Were inmates misled about their release?

Something is rotton in North Carolina? See earlier story about lifers.

2-2-2010 North Carolina:

E-mails, internal memos detailed statements by state officials about the status of lifers.

RALEIGH In December, Department of Correction officials and a lawyer for the N.C. attorney general said in court that prison officials never authorized the release of inmates sentenced to life in the 1970s, and never promised them they were going home.

E-mails and memos exchanged within the department show that his staff considered the releases certain.

Dozens of communications between Oct. 9 and Oct. 22 show that correction officials ordered the inmates released by month's end and began planning to prepare them for life outside. They talked with their families, assigned them parole officers to ease the transition and told the sex offenders to register with the sheriffs of their home counties.

But in Wayne County Superior Court, two months later, Department of Correction Secretary Alvin Keller denied authorizing their homecomings.

"I never ordered anyone's release," Keller . "We never - I never ordered the release of anybody."

His testimony and the correspondence followed a ruling by higher courts that life sentences imposed in the 1970s amounted to 80 years, thanks to laws in effect at the time.

Good behavior credits slashed those sentences in half; completed classes and working shaved off more time, state law and prison regulations mandated.

The communications were among 1,200 pages of internal documents that The News & Observer obtained through a public information request.

They show that the Department of Correction, with guidance from the attorney general's office, were moving to release the inmates until Oct. 22, when Gov. Bev Perdue stepped in.

She vowed to block their release and lambasted the courts for allowing them to be freed. Weekly news releases warned the public about the inmates and urged the courts to keep them behind bars.

Her poll numbers climbed, even while she took criticism from Republican leadership that she acted too slowly.

On Monday a spokeswoman for Perdue, who appointed Keller, referred questions about the discrepancies between the documents and the testimony to the Department of Correction.

Keller said in a statement late Monday that the Division of Prisons was working up a "worst-case scenario, the unconditional release of affected inmates, should it have been required by the courts."

"At the same time, attorneys representing the agency were researching and preparing arguments against the release of these inmates."

He reiterated that he never ordered any inmates released, a spokesman said.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper declined comment.

The fate of more than 40 inmates is in limbo. The case is bound for the N.C. Supreme Court Feb. 16, where justices will determine whether Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand was right to rule that prison officials cannot continue to confine two of the inmates, whose cases were heard in Wayne and Wake counties.

During the hearings before Rand in December, prison officials testified that they never told the inmates they would be set free.

Besides Keller, Kenneth Royster, superintendent of Raleigh Correctional Center for Women, and Enoch Hansberry, assistant superintendent for programs at New Hanover Correctional Center, each testified that they alerted the inmates that a release was a possibility.

But Mary Lu Rogers, a Division of Prisons administrator, dispatched orders to wardens on Oct. 13, saying that "per the secretary's office," they should "personally meet with the inmate and advise him/ her of their release on [Oct. 29]."

She told the wardens to gather medical information and help the inmates figure out where they planned to live, according to documents. ..Source.. Mandy Locke