What's going on in Alabama

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Contributor Connection Newsletter

Jan 18, 2024

Today our lead story has to do with Alabama's very low parole rate. I'd encourage you to follow the link below it because AL.com's Ivana Hrynkiw took a pretty deep dive on that one.

Of course, there' also much more below. Stay warm out there.

Ike Morgan

 

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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.

Read more about this story here
 

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.

Read more about this story here
 

Attorney's passing

Bill Slaughter, a former state legislator and a lawyer who represented Jefferson County through its sewer crisis, has passed away, reports AL.com's Greg Garrison.

He served in the State House from 1986 to 1990 and wrote legislation to allow casinos at dog tracks.

He also worked as an attorney for the City of Birmingham. But it was while representing the county that Slaughter helped negotiate $475 million in 40-year bond sales to finance sewer debt after a billion dollars' worth of sewer repairs.

Those bond-swap deals eventually went bad during the financial crisis in 2008 and Jefferson County went bankrupt.

Bill Slaughter was 84 years old.

Read more about this story here
 

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

  • Spiritual advisor for Alabama inmate set to die by nitrogen sends prison letter of safety demands
  • Families of disabled children scramble to pay bills, buy food as Alabama misses payments
  • Bloomberg gives $26 million to future Demopolis health sciences high school
  • Alabama superintendent talks up summer learning at White House
 

Born on this date

In 1941, singer-songwriter Bobby Goldsboro of Dothan.

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

 

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