REVIEWING HABITUAL OFFENDER LAW

2000 ammendment argued in court The Alabama Supreme Court heard
arguments last week in the case of an Alabama man in prison for life
without parole under the state's habitual offender law. His lawyers
asked that his case be reviewed so that a judge could determine if his
sentence should be lightened. Montgomery attorney Bryan Stevenson
argued lawmakers wanted to relieve prison overcrowding when they
passed an ammendment to let judges review old habitual offender cases.
He says it made a 2000 ammendment allowing lighter sentences in
current habitual offender cases retroactive. While the 2000 ammendment
hasn't been challenged in court, the Alabama Attorney General's office
says the 2001 ammendment should be thrown out because it is vague and
confusing.

The 2001 ammendment allows the sentencing or presiding judge to apply
the 2000 ammendment to old cases in "consideration of early parole of
each non-violent convicted offender based on evaluations performed by
the Department of Corrections and approved by the Board of Pardons and
Paroles and submitted to the court."

The parole board would still make decisions on parole, but the judge
would make the decision on whether or not the sentence in the case
should be changed from life without parole to life.

Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit firm
representing poor people, says in the three years since the
legislation passed, "not a single soul" it was intended to affect has
had a case reviewed. The decision in this case, involving prisoner
Junior Mack Kirby, could affect more than 300 other inmates in Alabama
who were sentenced to life without parole between 1980 and 2000.

The state argues there are no standards in the ammendment as to what
constitutes a non-violent offender, and that the ammendment gives
judges the responsibility for parole.

The latter argument just doesn't fly. The judge would review the
portion of the case that is under his authority to begin with - the
sentencing. The judge could make an inmate eligible for parole, but it
will still be up to the parole board to decide if parole is
appropriate. Parole would not be automatic. For decades there have
been stories of inmates locked up for the rest of their lives when
their criminal histories don't seem to merit that punishment.

Applying the new law to old cases as the ammendment allows would set
up the opportunity for judges to review and perhaps make the sentences
better fit the crimes. It's time the law be applied as the lawmakers
intended.