Attorney General: Teen convicts freed by law face parole in Arkansas

Rutledge’s opinion relates to offenders as teens with revised sentences

Former juvenile offenders freed from life sentences under a new Arkansas law likely will remain under state watch for the rest of their lives, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge advised parole officials in an opinion released Friday.

Prisoners sentenced to life without parole as teens had their sentences invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012, but it was not until earlier this year that state lawmakers said when the inmates should be eligible for release.

The new law, the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act, or Act 539 of 2017, makes such offenders eligible for parole after 30 years for capital murder, 25 years for first-degree murder and 20 years for crimes in which no one was killed.

The law did not specify how long such convicts released from prison must remain on parole supervision.

So Sheila Sharp, the director of Arkansas Community Correction, the agency that oversees those on parole and probation, asked Rutledge for her opinion.

Rutledge hedged her response -- delivered in a letter late Friday afternoon -- by noting that the Arkansas Supreme Court has yet to review the law.

The high court is currently on summer recess. Meanwhile, a legal challenge that has already placed implementation of the law on hold is expected to go before the justices.

Without the court's guidance, Rutledge said there's nothing in state law that would allow for early release from parole. Her legal opinion is non-binding.

In Arkansas, paroled inmates must stay under supervision for the remainder of their sentence. For example, an offender given a six-year prison term, but paroled after three years, would have to serve the remaining three years under supervision.

Under Act 539, former juvenile offenders are offered an opportunity at parole, but their sentences are still life.

"Therefore -- assuming the sentence is not commuted through executive action -- parole supervision would continue for the remainder of an Act 539 offender's life," Rutledge wrote.

Speaking by phone from St. Louis, where she was attending a conference Friday, Sharp said the opinion is what she had expected to hear.

Even under a lifetime sentence turned into parole, Sharp said offenders would be eligible for varying levels of supervision. Rutledge agreed, writing that the "degree" of supervision under Act 539 was subject to Community Correction's standard risk assessment.

"You can work your way up to annual supervision," Sharp said.

After spending decades in prison, many of the teens sent away for life sentences are now being represented by the Arkansas Public Defender Commission. The director of the commission, Gregg Parrish, said Friday he had yet to review Rutledge's opinion and could not offer his own comments on it.

According to Parrish's office, there are at least 42 inmates in Arkansas prisons who have been serving life sentences since they were teens.

Metro on 08/19/2017

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