Lawsuit pits Va. convicts against state parole board

By Laurence Hammack

STATE FARM

Henry Stump is quick to smile, even though he's spent all but one of his adult years in prison and is now pushing 50.

His face betrays no anger when he talks about being denied parole 18 times since 1991.

More than anything, Stump is puzzled. He cannot understand why the Virginia Department of Corrections continues to groom him for freedom -- offering an array of rehabilitative programs that he has taken at every opportunity -- only to keep him locked up.

"My crime is a cancer, but I've been cured," said Stump, who as a drunken 19-year-old killed a bootlegger in Russell County after the man refused to sell him another pint of liquor.

"I've went through all the treatment; I've taken all the chemo that the system has to offer," Stump said during a recent interview at the Powhatan Correctional Center, where he is serving a 93-year sentence.

Stump is a relic of old laws that make him eligible for early release. He was already in prison when the General Assembly abolished parole in 1995, and was not affected by the changes. 

Yet a lawsuit brought by Stump and 10 other prisoners claims that the Virginia Parole Board the legislature kept in place to consider thousands of inmates such as Stump has essentially abolished parole retroactively for them, too.

By repeatedly denying the inmates parole, citing the serious nature of their crimes, the board has ignored evidence the prisoners have turned their lives around, the suit claims. 

The lawsuit, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center of Charlottesville and a Richmond law firm, could have sweeping consequences. If a federal judge agrees to expand the case into a class action, it could benefit nearly 5,000 state prisoners who were convicted before 1995, when Virginia abolished parole.

Many are killers, robbers and rapists -- a population that many Virginians would likely prefer to remain jailed.

The lawsuit does not seek their immediate release. It asks that the parole board follow its written policy and base decisions on more than the seriousness of the crime, such as inmates' behavior behind bars and their progress toward rehabilitation.

In other words, Stump said, he wants the parole board to look at the person he is today, not the one he was nearly 30 years ago.

Crime and punishment

Nov. 27, 1980, was a cool and rainy Thanksgiving Day, and Henry Stump was drunk well before dark.

Earlier in the day, the 19-year-old had left the house in Honaker, where he lived with his parents and new wife, to meet friends. Stump, a high school dropout who followed his father to work in the coal mines, had a reputation by then for hard drinking and minor scrapes with the law.

Stump and three other young men pooled their money to buy two pints of whiskey. Then they walked to the home of John Ivory Cook, a 68-year-old known by locals as the man to see when the liquor store was closed.

"John Cook was the liquor store," Stump said.

When their bottles were empty, the youths made a second trip to Cook's house. When Stump and a friend came back a third time, he turned them away.

"He told me, 'Henry, I'm not going to sell you no more liquor. Go back home to your wife before you get in trouble,' " Stump recalled. But, he said, "telling a drunk 'No' is one of the hardest things in the world to do."

Instead of going home, Stump and one of his friends, William Earl Ball, decided to rob Cook and take his liquor. Stump picked up a metal pipe he found nearby, pulled the hood of his jacket over his head, and knocked on the door.

"Cook opened the door and I, Henry A. Stump, hit him in the head with the pipe," Stump later admitted in a written confession to police.

Stump and Ball took the man's wallet as he lay on the floor and then carted away two cases of Senator's Club and Paul Jones, the cheap whiskey that Cook was known to buy in bulk for resale.

The way Stump sees it now, it was an impulsive crime committed by two young men who just wanted another drink.

The way police saw it then, it was premeditated murder in the commission of robbery, a capital offense.

With Stump's guilt never in question, defense attorney Matthew Cody negotiated a plea bargain that spared the young man's life. Although the agreed-upon sentence was a long one -- 93 years in prison -- Stump said he was assured that, under the law at the time, he would become eligible for parole after serving 12 years.

"Mr. Cody said: 'You go in there and get your GED and you'll get out in 12 years. You'll make parole," Stump recalled.

Ball was sentenced to 19 years in prison. He made parole in 1990.

On June 11, 1981, two months after his 20th birthday, Stump took the plea agreement and was sent off to prison.

At the time, Ronald Reagan was halfway through his first year as president, Pete Rose had just tied a Major League Baseball record with his 3,630th hit, and tickets to a new blockbuster movie, "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark," were selling for $3 each.

'What can I do'

As he reminisces over the past three decades, Stump can recall the exact dates he was transferred from one prison to the next -- major milestones in a life behind bars.

