How a second chance for aging, nonviolent Alabama prison inmates died in Montgomery

Ann Manley wants her son, incarcerated for over 34 years, to come home.

“He did not hurt anyone,” Ann Manley said about her 60-year-old son, who is serving a life sentence in an Alabama prison after being convicted of burglary in 1986 for the third time. “I just wish someone would vote on something, get him out of there and send him home. I just want him home. I won’t last much longer.”

Even the man, now 73, whose house he burgled, says it makes no sense that Manley is still in prison and has asked the court to let him out.

“It troubles me that people who commit offenses involving serious injuries, or even death, often receive sentences less severe than Mr. Manley did for burglarizing my house,” said Montgomery resident Anthony Wilson, in an affidavit filed last year.

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The Alabama Legislature had an opportunity to grant the 87-year-old Montgomery woman her wish. But during the final day of the legislative session earlier this month, a bill that began with bipartisan support, abruptly died in the Alabama Senate.

The bill that offered Manley hope was HB229. And like all other criminal justice reforms introduced during the legislative session, it did not make it to the governor’s desk and crumbled under the weight of the “tough-on-crime” GOP supermajority in the Legislature.

‘No-brainer’

But unlike some other reforms, HB229 began with a good amount of Republican support to start.

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Birmingham, who met Manley and learned of her son’s story in 2014, returned to the Alabama State House for the first time since the late 1980s to testify in support of it.

The legislation, as originally written, offered a mechanism for judges to review sentences of those over 50 and who are serving life without parole, and who had served at least 15 years under Alabama’s Habitual Offender Act. People convicted of homicide, a sex offense or an offense that caused serious physical injury were not eligible.

According to the nonprofit Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, approximately 200 inmates would have been eligible to have their sentences reheard under the legislation’s original version.

The bill was amended in the Alabama House to remove the age requirement, while increasing the length of the prison term before a rehearing could take place to at least 23 years.

That bill passed on a 64-37 vote in the House.

“I think the best way to put it is this was a no-brainer,” said Jerome Dees, Alabama policy director with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund. “It should’ve been non-controversial and straight-forward.”

The bill would have helped ease crowding in Alabama prisons, which are already under federal review for dangerous and overcrowded conditions.

Dees added, “These are individuals who have been (in prison) quite some time. ... I believe a commonsense approach is to allow individuals to go back for a rehearing and reintegrate into society. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the trend in Alabama or throughout the Southeast … we still take this approach that tough on crime is the way to go.”

Carla Crowder executive director at the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit which worked with England to draft the bill, said the final version would have provided resentencing opportunities to more than 200 people, many who have served more than 30 years.  And she said, while the efforts did win bipartisan support to start, criminal justice reforms in Alabama can expect to face challenges. “It was always going to be an extremely heavy lift to pass anything in Alabama that would have potentially released people from prison, but HB229 targeted such a limited group of individuals whose crimes involved no physical injury, we learned there is an appetite even in Alabama to explore a solution for these older individuals.”

Proponents said the bill, by allowing for the reconsideration of sentences for older inmates, would save tax dollars. According to Appleseed’s research, medical costs within Alabama’s prisons have soared 119% in 15 years while the number of people aged 51 and over has increased during that time period.

“I wished all people would realize that prisons are the single most costly institutions in our state after public schools,” said Susan Dewey, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Alabama.

Legislation unravels

No one spoke in opposition of the legislation during two public hearings before House and Senate Judiciary committees.

“It was very frustrating,” said Bachus, referring the to the bill’s collapse in the Alabama Senate during the waning days of session. “I didn’t find anyone with a strong objection to it.”

He believes an opinion piece published in late May by former Republican state lawmaker Paul Demarco, who ran for Bachus’ 6th congressional district seat in 2014, might have played a role in its unraveling.

Demarco, in the piece, urged voters to pay attention to Republicans who support “soft-on-crime” measures backed by Democratic politicians.

“The most important priority our lawmakers have is public safety in Alabama,” Demarco, a Birmingham attorney, told AL.com this week. “It should always be paramount when state representatives and senators consider legislation.”

Said Bachus, “This is about mercy. We all believe in punishment, discipline, and justice, but there is also cruel and unusual punishment. To take someone who committed non-violent crimes in their 20s and put them into prison for the rest of their lives when no one was harmed seems to be unmerciful.”

Bachus relayed Manley’s story during a news conference in April when he stood up to testify in support of HB229 before the Alabama House Judiciary Committee.

“The vote count showed it would pass overwhelmingly and it was on the Senate calendar,” Bachus said. “All of a sudden, it was pulled.”

Demarco’s last-minute piece alleged that HB229 did not contain a provision for crime victims to be notified about the potential release. However, according to HB229, a victim “shall have a right to be heard on any motion filed” before a judge considers an early release. A judge, the bill says, “shall give considerable weight to any objection made by the victim.”

Demarco said he wrote his piece as private citizen who was weighing in with an opinion, and that he has no vote on the matter.

Alabama State Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, who sponsored HB229, said there was “misinformation” about the bill that suggested “we were just letting people out” of prison.

“You have several ways to get out of prison,” England said. “Mandatory release or through being paroled, and this would have created a temporary window outside of those and would have created a more strenuous review process than all of them.”

