RALEIGH -- At 8:15 a.m. Monday, prison inmates Alford Jones and Faye Brown won a homecoming come dusk. By 3:45 p.m., a trio of Court of Appeals judges ordered that they stay put.
Now, their fate and that of dozens like them sentenced to life in prison in the 1970s is once again in limbo, as it has been for more than two months. The pendulum swings nearly every week between poles of politics and decades-old laws. For state leaders like Gov. Bev Perdue, a life sentence should keep someone locked up for all his living days. For lifers from the 1970s and their advocates, their sentences, with good behavior credits, amount to no more than about 35 years.
The Court of Appeals could hold a hearing on the state's request to withhold credits that could cut a prisoner's sentence; if the court declines, the state could ask the Supreme Court to review the matter. Either way, another round of exhaustive court hearings is assured.
Perdue, who said she was angered by the court's early morning ruling, stood in a cold mist outside the state Capitol on Monday evening and vowed to fight their release as far as she could.
"You know how angry and in disbelief I've been all day," Perdue said, shaking her head. "This is not how government and the courts are supposed to work for people."
Perdue's taken a hard stance on this issue, winning praise from law enforcement and crime victims' advocates. Her approval ratings have improved in the wake of the debate, too.
Lawyers for Brown and Jones said little Monday, expressing glee when their clients' freedom was granted, then hope when it was put on hold again that the Court of Appeals would side with them.
The administration and the courts have butted heads since early October, when the Supreme Court declined to review a Court of Appeals decision that an old state law defined life sentences imposed between 1974 and 1978 as 80 years.
One by one, inmates have made their case in court, arguing that credits earned for good behavior, classes and jobs have cut those sentences to less than 40 years and make the prisoners eligible for freedom now.
Brown, convicted of bank robbery and taking part in the shooting death of Highway Patrolman Guy Davis, and Jones, convicted of killing a 60-year-old Lenoir County man, made their pleas last week to Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand. Prison officials argued they don't give those credits to lifers for anything other than evaluating their security level and determining their eligibility for parole.
Rand's ruling Monday was emphatic: "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."
Politics versus the law
Even at the hearing last week, politics and the law were at odds.
Rand pressed a lawyer for the state to explain the about-face offered by the state's administration in October: One moment, Perdue ignited a public outcry when she released a list of inmates to be freed and scolded the courts for allowing it to happen. Then, weeks later, she issued another press release saying the Department of Correction had no power to award these credits and that inmates couldn't collect them.
"You gotta admit it looks a little weird," Rand said. "Everybody ... is saying the sky is falling. Then you say, 'No big deal, they aren't getting out until 2055.' Isn't that weird?"
Rand was not an obvious ally for the prisoners in this debate. His father, Tony Rand, who will soon retire as Senate majority leader, has spoken publicly about the need to keep these lifers behind bars.
In November, Perdue appointed Tony Rand to oversee the state's parole commission, which is charged with determining whether inmates can rejoin society.
Jones has been approved for parole next year; Brown has been repeatedly denied parole, as recently as this year.
Ripley Rand came by his current job through political appointments by former Gov. Mike Easley. His name is on a short list of North Carolinians being considered to be the next United States attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Skirting Rand's ruling
The inmates were ordered released under a mechanism rarely used in state courts. Called a writ of habeas corpus, the instrument dates back to British common law and is used to protect individual freedom from arbitrary action of the government. In North Carolina, such requests can be used when a prisoner is held after his sentence expires.
On Monday, the state's lawyers scrambled to circumvent Rand's ruling. They bypassed him and appealed, instead, to the Court of Appeals. There's little precedent for such matters. The most recent court opinions on such cases are more than 100 years old.
