In the face of outrage from victims and their families, Gov. Bev Perdue said yesterday that she will not free a group of violent inmates who were originally sentenced to life in prison.
Perdue, who is in China on a trade mission, argued in a statement that she doesn't believe that the N.C. Department of Correction has the legislative authority to apply credits to inmates who are in prison for life.
Her administration plans to deny the 20 inmates those credits, preventing their release until the matter is resolved in the courts. The inmates were scheduled to be released next week.
The N.C. Supreme Court ruled earlier this month in favor of prisoner Bobby Bowden, who argued that a state law from the 1970s defined a life sentence as 80 years. Time-off credits allowed some inmates, such as Bowden, to get a day-for-a-day for good behavior, and 20 inmates, including three from Forsyth County, qualified for release.
The three Forsyth inmates -- John Montgomery, John Alford and Manley Porter -- were convicted of rape more than 30 years ago.
Perdue said that there is a real question whether legislators intended for the corrections department to have that kind of authority. "I do not believe they did, and my legal counsel agrees," she said. "This raises the very real question that these inmates should not be eligible for early release."
Perdue's office claims that inmates sentenced before the state's Fair Sentencing Act went into effect in 1981 should not have qualified for the good-conduct credits offered under that law.
Attorney General Roy Cooper said that his office advised the corrections department "that no prisoners have to be released until further direction from the courts."
The potential release appalled victims, in part because most of the inmates would be freed without any post-release supervision. Only one would have official supervision, and the convicted rapists would have to register as sex offenders.
The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office has been in touch with other counties about Montgomery, who was also charged with sexual assault in Davidson, Rowan, Cabarrus and Randolph counties. There is no statute of limitations on such charges, and officials in those counties could choose to prosecute him.
Pam Hurley, whose mother was killed by Bowden, said she thinks that the reprieve may be just temporary.
"We are happy, but we are continuing to send letters and e-mails to get our message out. This should have never happened in the first place," she said. "Now that this has been breached, you'd be crazy to relax and think, ‘Oh, well now it's all over.' It's not over. We know it's not over."
The governor's argument is the latest legal maneuver in a case that has been in the courts for years. Attorneys for the state argued before the Supreme Court last month that the law was "ambiguous," but justices unanimously agreed to allow a 2008 N.C. Court of Appeals decision stand. That announcement earlier this month left the state scrambling to prepare the inmates for release on Thursday.
Staples Hughes, the state appellate defender whose office represented Bowden, said he would have to wait to find out why Perdue thinks that the credits were applied improperly.
"It's curious that after all these years, suddenly in the wake of all the publicity about this, they decide the credit was improperly given," he said.
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