“It had as many guardrails that you could put into a piece of legislation to properly identify an individual for this review.”

Aside from a victim’s opinion, under HB229, a judge could consider the following criteria:

• The underlying offense
• Individual’s conduct while in custody
• Age, including relevant research showing the decline in criminal behavior as people grow older
• Individual’s likelihood of success after release based on availability of a structured, supportive re-entry program
• Whether a firearm was used during the offense

“The only way this bill gains any traction is through bipartisan support,” England said. “A number of Republicans voted for it. The Attorney General helped put some guardrails in it. And up until the last day, (Republicans in the Senate) were not against the bill.”

Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed’s office did not provide a comment for this piece.

“I think there was a general concern about having more legislation that was about releasing convicted criminals early,” said state Senator Chris Elliott, R-Daphne. “We had a number of those pieces of legislation, and there was an unwillingness to do too much more of that at this moment.”

Barry Matson, executive director of the Alabama District Attorney’s Association, said there was supposed to be an amendment added HB229 that would have required the victims to be notified by an agency involved in the case, like Montgomery-based VOCAL – Victims of Crime and Leniency.

He said he never saw an amendment materialize and was unsure what happened.

“Anything you do with an early release needs to be scrutinized,” said Matson. “Whatever it is.”

Janette Grantham, executive director of VOCAL, said there were no plans for a VOCAL amendment on the bill at any time.

“In the beginning, there were concerns about public safety (about HB229 and several other bills),” she said. “I do not know of anyone from VOCAL being at the State House in the last days of the session. In fact, I was on medical leave, and no one else had authority to speak for VOCAL.”

Posterchild for relief

John Manley, who has been in state prison since 1989, was viewed as a posterchild for the legislation. His story was highlighted in a report about Alabama’s Habitual Offender Act released by Alabama Appleseed earlier this year.

Manley, now 60, will likely die in prison if a version of the bill is not passed.

He was convicted of first-degree burglary one month after George H.W. Bush was inaugurated as president. The incident occurred in 1986, and court records indicated Manley was arrested while he was hiding in a closet inside a home he was burglarizing.

During the arrest, police found Manley in possession of a weapon – he reportedly did not point it at anyone, nor did he have any interaction with the homeowner. He was charged under the 1979 Habitual Felony Offender Act due to having two prior burglary convictions which were also Class A felonies. According to court reports, both first-degree burglaries occurred with stolen firearms found in the possession of Manley. He never fired a gun while he committed a crime, his attorney said in a court filing last year.

Manley’s attorney, in seeking his client’s release from state prison last year, argued that the offenses would have been downgraded to a third-degree burglary today and would not be punishable under the Habitual Offender Act. In 2006, lawmakers changed the burglary law to exclude offenses that involve the “mere acquisition” of a firearm from the first-degree felony section of Alabama state law.

The burglarized victim in the case that led to Manley’s life imprisonment has since requested a judge let Manley out of prison.

“He would’ve been out 20 years ago under the present law,” Bachus said.

Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey, president of the Alabama District Attorney’s Association, said he has been asked to “ignore a Rule 32,” which is a legal filing asking for post-conviction relief of an inmate. He said there is no argument by Manley’s attorneys that includes new evidence nor ineffective legal counsel that would affect his original conviction in 1989, and that Manley should not receive a special exception under Alabama law.

“They have asked me not to answer (the Rule 32 petition) so the judge releases (Manley),” said Bailey, a Democratic prosecutor. “I am not fulfilling my duty (as a District Attorney) if I did that, and I am not turning a blind eye toward something like that.”

Manley, by all accounts, has also been a model prisoner. He works in the prison kitchen, is a barber and an accounting clerk. He earned an associate’s degree from Gadsden State Community College, and is deeply involved in prison ministry.

Bachus said that he met Manley shortly before he retired from Congress in 2015, while visiting the St. Clair Correctional Center in Springville.

Bachus said the jail’s warden told Bachus at the time that Manley “should not be here,” and that Manley’s incarceration “bothered him.”

Matson, who said he was unfamiliar with Manley’s case, said during his career spanning back to 1993, life sentences without parole are applied to convicted criminals with three or more prior convictions with at least one being a Class A offense.

“Breaking and entering into a dwelling that is occupied and armed with a deadly weapon is akin to home invasion,” Matson said. “That’s a burglary, first-degree. If you got a prior burglary first, and two priors … it’s life without parole. But if you’re young and dad is a nice guy, we shouldn’t enforce that? But then the next guy, it’s enforced. That’s how you get disparities of enforcement.”

Alabama Appleseed, in its report, identifies the older, nonviolent offenders who are serving life sentences in prison honor dorms as those least likely to reoffend. The organization says the state’s Habitual Offender Act fills prisons “with old men reading their Bibles, writing poems, mopping floors, and seeking one more class, one more program, one more chance to finally prove they are more than who they were 30 years ago.”

Ann Manley knows her son would certainly be eligible if HB229 is reconsidered next year. England said he hopes the momentum the bill had this session will “propel it forward in the future.”

“He wants to get out,” she said. “And spend time with his family.”

This story was updated at 10:45 a.m. on June 22, 2023 for editing and to add comment from Alabama Appleseed