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3 convicted in Forsyth to be freed
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Published: October 22, 2009
RALEIGH - John Montgomery, John Alford and Manley Porter were all convicted of rape more than 30 years ago in Forsyth County.
Their victims expected each of the men to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
But next week, barring some unanticipated 11th-hour development, those men -- along with 17 others convicted of violent crimes during the 1970s -- will walk free.
Their release was ordered earlier this month by the N.C. Supreme Court, which upheld a lower court's ruling that, at the time that the inmates received life sentences, North Carolina law defined a "life sentence" as 80 years.
The inmates in question -- whose crimes include murder, rape and robbery -- were able to reduce their 80 years significantly by accumulating credits for good conduct or participation in work programs. State law gives the N.C. Department of Correction the authority to reduce inmates' sentences based on those factors.
The result is that the 20 inmates scheduled to be released next Thursday have now served their time. Officials say that dozens of other criminals who were convicted under the former 80-year-maximum law will be released in coming years.
The situation has outraged elected officials in both parties, and sent state and local officials scrambling.
Last week, Gov. Bev Perdue directed her lawyers to try to find some way to keep the inmates locked up. This week, George Holding, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, said he would investigate whether any of the inmates could be charged with federal crimes.
But those efforts appear to be long shots.
Prosecutors say their hands are tied.
"There's nothing I can do," said Tom Keith, the Forsyth County district attorney. "I can't file a motion to re-sentence them."
Keith said he expects the problem to get worse in the future as overcrowding in the state's prison system increases. Because of that, the corrections department has little choice but to set rules that allow many prisoners to get an early release, Keith said.
Currently, state law requires inmates who get life sentences to serve just that: life in prison. Keith said he would favor a state constitutional amendment that would make sure that life sentences can never be reduced, regardless of shifting state laws.
Keith's staff has been digging up old court documents and searching through microfiche records to try to gather information on the three inmates who committed crimes in Forsyth County. His office is also trying to find and notify the victims -- a tough task more than 30 years after the fact.
The brutality of the crimes has not diminished over time:
□ Montgomery, now 58, was convicted in 1976 of raping a 15-year-old girl from Clemmons after luring her away from friends by asking her to help look for a lost dog.
□ Alford, 61, pleaded guilty in 1978 to two counts of rape and four counts of armed robbery. He raped employees of a flower shop and a grocery store.
□ Porter, 61, also pleaded guilty to rape and robbery charges. In 1976, he and another man robbed a general store on Academy Street in Winston-Salem. A store clerk said that Porter, carrying a shotgun, forced a customer to the floor and raped her.
Thomas Bennett, the executive director of the N.C. Victim Assistance Network, said that the release of these inmates and the others in the group is a miscarriage of justice.
"I don't think there's any question that some of these inmates could still be dangerous, could still be a threat to anyone," Bennett said.
Most of the inmates, once they are released, are not required to be formally monitored or supervised. Montgomery, Alford and Porter will all have to register as sex offenders. Prison officials are working to find transitional housing for all of the inmates and trying to prepare them to re-enter a world that is very different from the one they left 30 years ago.
The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office is working to find a way to go after one of the three men, Montgomery.
Jim Gilmore, the administrative officer for the sheriff's sex-offender registry unit, said he has been in touch with authorities in other counties where Montgomery also had been accused of sexual assaults.
Montgomery had been charged in Davidson, Rowan, Cabarrus and Randolph counties, according to news stories at that time. Charges were later filed, after he was convicted, out of an Iredell County case.
Gilmore said that the idea is "to see if anything that was overlooked" would allow prosecution at this time because there is no statute of limitations on prosecution of such charges. Whether the other counties retained documentation of their cases and whether witnesses can be found, Gilmore said, is what makes it "a shot in the dark.''
It would be up to the other counties to try to prosecute the cases.
Thomas Maher, the director of the N.C. Office of Indigent Defense Services, said he understands why people are angry over the impending release of the inmates. But he said it would be wrong to require the inmates to remain locked up after they have finished serving their time under the rules that were in place when they were sentenced.
"Now that they've served them, it feels like somebody's trying to change the rules after the fact," said Maher, referring to efforts by the governor and other officials to try to keep the inmates from going free. An appellate defender in Maher's office represented Bobby Bowden, the inmate who brought forward the case pursuing release.
The court ruling, despite the controversy it has aroused, was actually quite unremarkable, Maher said. The language in the statute that was in place for several years in the 1970s is clear, and even critics of the prisoners' impending release acknowledged this week that the court probably could not have ruled any other way.
The 1970s law stated: "A sentence of life imprisonment shall be considered as a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 80 years in the state's prison."
jromoser@wsjournal.com
919-210-6794
Journal research-team leader Julie Harris contributed to this article.
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