Parole Board Releases Hundreds Of Convicted Felons
Some Say Paroles Related To Prison Budget Cuts
Duane Pohlman, WEWS 5, July 8, 2004

CLEVELAND -- Convicted sex offenders and murderers should be serving at least the minimum sentence for their crimes, but Ohio's prison system is letting some of them out before their full time is served.

NewsChannel5 chief investigator Duane Pohlman reported on what is happening in Ohio's parole system.

Pohlman: These are the faces of former inmates, paroled by the state of Ohio.

Rapists, murderers, violent offenders -- all of them set free long before serving their maximum sentences. In many cases, the inmates barely served minimum time. In some cases, they served less than the minimum.

Albert Spann was convicted of felonious assault, abduction, two counts of rape and aggravated arson. He was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison.

He served just seven, and was paroled in 1988.

But he violated that parole and was in and out of prison on parole violations three more times over the next 12 years.

He still hadn't served his original maximum sentence when he was paroled again, for the fourth time, in March.

He is listed as a sexual predator, the most likely to attack again.

Albert Spann is a free man, on the streets of Cleveland.

Claude Willis was convicted of felonious assault, sexual battery, two counts of gross sexual imposition, and rape involving two separate young women.

He was sent away for a minimum of 14 years. After serving 14 years and 10 months, the state of Ohio set him free.

NewsChannel5 found Willis, a sexual predator, living in an East Cleveland apartment building, right next to Shaw High School.

Concerned Citizen 1: "The kids are too close ... he's too close to the school!"

Concerned Citizen 2: "Somebody like that doesn't need to be in there. He needs to be gotten out."

Pohlman: In 1979, Richard McGlothan was convicted of three separate rapes.

He received a maximum 25-year sentence, but was released after just 11 years.

In 1991, McGlothan violated his parole and went back to prison. But he was freed again, and just days after NewsChannel5 taped him at a South Euclid home, he was arrested again on another parole violation.

Prosecutors and victims' advocates alike claim the state of Ohio is dumping prisoners.

William Mason, Cuyahoga County prosecutor: "They're starting to release inmates who should never be back on the streets."

Bret Vinocur: "It's dumping prisoners in to a neighborhood."

Pohlman: And Vinocur, the founder of Findmissingkids.com, says the results of these releases will be deadly.

" Do you have any doubt what will be happening in Ohio in the coming years?"

Vinocur: "I have no doubt ... people are going to be raped and murdered."

Pohlman: Joel Yockey, who had served only 15 years of a 25-year sentence for raping a 17-year-old, was released in 2002 to Wayne County.

The very same year, he was convicted of kidnapping, raping and dismembering 14-year-old Kristen Jackson.

In Cuyahoga County, the list of recent parolees charged with rapes, murders and other violent crimes continues to grow.

Mason: "The parole board has changed its direction. They are no longer working to keep criminals in jail."

Pohlman: "The advocates and prosecutors claim the parole board is dumping prisoners."

Gary Croft, Ohio Parole Board Chair: "That's untrue."

Pohlman: Croft says the state is simply following rules from an Ohio Supreme Court case in 2002, now known as the Layne decision.

Croft: "With the Layne case, we heard inmates that we would not normally have heard."

Pohlman: Before Layne, the parole board looked at everything -- all charges and arrests.

Now, the board can only look at the crimes the inmate was convicted of committing.

Everyone agrees that's fair.

Mason: "I agree with that concept."

Pohlman: But prosecutors and advocates say what the parole board did next was not fair -- 2,431 inmates who had already been turned down for parole got new hearings.

And even though the board still had the right to turn down every one of them, it paroled 1,413 -- almost 60 percent were set free.

Mason: "They're releasing prisoners in wholesale fashion."

Pohlman: Mason assembled a team of 28 prosecutors to fight the releases. He even filed a suit against the state -- he lost.

Mason: "Out of 500 cases, we've only gotten 30 full board hearings."

Pohlman: Mason and his team flooded the Department of Correction with hundreds of letters objecting to paroling more than 500 inmates from Cuyahoga County.

Mason: "We won five or six cases, five cases."

Pohlman: Mason and his team say they were denied the most basic of information about pending paroles.

Rick Bell, chief criminal prosecutor: "They're not telling us what their initial decision is, so we do not know if someone is being released. We can't warn the victim ... our hands are tied. To me, that's not enough. That's outrageous."

Pohlman: The parole board chair disagrees.

Croft: "We provide proper notice as per statute."

Pohlman: The "proper notice" is a basic letter with the name and number of the inmate, and the month -- no date -- of a pending parole hearing.

When I suggested the parole board should share all the information about the prisoner on the Internet, I got this:

Croft: "I'd have to think about it. I'm not really sure whether I agree with that ... I would need to sit down and contemplate that ... I just can't sit down and do that off the cuff."

Pohlman: "I'll give you my business card ... when you're done contemplating, will you give me a call?"

Mason: "The cooperation we have received from the state of Ohio has been ridiculous."

Pohlman: So, what's really going on?

Mason and others say the state must have wanted to parole all these inmates -- but why?

Well, timing is everything. And the Layne decision happened at the same time the state faced one of the most serious budget crises in its history.

To save money, the state began closing prisons.

Gov. Bob Taft ordered the closing of the state prison in Lima -- more than 1,600 prison beds gone.

Guard: "The inmates? They moved them out."

Pohlman: Another major prison near Columbus closed, too.

The total -- 4,300 beds cut from the system. And the cuts come a time when Ohio's prisons are severely overcrowded.

According to figures obtained by NewsChannel5, the state's prisons are routinely running at 120 percent of their capacity. Some of the prisons are running at more than 150 to more than 200 percent of their capacity.

Croft says his decisions have nothing to do with relieving overcrowding.

"You're in the very same headquarters where key decisions have to be made about what to do about the budget crisis and prison closings. You never felt pressure of that?"

Croft: "No, No. Absolutely not."

Pohlman: But Mason and others say the decision to parole in Ohio is based on the bottom line.

Mason: "That's what's so pathetic about it. It's all about money ... instead, what they've done is release these very, very brutal murderers, rapists, child predators, and putting them back in our communities to commit more crime."