A week after the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) announced that a prisoner had tested positive for COVID-19, Rudolph Sutton died in his cell at the State Correctional Facility (SCI) at Phoenix in Montgomery County. Sutton, 67 years old, died from pneumonia caused by COVID-19. He was the first inmate, and as of this writing, the only state inmate to die from the virus.

There are stories like Sutton’s all across the country. Sixty-year-old William Garrison died at the Macomb Correctional Facility in Michigan. He spent 44 years in prison and died of COVID-19 only 24 days before he was to be released from prison.