The governor is making big changes after a man on parole allegedly killed three people in Guntersville this summer.
Governor Kay Ivey signed an executive order to temporarily stop early paroles. She also replaced chairman of the Pardon and Parole Board, Michael Spurlock, with board member Lyn Head. The board has 30 days to come up with a corrective plan.
Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall met with the board members Monday morning and left…
“I was disappointed in that meeting,” Ivey said.
She says the executive order is a start to strengthen leadership, management, and operations.
Jimmy Spencer has a violent criminal history dating back decades.Officials say he even assaulted inmates and officers while in the prison system, yet he was granted parole. That’s when he allegedly killed two elderly women, Martha Reliford and Marie Martin, and Martin’s seven-year old great-grandson Colton Lee.
“Somebody at the lower level made a decision and recommended it go up the chain and when it finally got to the board members they approved it and that’s just not acceptable,” Ivey said about his parole being granted.
The governor says there are multiple committees that review who could get parole and around 600 people in the agency.
“What’s scary to my clients and should be scary to everybody else: how Jimmy Spencer slipped through the cracks if there are all these committees reviewing these parolees, tells me there’s multiple levels of people not doing their jobs,” said Attorney Tommy James.
James is the attorney for the victims’ families. He says that like Ivey, the families are frustrated.
“The system did fail them and they want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else again,” he said.
James says violent offenders have been slipping through the cracks for some time. He believes the governor’s actions are a start, but it’s going to take those 600 people doing their jobs to see any change.
