The Associated Press via The Republic
NEWARK, N.J. — Old habits apparently die hard for one of New Jersey’s most notorious jail escapees.
Four years ago, Otis Blunt and another prisoner executed a daring jailbreak that evoked the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” and led to the suicide of a prison guard he had mentioned in a taunting note.
But on Thursday the state Department of Corrections got the last laugh when an appeals court ruled that prison officials were correct in penalizing Blunt after a guard overheard him last year counseling another East Jersey State Prison inmate in how to cut pieces of brick out of his cell wall.
The prison penalized Blunt by, among other sanctions, restricting his privileges for one year and erasing one year’s worth of commutation time, likely increasing the amount of time he will be imprisoned.
Full Story: Court upholds sanctions for NJ inmate in 2007 ‘Shawshank’ escape that led to guard’s suicide