It is not common but it happens, and understanding how requires knowing what actually goes into a sentencing decision beyond the statutory maximum for the charged offense. In Florida and most other states, the statutory maximum for a specific charge sets a ceiling for that individual count. But defendants are rarely sentenced on a single count in isolation. Multiple charges can be stacked, each carrying its own sentence, and those sentences can run consecutively rather than concurrently. Two consecutive life sentences...

The confusion is understandable because there are a lot of services competing for your attention, and not all of them are straightforward about what they actually do. Here is how to think about it. GTL, now rebranded as Viapath, is the phone carrier contracted to your husband's facility. If GTL holds that contract, every call he makes goes through their system regardless of what number he dials. You cannot replace GTL. What you can do is change the number he dials...

Life without parole, without hesitation. The death penalty means the state controls the end of your life, and the timeline is out of your hands. Executions in the United States are rarely swift. The average time spent on death row is well over fifteen years, with many inmates waiting two decades or more through appeals, stays, and legal proceedings. That is fifteen to twenty years of living under a specific kind of psychological weight that is different from any other sentence....

Yes, and this is one of the less talked-about benefits of the service. When an inmate makes calls through the facility's phone carrier, every number they dial has to be submitted and approved in advance. That approval process requires the person on the outside to register their phone number with the carrier, which means your name, number, and in some cases your address go into that system. For people on a family plan, a work phone, or any situation where the...