They are the worst of the worst: killers whose brutality still has the power to shock even decades after their crimes. They were sentenced to life in prison or once sat on death row. Some killed cops. Others tortured and slaughtered children. Some are spree killers who racked up multiple body counts.
These are monsters and should never see the outside of a prison again — the ones you worry might escape in a natural disaster. Yet they’ve been shuffled out the door in a “conga line” for years now, thanks to the efforts of the lunatic fringe North Carolina Parole Commission.
The three members of the commission are appointed by the governor. The majority of the commission — two members — must agree to deny or approve parole for all eligible offenders, a hell of a lot of power concentrated in the hands of just three people. As I’ve reported before, the commission isn’t required to parole anyone, but it has a long history of near unfathomable sympathy toward the most vicious of the state’s killers.
Then, four years ago, the North Carolina state senate came up with a brilliant idea. It would push the parole commission to shove them out the door faster.
A state senate amendment passed in 2005 requires the prison system to enroll a minimum of 20 percent of parole eligible inmates in the Mutual Agreement Parole Program, a pre-release program.
It’s the state legislature’s way of pressuring the parole commission to let even more prisoners out, former Durham prosecutor Eric Evenson explained to Raleigh’s WRAL this week. And it is working.
Since 2005, the average number of those with first-degree murder convictions who were paroled more than tripled from 5.7 to 21. By 2007, the number increased to 27.
The problem is that different sentencing guidelines apply to those who committed their crimes before 1994. Today, if you are sentenced to life in prison, you serve it with no possibility of parole. But before 1994, when sentencing rules were reformed, it wasn’t unusual for criminals to serve just 20 percent of their sentences.
Most of those who committed less-violent crimes have long since been paroled, leaving behind an ever-dwindling pool of pre-1994 killers and serial rapists to feed into the system.
Edward Earl Williams is a good example. He was paroled last Monday. In 1968, he stabbed 6-year-old Perry Lynn White 12 times, slit his throat, then left him to die alone under a house. Before he killed White, Williams attempted to murder a young girl, who was also stabbed multiple times, but survived.
Paulette White, Perry White’s mother, spent years fighting to keep Williams behind bars. She says she worries that Williams, who is 58, will attempt to kill another child. And, as she told me last week in so many words, she wonders if she should do something to stop him.
White isn’t the only one tormented by the parole commission’s decisions. As I’ve reported in the past, other victims’ families who have fought to keep killers behind bars in North Carolina and ultimately lost have been harassed by them after the commission released them.
State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Democrat from Carrboro, has in recent years become a one-woman justice system wrecking crew. She has sponsored bill after bill to empty out state prisons by shortening sentences and keeping people off death row by weakening the death penalty.
“What we hope is the person who is coming out of prison is not the same person who went into prison,” Kinnaird told WRAL of the 2005 senate amendment. Kinnaird says the amendment “helps control the prison population.” She denies the legislature is pressuring the parole commission to release more murderers.
But even the Department of Correction has acknowledged that the increase in the number of murderers being paroled is directly tied to the fact that the number of those eligible for parole in the system is shrinking, and only the worst of the worst are left.
The truth, as those who read this column know, is that the state legislature spent so much money during boom times on useless junk — like deluxe habitats for polar bears — that legislators didn’t get around to building enough prisons to accommodate a state population that is among the fastest growing in the nation. With that growth naturally comes an increase in the number of criminals, a fact the state’s leadership is doing its best to deny.
Now they are asking average citizens to live with these monsters. But it could be worse. A few weeks ago in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Democrat state legislators floated the idea of doing away with structured sentencing, the 1994 change that mandated that criminals actually serve their entire sentences.
What a great idea! Let’s go back to letting criminals get away with serving 20 percent of their sentences, which actually became the average in North Carolina before structured sentencing. How about a return to the era when a life sentence didn’t mean life, even for the most brutal crimes?
Too bad we can’t mandate a new final stop on the parole conga line for killers like Williams. A six-month stay at Kinnaird’s house and the homes of legislators like her might change their minds before they do any more damage.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 7, 2009.
