someone in this condition requires.
A National Institutes of Health study claims the cost of acute care for a quadriplegic can top $500,000. It can require constant care a prison is not prepared to provide. There are bottom-line financial reasons to release a man who has been in prison since the Ford administration.
But Wabby wouldn’t take the lawyers’ word for Bozeman’s condition and wouldn’t stipulate to the medical records.
“I want to hear him say it,” Wabby said.
That is a problem. Quadriplegics can have trouble swallowing and breathing, making talking a challenge.
Wabby’s position smacked of cruelty, and the DA’s office should be better than that.
Taking a hard stance on crime is understandable from an office charged with justice. However, there is room for the office to show simple humanity to a man near the end of his life and therefore the end of his sentence. Oppose the release if necessary and let the cost to the taxpayers be damned.
But is it justice to taunt a man who can’t move into begging?
