So, I thought LWOP would never mean having to let someone go...

And the exceptions just keep showing up.

Famed prison journalist Billy Wayne Sinclair paroled

BATON ROUGE, La. � Billy Wayne Sinclair, a convicted killer who won awards as an inmate journalist and called attention to a 1980s Louisiana pardon-selling scandal, was out of prison and on his way to Houston Monday night.

Sinclair had served 40 years of a 90-year sentence for killing a Baton Rouge convenience store clerk in a 1965 robbery. He won a parole Friday on a 3-0 vote, said Margaretta Blades of the parole board.

"He plans to live in Texas," Blades said. "The parole is for him to move to that state."

Reached on her cell phone, Sinclare's wife, Jodie, confirmed the couple were driving to Texas. She refused further comment.


The state Pardon Board voted in 1991 to cut Sinclair's no-parole life sentence to 75 years, but Gov. Buddy Roemer put the sentence at 90 years, making his earliest possible good-behavior release date April 2011.

Because of stiff opposition from family and friends of the victim, J.C. Bodden, the Louisiana Parole Board had refused to set him free.

Doesn't it remind you of discretionary mandatory supervision in Texas? Words don't mean what they should! Maybe LWOP means life with "option" of parole!

quote:

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"He plans to live in Texas," Blades said. "The parole is for him to move to that state."

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I think we need an Interstate Agreement on the Exchange of Convicted Murderers [IA-ExCon]before residency in Texas becomes a standard condition of parole from other states.