You mean this information?
Allen, 63 , has been eligible for parole for 25 years , but the state Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission has turned him down 25 times. It says it denied him parole because he breaks prison rules, and he might have roughed up Johnson -- though he wasn't convicted of it.
"Your release at this time would unduly depreciate the seriousness of the crime or promote disrespect for the law," the commission wrote Allen in December, after his most recent parole review. "Your continued correctional programming in the institution will substantially enhance your capacity to lead a law-abiding life if released at a later date."
"Anyone with a life sentence who has been in prison as long as this man has, and has been in close custody [highest risk] most of those years, we cannot see placing him back in the community," Baker said last week in an interview at her office in Raleigh. " He's a threat to the public."
Allen has no legal grounds for a court appeal, because he was properly convicted of second-degree burglary: breaking and entering a home at night to steal something , regardless of whether the home is occupied. He was sentenced to life in prison under an old law.
Even assuming that Allen accosted Johnson, the longest prison sentence he could get under current law for the most likely charges, burglary and robbery , would be six years.
According to court records, prosecutors reduced the charge to second-degree burglary because they couldn't prove that Johnson had been home during the theft. "It was, in effect, a stipulation by the state that the house was not actually occupied at the time," states a 1971 state Supreme Court ruling rejecting Allen's appeal.
I think the sentence is grossly unfair and the parole board is filled with incompetent liars or worse.