After the first 10 years, he realized he wasn't going home anytime soon. He "fell down in a ditch," he said, and began to smoke marijuana that he said was common at Bland Correctional Center.

Stump was busted in 1990 and pleaded guilty to a new crime, possession of drugs by an inmate. An additional six-year term was added to his sentence.

Still, he became eligible for parole the following year.

As he was denied for the first time, and then again and again, Stump set out to take every opportunity the prison system offered.

He earned his GED, completed alcohol and drug abuse treatment, took classes in personal development, obtained vocational training in small engine repair and brick masonry, was certified as a forklift operator and became a born-again Christian.

Stump also works in the prison shop for the Department of Motor Vehicles, making vanity license plates.

A prison counselor wrote in a 2007 evaluation that Stump "has taken just about every program offered for self-improvement since entering corrections."

Yet the parole board denials kept coming.

Each letter cited an eight-word explanation that Stump and many other inmates have heard many times before: "The serious nature and circumstances of the crime."

Many veteran inmates acknowledge they did terrible things, Stump said, but are frustrated by the parole board's reluctance to consider how they have changed since.

"Because God knows we can't change that," Stump said of the crime. "If we could change that, we would have already done it."

Last April, Stump received his 18th denial letter from the parole board.

"I don't know what more I can do," he said. "An interviewer [for the Department of Corrections] said to me one time: 'Mr. Stump, if the parole board would just look beyond your crime, they would grant you parole.'

"I said: 'What can I do to get them to look beyond the crime?'

"He said: 'More time.' "

System changed in 1995

The definition of time has changed in Virginia's prisons over the years.

When Stump was convicted, there was a "universal expectation" that an inmate would serve only a fraction of the sentence imposed, according to his lawsuit, which was filed Feb. 3 in U.S. District Court in Richmond.

Under the system at the time, first-time offenders became eligible for parole after serving one-fourth of their sentence, or 12 years, whichever was shorter. Credits for good conduct often hastened a parole eligibility date.

Thus a judge who thought a 10-year sentence appropriate might sentence a defendant to 40 years.

Gene Cochran, an Abingdon lawyer who prosecuted Stump as Russell County's commonwealth's attorney, said that to the best of his memory, parole was a factor in striking a plea agreement.

"Whether we gave him 93 years or 1,000 years, he would still be eligible for parole at the same time," Cochran said.

All that changed in 1995, when the General Assembly abolished parole. The new system, called "truth in sentencing," required inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before being released administratively.

The parole board remained in place to consider inmates, such as Stump, who were convicted before 1995 and not subject to the new laws.

The board's annual grant rate, the measure of how often the board approves early release, plummeted from 42 percent in 1989 to 3.4 percent in 2006. The grant rate was 8.7 percent last year.

If the legal challenge is successful, the board would be forced to consider all 14 elements outlined in its policy manual in parole decisions. In addition to the crime, those elements include inmates' prior records, institutional behavior, changes in motivation, release plans and input from their advocates and their victims.

Since the lawsuit was filed, parole officials have declined to comment about their practices.

In an earlier interview, board Chairwoman Helen Fahey said the board's parole rate has gone down gradually over the years, as nonviolent offenders have worked their way out of system. Left behind, she said, are the more serious cases.

"We review the cases individually," Fahey said in a 2004 interview. "We look at the sentence they were given to serve. We don't look at them assuming they are going to make parole when they come up for the first time on a violent offense."

Stump smiled again -- this time wryly -- when asked if suing the parole board might jeopardize his future chances.

"I wasn't being considered for parole anyway," he said. "If it doesn't help me, but if it helps the next man, then maybe we've done something right."

'Justice has been done'

When Stump's brother died in 1986, he was allowed to leave prison long enough to attend the funeral, under the guard of correctional officials.

Attending the service in Honaker was Beatrice Cook, the widow of his victim.

After walking past his brother's casket, Stump approached the woman, said he was sorry for what he did and asked if she could forgive him.

"She was crying and she said, 'Henry, I forgive you. But you need to ask God to forgive you, too,' " Stump recalled during the prison interview. "I told her I had, and she hugged me."

Beatrice Cook has since died. Her son, Larry Cook of Abingdon, is ambivalent about the prospect of Stump's release. Cook said he would rather not run into the man who killed his father. But the two killers were young, and Cook doesn't believe they meant to murder.

"I can't say I want him out, but I think justice has been done and he should have a few years of his life," Cook said. Like his mother, Cook said he has forgiven Stump.

Forgiveness by the parole board is something Stump still seeks.

Researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this story.