Central Pa. woman, 59, who gave brother-in-law fatal dose of heroin can’t beat 14- to 30-year jail term
Updated Feb 18, 2021;
A midstate woman convicted of causing her brother-in-law’s heroin overdose death has failed to convince a state appeals court to overturn a prison sentence that could conceivably keep her behind bars for the rest of her life.
In upholding Justina Heisey’s 14- to 30-year prison term, the Superior Court judges rejected the 59-year-old Lancaster County woman’s argument that she shouldn’t have been found guilty of a drug delivery resulting in death charge. Heisey stressed that she and an accomplice warned her brother-in-law not to take so much of the “Cloud 9” heroin they bought for him in Philadelphia. Instead, he snorted two bags of the drug, four times the amount the pair recommended that he use, Heisey contended.
Chronic child molester deserves no break on 15- to 30-year jail term, Pa. court says
Updated Dec 22, 2020;
Kevin Partello has spent the last 32 years amassing a record of convictions for child-sex crimes.
That list began when Partello, now 55, was convicted of molesting eight boys in Lancaster County in 1988. At the time, he was a student at Lancaster Bible College and was working with a youth group.
In the intervening decades, he was convicted again and again for such crimes and for failing to register with police as a sex offender.
The result is that Partello is back behind bars, sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for violating his probation from that 1988 conviction.