Earl Bradley moved to prison out of state
Former Lewes pediatrician sentenced to 14 life terms for sexual abuse
- Earl Bradley, a former Lewes doctor, is being moved to another prison.
- He was convicted of dozens of child abuse incidents.
- Delaware has prisoner transfer agreements with 27 states.
Earl Bradley will spend the rest of his life in prison for raping scores of young patients he treated as a pediatrician — but no longer will that prison be in Delaware.
The Department of Correction is moving Bradley to an out-of-state prison, DOC officials announced, because of "the overall impact this offender has had on the victims and local Delawareans, some of whom work in or are housed in our correctional facilities."
Officials have been notifying the families of Bradley's victims, and the victims themselves, of the transfer in recent days.
The prisoner transfer moves Bradley, 63, from James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, where the state's most closely guarded male inmates are kept.
Bradley has been held there in the Secure Housing Unit, or SHU, where inmates spend 23 hours of each day locked in single-bunk cells. There, Bradley was detained alongside Delaware's 13 death row prisoners and hundreds of other offenders.
As of Monday, Bradley has served a post-conviction sentence of four years, nine months and 18 days.
It's not clear in which state Bradley will land. Jayme Gravell, a DOC spokesman, said Delaware has prisoner transfer agreements with 27 states, from California to Rhode Island and dozens in between. She declined to specify which state will house Bradley.
The former pediatrician was arrested and charged in December 2009 with nine sex offenses, based on an investigation into complaints he molested a two-year-old patient. When police searched his home and office, they found hours of videotapes Bradley had made documenting more assaults, some of them on toddlers and infants.
He eventually faced 529 counts in an indictment, including rape, covering more than 100 patients, a vast scheme of abuse that shocked Delaware and the country. He was convicted in a bench trial of all 24 charges in a consolidated indictment, and Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter sentenced him to 14 life terms plus 165 additional years, effectively cementing Bradley's place behind bars until his death.
The state Supreme Court unanimously upheld his convictions on appeal in 2012, but Bradley continued to file for new appeals. In March, he lost a last state-level appeal that demanded a new trial. Throughout his appeal process, the land where his now-demolished medical practice, BayBees Pediatrics, once stood has remained vacant and on the market.
Gravell said just 20 Delaware-sentenced inmates are currently being held in out-of-state cells, making Bradley one of very few inmates deemed better kept in another state.
The Interstate Corrections Compact requires states that send prisoners to out-of-state facilities to pay the receiving state for "inmate maintenance, extraordinary medical and dental expenses" and other costs. Wherever Bradley is, the compact allows Delaware officials to visit the prison he'll be held in, and the state will get reports on his conduct in that prison.
Bradley has not been interviewed by the media since he's been behind bars. He has, at least twice, written letters from prison directly to judges overseeing his case, once in 2012 and again in 2013, when he submitted a closely-spaced, 43-page memo to the Delaware Supreme Court. The letters, though, shed little light on his life and conduct in prison, instead focusing on his complaints that police illegally searched his home and doctor's office.
The prosecution of Bradley was led by the late Beau Biden when he was attorney general. A spokesman for Attorney General Matt Denn declined to comment on Bradley's transfer Monday.
Beebe Medical Center, which employed Bradley as a physician, reached a $123 million settlement in 2012 to end a class-action lawsuit the families of Bradley's victims had brought against the hospital. Beebe was accused in the suit of failing to report Bradley's errant behavior to authorities following an investigation in 1996. The hospital agreed to pay $8.2 million directly, with its liability insurer funding the bulk of the settlement.
Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter@JamesFisherTNJorjfisher@delawareonline.com.