Read the newsletter below. Sign up to get it in your inbox each day here.

Stingy with parole

Alabama’s parole stats have swung wildly in recent years, and some are calling the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles unreasonable in its reluctance to grant more inmates their freedom, reports AL.com’s Ivana Hrynkiw.

Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, who now runs a nonprofit that tries to help prisoners with medical conditions get paroled, even said of the parole-board chair, “I don’t know how she sleeps at night.”

First, some background.

Jimmy O’Neal Spencer was serving two life sentences for eight convictions back in 2017 when he was paroled and sent to a Birmingham homeless shelter. Within weeks he was committing crimes again and eventually was arrested for killing three people — two women that he robbed, ages 65 and 74, and a 7-year-old boy he killed to get rid of him as a witness.

Those crimes, of course, horrified the state and prompted calls for a tightening up of the parole board.

At the time, just over half of inmates who were up for parole were being granted their release, and that percentage was on the rise. With Alabama’s violent, run-down, overcrowded prisons pitting the state against the Justice Department in court, it made sense to try to lighten the inmate load.

Well, that’s slowed to a crawl. In 2023, only 8 percent of those who came before the board were granted parole. The board’s own guidelines suggest that rate should be more like 80 percent.

Of the three parole-board members, the biggest difference has been made by chairwoman Leigh Gwathney, who was appointed not long after the Spencer murders. Data gathered by the ACLU over a 10-week period last year shows Gwathney voting “yes” at about a 2.4-percent clip. She previously was an assistant attorney general, and over that same 10-week period, she voted “no” on every parole request that the AG’s office opposed.

One of the points being made by the ACLU is that almost all paroles are also being denied for those who are assigned to work-release facilities, so we’re sending the inmates out into the community already but still not granting them parole.

Janette Grantham, the director of Victims of Crime and Leniency, sees it differently.

“To me, the most important thing is we don’t have any new victims,” she said.

Bone-chilling

We had some record-breaking cold days this week in parts of the state, according to weather reporter Leigh Morgan for AL.com.

I’m not talking about low temperatures at night but high temperatures during the day. On Tuesday, Huntsville’s high was only 21 degrees, breaking its record-low maximum temperature for Jan. 16. In Muscle Shoals it only got up to 22 degrees, tying a record set way back in 1927, the year Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs.

In Birmingham it got up to 27 degrees, three whole degrees below a mark set in 1977. And in Tuscaloosa it got up to 28 degrees, three degrees lower than its previous record, also set in 1977.

Then on Wednesday morning, with everyone trying to stay warm, the TVA hit its all-time peak power demand, breaking a record set during very different weather conditions in August 2007.

The TVA said its grid has been stable and generating facilities are doing well.

Quoting

“It’s definitely not about winning. It’s definitely not about having pride in something you built and want to finish something you started.”

Former Alabama offensive lineman Alphonse Taylor, reacting to numerous transfers out of Tuscaloosa.

More Alabama news

Born on this date

In 1941, singer-songwriter Bobby Goldsboro of Dothan.

In 1950, former Auburn football player and coach Pat Sullivan of Birmingham.

The podcast