State must release 20 killers, rapists

1970s law defined life sentence as 80 years long

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 16, 2009

RALEIGH

A group of murderers and rapists, several of whom victimized young girls, will be set free from North Carolina prisons this month after state courts agreed that a decades-old law defined life sentences as only 80 years long.

Dozens more inmates could be released in the coming months unless the state can figure out a legal recourse to keep them behind bars, officials said yesterday. Gov. Bev Perdue called them "dangerous criminals" who have repeatedly been denied parole.

"I'm appalled that the state of North Carolina is being forced to release prisoners who have committed the most heinous of crimes, without any review of their cases," Perdue said in a statement.

One of the 20 inmates set for release, Bobby Bowden, had argued that a law adopted in 1974 clearly defined life sentences as just 80 years. The 60-year-old convicted murderer believed that the statute, combined with good-conduct credits, means that his life sentence is now complete.

The Court of Appeals sided with Bowden last year. North Carolina's Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the state earlier this month after a lawyer from the attorney general's office had argued that the 80-year figure was ambiguous and likely meant to determine when somebody would be eligible for parole.

Justices on the high court balked at that argument, and an attorney for Bowden called it "legal gymnastics." The statute, which was in place for several years in the 1970s, says: "A sentence of life imprisonment shall be considered as a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 80 years in the state's prison."

A governor's list of prisoners set for freedom describes a range of gruesome crimes: John Montgomery, 58, was sent to prison in 1973 for raping a 15-year-old girl while on escape from Guilford Correctional Center. Faye Brown, 56, was convicted on a first-degree murder charge for the 1975 killing of a state trooper during a bank robbery. Steven Wilson, 52, went to prison in 1978 for abducting and raping a 9-year-old girl.

All but one of the inmates have been convicted of murder or rape.

The 20th, 57-year-old Charles Lynch, was convicted of two counts of second-degree burglary and assault with intent to commit rape.