By Liz Zemba
Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — A Philadelphia couple’s nearly two-year battle to obtain a marriage license via videoconferencing from a state prison came to an end on Friday when they sat across from each other in a Fayette County courtroom to initiate the paperwork.
High school sweethearts Norma Scott, 55, and Kevin Davis, 57, blew kisses at each other’s images on TV screens located in the courtroom in Uniontown and at the prison in Luzerne, patiently waiting for marriage-license clerk Sandra Bieniek to take their information.
“Good morning, babe, how are you?” said Scott, who traveled from her home in Lansdowne, near Philadelphia in Delaware County, for the 10:30 a.m. appointment arranged through the State Correctional Institution at Fayette and the county’s Register of Wills Office.
“I’m OK,” Davis said, before giving his name, address and other required biographical information to Bieniek. She filled out the groom’s portion of the application as Scott and Davis exchanged smiles and occasional laughs.
The interview lasted just a few minutes, but it took the couple 20 months to arrange for it, according to federal civil rights lawsuits filed July 13 on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project.
The lawsuits accused Register of Wills Donald Redman and the prison of failing to allow inmates to use videoconferencing to apply for the licenses at the courthouse in Uniontown. State law requires applicants to appear in person for the licenses. But Davis, who was convicted of murder 37 years ago and is serving a life sentence, cannot leave the prison.
A handful of other inmates at the Luzerne prison arranged marriage licenses via videoconferencing through Schuylkill County, according to the prison, but they had to use a traveling minister from New Jersey who told the Tribune-Review she charges from $1,500 to $2,000 in fees and travel expenses.
Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said her agency and the ACLU tried for several years to arrange for Fayette to hold the videoconferences, with no success. She said Scott and Davis exhausted a lengthy appeals process at the prison before filing the lawsuits, which were consolidated.
According to court documents in the lawsuits, the prison’s attorneys told Chief Magistrate Judge Maureen P. Kelly during a July 16 hearing it was “ready, willing and able” to conduct the videoconferences, but “Fayette County had not yet implemented such a mechanism.”
Jim Davis, a Uniontown attorney who represents Redman, told Kelly the county adopted a policy allowing inmates to use videoconferencing at the courthouse for marriage licenses on July 15 — two days after the lawsuits were filed.
The policy is to remain in place for future use by other inmates, Davis told the judge.
On Friday, Scott and Davis were the first couple to take advantage of the policy, according to Redman’s office.
Once Scott had filled out her portion of the application, she went to the prison to have Davis sign it. It had to be returned to the courthouse by the close of business on Friday so the office could issue the license on Monday, following a three-day waiting period, Bieniek said.
“I’m happy we got it over with,” Scott said, smiling, as she left the courthouse, paperwork in hand, for the prison. “I’m going to let him choose a date.”
Morgan-Kurtz, who accompanied Scott on Friday, said the two consolidated lawsuits will remain active until the county and prison agree in writing to allow inmates to continue to apply for marriage licenses via videoconferencing in Uniontown.
The two agencies likely will seek to be reimbursed for attorneys’ fees, she said.