General
This is an opinion column.
Prosecutors are the only officials in the justice system with a responsibility to the truth — to find the truth, to tell the truth, to protect the truth.
Or at least, that’s what a handful of prosecutors have told me over the years. I wish it were, well, true. In an ideal world, it would be. But more often it’s a platitude, always within arms’ reach — when they’re wrong.
And there are few I’ve met who have been so wrong as often as Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
My colleague Ivana Hrynkiw has spent the last year documenting the failures of Alabama’s parole system and examining his position that “there is simply nobody else to ‘reform’” in Alabama prisons. The only comment Marhsall’s office has given regarding her reporting was full of hubris like a pimple about to pop.
“We do not have anything further to add as we disagree with the premise of every article you have written on the topic,” Marshall’s office said through a spokesperson.
There might not be a better endorsement of Hrynkiw’s work on this subject.
You see, when it comes to pardons and paroles, Marshall’s office has a messy relationship with the truth.
Take, for instance, the case of Robert George, who accidentally shot a young girl during a drunken dispute 31 years ago. At the time of his hearing, George was 85 years old and his health had declined to where he struggled to make his bed.
But that didn’t matter to the attorney general’s office.
Neither did it matter that the victim’s mother had forgiven George and taped a video message for the parole board, begging them to forgive him, too.
Instead, the attorney general’s representative cited George’s criminal history, including crimes he had not been convicted of.
George’s lawyer, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb, corrected the attorney general’s representative, and George won release on a split 2-1 vote.
Cobb isn’t the only former chief justice from the state’s high court questioning Alabama’s implacable parole system or its attorney general.
When Willie Conner’s case went before the board (prisoners are not allowed to attend their own parole hearings) he had the representation of Roy Moore, who had been troubled by Connor’s case for years.
Connor had served 12 years of a life sentence under the old three-strikes law. His final crime was shoplifting a nail gun from Lowe’s. He was indicted for having committed a crime involving a weapon — the nail gun he stole.
Even the attorney general’s representative expressed some doubt about the case, telling the parole board, “It’s kind of wild that we are going through this when honestly, I kind of believe he has shown he could be worthy of parole.”
But then she reverted to the attorney general’s default setting — pursuing the maximum punishment, regardless of the circumstances, and citing a history of violent offenses.
Connor’s actual record was second-degree theft, receiving stolen property and drug possession.
So much for the truth.
Connor won parole on another 2-1 vote. That dissenting vote is an important one, a consistent one — Leigh Gwathney who’s not only the board chair but also a former assistant Attorney General.
“People want justice. They want bad people to stay in, they want people that are worthy of parole to get out. That’s the system,” Moore told Hrynkiw. “That’s what it’s supposed to be. But that’s not what it’s been.
“What it’s been is a representative of the attorney general’s office controlling the parole board in my opinion.”
But not everyone who goes before Alabama’s parole board has a former chief justice on their side. Most don’t even have lawyers. And most don’t get the same consideration from this system as their clients.
That includes prisoners who are elderly and infirm. That includes others who walk among the free public while on work release, but when their cases appear before the parole board they are deemed too dangerous to be released into society.
The Alabama Attorney General’s office has adopted an absolutist position on parole: Everyone deserving of it is already free.
“[C]hanges to our sentencing and incarceration laws have ensured that dangerous offenders are largely the only ones left behind bars,” Marshall said in 2022.” As a result, we should absolutely expect and demand that parole rates decline.”
But sit in these meetings, as Hrynkiw has done for the last year, and you will see the absurdity of such an argument. You’ll see reality. You’ll see the truth — a parole system so dogmatic, so broken and so dysfunctional it deemed inmate Fredrick Bishop unfit for release.
Bishop had been dead for 10 days before his hearing.
The parole board’s own criteria say about 80% of the inmates they see are suited to be released. Yet last year, they let out just 8%. That’s the same ridiculous odds as recovering an onside kick in the NFL. This year, under public scrutiny, that climbed just above 20%. But it’s still far too low. Even throw-away-the-key Texas lets out twice that many percentage-wise.
This even makes things tougher on the prisons themselves, which are notoriously overcrowded, and can offer little incentive for good behavior if there is little hope of parole anyway. Hrynkiw found the prisons have even had to use a rare medical furlough to send home a handful of dying, elderly inmates who were denied parole.
Alabamians can see what’s happening here. And not just citizens or voters, but the lawmakers who have begun to ask questions of their own.
It’s time for the truth to have its day before the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles. And if truth can’t find a fair hearing there, then perhaps before the Alabama Legislature.
It’s time for someone to stand up for the truth — because Steve Marshall never will.
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