Fetterman Suggests ‘Shawshank’ Justifies Releasing Murderers

In an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns, pro-criminal Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) suggested that the movie The Shawshank Redemption justifies his propensity for releasing convicted murderers from prison.

Fetterman, running against Republican Mehmet Oz for the state’s open United States Senate seat, justified his record of helping to free convicted murderers from Pennsylvania prisons by stating that actor Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption is about “giving somebody a chance” as opposed to having them serve their full life sentence. Freeman’s character in the film admits to having committed a double homicide.

Asked if he thinks his stance on crime is out of touch with Pennsylvania and what he would say to someone concerned that this is not a time to relax sentencing but a time to focus on public safety, Fetterman replied, “I believe in redemption and I would just ask anyone watching, I’d say if you’ve seen ‘Shawshank Redemption,’ the movie, and if you at the end of the movie, you would vote to have Morgan Freeman’s character die in prison, then that’s really those, that’s the choice, that’s how you look at it … I haven’t met a single person who said ‘Yeah, Morgan Freeman should die in prison.’ It’s all a choice on redemption and giving somebody a chance to not die in prison that is not any danger to the public whatsoever.”

As chair of the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, Fetterman helped free a number of convicted murderers from prison and has suggested freeing a third — roughly 13,000 — of all inmates in the state’s prison system. In 2019, he successfully helped free a convicted second-degree murderer who was known as “a son of the devil” and who had allegedly threatened witnesses in the case with murder if they testified against him.

That same year, Fetterman voted to free from prison a convicted murderer who killed a man with garden shears and sought to have a hit man murder his accomplice. In June 2021, Fetterman was the sole vote to free a convicted murderer who killed an 18-year-old boy for heroin money.

Fetterman has overseen the release of 13 convicted murderers while heading the Board of Pardons. Also, one of Fetterman’s appointees to the board sought to end mandatory sentences of life without parole for first- and second-degree murderers.

Anyone who thinks the very real killers Fetterman has supported are comparable to Morgan Freeman’s fictional character is living in a Democrat fantasy.