Monday, July 27, 1998

Parole system shutting down

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN -- Some short Stories About Texas Today:

Twenty years ago, a 27-year-old man named Robert Hudspeth committed murder in the course of a burglary in Austin. He came from a good family, had attended St. Ed's and UT-Austin and worked as a car salesman, but he just went progressively more off the track. He drew life on a capital murder charge.

Hudspeth was sent away and did his 20. He was a trustee at the Wynne Unit for nine years and did maintenance work at a state airplane hangar.

Every morning at 5 a.m., he walked to work, and every afternoon at 2:30 p.m., they came to pick him up again.

He had one bad mark on his record: A few years ago, he found a half-empty whiskey bottle in a state plane and tried to smuggle it back into Wynne for his friends. They caught him, and he lost trustee status for 15 months. He got it back and stayed clean.

Last year, Hudspeth got himself certified as a Texas commercial driver so he'd have a way to make a living when he got out.

The address on the license was "Wynne Unit." He was a guy whom people liked, and they helped him plan for his release.

He came up for parole hearing two months ago and went before two commissioners. The warden thought he'd get it; everybody thought he'd get it.

"I don't know why they pay those people," Hudspeth later told David Tinsley, who has the hangar next to the state one; "they didn't ask me any questions or talk to me at all. They just stamped it ‘DENIED.' "

Asked if he knew why, Hudspeth said: "Yeah, it's a Willie Horton thing. The governor is running for re-election, so no one is getting out. They're afraid of making him look bad."

Lawyers who handle parole cases confirm Hudspeth's judgment: The parole system has been pretty much shut down. After the manic building spree of a few years ago, the state finally has enough beds, so they can afford to keep everyone in. Although "murderer" is a scary concept to the public, criminal justice experts say guys like Hudspeth are classic low-risk releases -- they almost never come back.

Hudspeth was depressed after he was denied parole with no explanation. A few weeks later, he stole a Suburban from Tinsley's hangar and drove to Austin, and then on July 2 he drove to Llano.

He ate a peanut-butter sandwich and some instant rice with ketchup. He wrote a note that said, "I don't want to die in prison." And then he hanged himself.

End of story.

The overall parole approval rate, according to the latest figures from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, is 22 percent for both violent and nonviolent offenders, which means it's actually much lower for violent offenders. This is the lowest approval rate in state history.

Before 1992, the approval rate was about 60 to 70 percent and was simply a way of managing the prison population.

The decline is both because of the state prison building spree and because of the hideous results of the erroneous release of Kenneth McDuff. There are 18 members of the parole board, each paid $75,000.

Parole board members are responsible for voting on parole releases, parole revocations and amending conditions of supervision. They process almost 100,000 files a year. Divide that by 18, and see what you get.

Lawyers who work in this area believe that most board members do care and are conscientious but are just overwhelmed. There are seven board offices around the state. Each one receives between 6,000 and 7,000 files a week, and they have to be cleared by the end of the week to make room for another batch.

The results are stories like this:

Charles Marshall, early 30s, is convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 16-year-old girl. She did not want to press charges, but her parents did. Marshall drew 10 years.

After a few months in prison, he was found to have inoperable cancer. A lawyer applies for an emergency medical furlough or special-needs parole.

Marshall had a malignant melanoma, one of the most virulent forms of cancer, that metastasized into his spine, neck, jaw, stomach and intestine.

He had to use a wheelchair and could not even get up to go to the bathroom. He was utterly helpless.

Parole denied. He died in the prison hospice unit on March 2, 1997.