MORE FELONS QUALIFY FOR EARLY RELEASE

Second Parole Board Going Beyond Clearing Up Backlog

On March 10, 2003, a Russell County judge sentenced Deborah Ann Herron to
10 years in prison after a jury convicted her of manslaughter in the
stabbing death of a disabled man.

In October this year, Herron will be set free. She is one of thousands of
Alabama criminals being granted parole years, and in some cases, decades,
before their sentences are over.

"We're seeing more and more people serving less and less time, and they're
considering them earlier and earlier," said Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones.
"We're getting notices that they have been considered that have served
eight months of a 10-year sentence."

Herron was originally charged with murder in the death of Eddie James
Saxton. She was accused of using a butcher-type knife to stab Saxton, 42,
inside her two-bedroom apartment in Russell County. Saxton's body was found
inside the kitchen where he was stabbed some 13 times, with a single crutch
lying nearby. Apparently, the two were continuing a fight they had had
earlier in the day when the stabbing occurred.

Increased Paroles

In September 2003, the state Legislature, at the request of Gov. Bob Riley,
created a second state parole board to speed up the release of nonviolent
felons.

The three-person board was formed to speed consideration of parole for
thousands of eligible prisoners judged to pose the least risk to the
community, usually for property crimes or drug offenses.

In Alabama, such inmates make up more than 43 percent of the 23,874
incarcerated, according to the Department of Corrections.

Since 2003, 4,174 prisoners have been released through the second board's
special dockets. There were also 1,820 paroled through the normal process
and more than 13,500 whose sentences ended or who started their probation.

State Attorney General Troy King was a legal adviser for the governor when
the special board was created to correct a backlog of parole hearings. Now
that the backlog is corrected, King is asking the Legislature to abolish
the special board.

King said the special board is moving on to regular parole cases, including
violent criminals.

Local Perspective

Jones and Russell County Sheriff Tommy Boswell are seeing the effects of
the increased releases.

"The idea was the jails were full of drugs and nonviolent crimes, forgers,
and that they could make beds for the real criminals by getting rid of all
these people," Boswell said. "What happens is that those people also commit
other crimes, and they're career criminals, and they just constantly cycle
through the system."

In the past two years, there were 110 people paroled out of state prisons
who came from Lee County. Of those, 35, or 32 percent, have had their
probation revoked. In Russell County, there were 89 in the last two years,
with 14 revoked, or 16 percent. However both counties had more revoked
paroles last year than the year before.

Jones said he thinks many of the early parolees will just end up back in
the system. "We're afraid that we're going to see them again. I'd love to
be wrong -- I'd be happy -- but I don't think so," he said. "If we see
repeat offenders, and we do, the only advantage we have is the information
is already typed in the database. It's sad but true."

Boswell said this puts more pressure and responsibility on county
governments, who have to deal with the re-offenders.

"Instead of me being rid of a guy for 15 years, I'm rid of him for 15
months," he said. "What they're doing is making us pay. The counties are
paying and the victims are paying. The state isn't paying."

Paying The Debt

The state had hoped the extra paroles would help alleviate the overcrowding
in Alabama's state prison system. Designed to hold 12,943, the current
number of inmates is 23,874. That doesn't include another 3,370 people who
are waiting to be transferred from county jails, are serving time in other
states or are housed in alternative arrangements.

Judges at both the federal and state levels had ordered the state to reduce
the overcrowding, and Riley suggested the extra board after Alabama voters
rejected his plan to raise taxes by $1.2 billion, some of which would have
gone to help prison overcrowding.

The new board did help alleviate some overcrowding, King said, but not to a
large degree. And he sees the problems in the board overshadowing any help
they have given.

King said people who should never be let out of prison are being paroled.
He said the board should be concerned with three questions: "Do they think
they have been sufficiently rehabilitated? Do they think these people are
likely to re-offend? Have they paid back their debt to society?

"Some of them, because of their crime, can never repay that debt," King said.

The parole boards are sometimes more considerate of the rights of the
people in prison, King said.

"Sometimes we forget that there are thousands of people held in prisons of
their own. One of my jobs as attorney general is to be an advocate for
victims," he said. "For them to start psychoanalyzing prisoners and
thinking about what the rights of the prisoners should be above the rights
of the victims and the rights of justice is just a travesty of justice. The
state of Alabama should not be engaged in denying justice to victims."

King said he has been attending more parole hearings, even if just to stand
with the victim to show support. "Our system revictimizes them. That is a
horrible, horrible thing for the state of Alabama to allow."

The Solution

Although all agreed there is no easy answer, Boswell, Jones and King all
noted one measure that would help: truthful sentencing.

"Truth in sentencing would make more sense than all of this crap. Judges
sentence somebody to 30 years, hoping they'll serve five. If there was
truth in sentencing, they would sentence them to five and they would serve
five. Now, there's just no telling," Boswell said. "The second thing is
you've got to build enough jails to hold the people that need to be locked up."

Jones said there's no "cure-all" but that truth in sentencing would be a
good step. "The sentencing commission has been trying for years to work for
truth in sentencing. I think certainly those efforts need to continue," he
said.

The current sentencing structure, with actual served sentences so much
lower than the imposed sentence, doesn't scare many criminals, Jones said,
especially drug dealers who are making a lot of money.

"It's not a deterrence anymore," he said. "Faced with the prospect of the
time they're going to serve, it's worth the risk."

King agreed that sentencing reform is the first step to changing Alabama's
prison and parole problems.

"We've got to demonstrate to people that when they get sentenced they are
going to serve that," he said. "That's a big deterrent." The Associated
Press contributed to this report.