House Judiciary Committee passes bill for Alabama parole applicants to attend hearings

The Alabama House Judiciary Committee Thursday approved a bill allowing parole applicants to participate in their parole hearings after a legislator delayed a vote on Wednesday.

SB 312, sponsored by Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, requires the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to allow applicants to participate in parole board hearings virtually through video conferencing or other electronic means.

Barfoot, who attended Thursday morning’s committee meeting, said it is important to allow applicants to participate in their hearings.

“More importantly, it gives the parole board another opportunity, or an opportunity, to question that inmate, to find out what, if anything, they have learned by being in DOC (Department of Corrections) custody,” Barfoot said.

The measure passed by a vote of 10-2, with Rep. Russell Bedsole, R-Alabaster and Rep. Phillip Pettus, R-Killen voting against the proposal.

An amendment added in committee extends the ability to virtually participate in a parole hearing to a crime victim;  a local district attorney; law enforcement and any other individual interested in the proceedings.

Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook proposed a substitute Wednesday to amend the version passed by the Senate. Faulkner’s proposal would have allowed the Parole Board to exclude parole applicants from hearings. The proposal would also have allowed the parole board to have applicants use the telephone in the first year, giving the body time to work through the technology and logistics to eventually allow applicants to participate by video conferencing.

Faulkner was absent during Thursday’s meeting.

“We are still against it,” said Wanda Miller, the executive director of Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL), which advocates for the rights of crime victims, in an interview after the meeting. “But we are having to look at it with the thought in mind it could pass. With that knowledge, we need to make sure that victims are protected.”

Advocates are continuing to review the legislation to ensure that some stipulations are met to satisfy their concerns with victims.

“Victims, what they say, the inmate wouldn’t be able to hear,” said Darlene Hutchinson, chair of the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Commission. “We also want to make sure that nobody is going to be putting victims out of the room, or that they have the right, if they want to, to stay in.”

In the end, enough members were satisfied with the amendment and felt comfortable enough with the legislation to pass it.

“It is important that the parole board hear the stories of the people who are up for parole directly from them,” said Katie Glenn, senior policy associate with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We know that this parole board recently denied parole to someone who was dead. If this bill had been passed last year, that would not have been the case.”