Federal lawsuit filed against Va. parole board

RICHMOND — Virginia’s parole board has unfairly denied parole to thousands of inmates who were incarcerated before the state abolished parole in 1995, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Richmond, accuses the five-member board of ignoring state law that requires those convicted before parole was abolished to receive a “thorough investigation” into whether they have been rehabilitated and should be released.

The suit was filed on behalf of 11 inmates who have been eligible for parole for more than a decade, each with exemplary prison records despite the violent nature of their crimes. It asks the court to order the parole board to issue rules that ensure “fair and meaningful consideration” of parole for the more than 6,000 parole-eligible inmates.

“By any reasonable measure, you would look at these people and you would say, ‘What are they still doing in prison?’ and yet year after year after year they get a letter from the parole board saying parole has been denied,” said Steve Northup, a Richmond attorney who is working with the Legal Aid Justice Center on the suit.

Before the abolition of parole, judges often sentenced individuals to lengthy prison terms with the understanding that they would be eligible for release after serving as little as a quarter of the sentence. In 1993, the year before lawmakers passed a law to abolish parole, Bureau of Justice Statistics data showed that violent offenders in Virginia served only 38 percent of their sentences.

Nearly half of the board’s denials in 2006 and 2007 boiled down to six words: “nature and circumstances of the crime.”

The nature of the crime is only one of several considerations outlined in the law for the board to consider. Others include the inmate’s prior record, prison conduct, whether the inmate has been rehabilitated and whether release would be an acceptable risk.

“This is a false hope that’s being held out to them by Virginia law, because they can’t change the crime, there’s nothing they can ever do to change the crime, and many of them have stopped getting their hopes up,” Northup said.

The law requires parole be granted to those deemed suitable following a “thorough investigation ... into the prisoner’s history, physical and mental condition and character and his conduct, employment and attitude while in prison.”

Yet the attorneys said the parole board no longer personally interviews inmates and has abandoned the use of risk assessment guidelines. The board no longer meets regularly, but votes by computer based on review of an electronic file.

A message left with board chairwoman Helen Fahey was not immediately returned.

By the end of the year, the lawyers said, nearly a quarter of parole-eligible inmates will already have served longer than they would under the sentencing guidelines that apply to crimes committed after parole was abolished.

They estimate Virginia is spending more than $150 million each year to house parole-eligible inmates, which burdens taxpayers “who must bear the cost of warehousing thousands of men and women who by any reasonable measure have rehabilitated themselves and no longer belong in prison,” said William Richardson, an Arlington attorney who is helping with the case.

Richardson has been involved in unsuccessful attempts to get former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and lawmakers to change how parole is determined.

The attorneys argue the parole board is violating not only the inmates’ due process rights but also the constitutional guarantee that they won’t be punished beyond what was determined at the time of conviction.

The eight male and three female inmates range in age from 43 to 69. All have been incarcerated for more than 23 years, and five of them for more than 30 years. Most committed their offense at young ages, had no prior offenses, have been model inmates with little or no infractions but have been denied parole an average of 15 times each, some more than 20.

“She’s done her time and we feel like justice has been served,” said Robin Banks, whose sister Sharon Burnette is the lead plaintiff in the suit.

Burnette, 49, has spent the last 28 years in prison for killing a gas station attendant during a robbery. Her only institutional infraction was for sleeping through count in 1982.

“After 28 years, we feel it’s time for her to come home,” Banks said.

Another inmate, Monty King, has served more than 23 years for beating a robbing an elderly woman, who later died from the beating. He had no prior criminal record and no infractions since 1994, when he also slept through a prison count.

“He’s a very, very different person than the one who committed that crime,” said his mother, Liana King of California.