NC Judge Orders 2 Inmates Convicted Of Murder Released

NC Judge: Lifers should be Freed


NC Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand has ruled that two inmates sentenced to life in the 1970s should be freed.

His order comes less than a week after Alford Jones and Faye Brown, both convicted of murder, argued that they were being illegally detained by North Carolina prison officials, Mandy Locke reports.

The state's highest courts have ruled that life sentences imposed between 1974 and 1978 amounted to 80 years. Brown and Jones argued that credits earned for good behavior, working while in prison and earning degrees made them eligible for release now.

Prison officials argued that they never awarded credits to these inmates for anything other than consideration of parole or changing their grade of custody.

In his order, Rand acknowledged the prison system's method of awarding credits but said that policy has been wrong.

"The Court concludes that the Department of Correction's interpretation of its regulations regarding the award of sentence reduction credits is clearly erroneous, and that a different reading is compelled by the plain language of the regulations," he wrote.



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