In July of 1998, Billy Crowder was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and armed robbery in a Georgia State court.  He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, 5 years in prison for hindering the apprehension of a criminal and life in prison for armed robbery. In both State and Federal courts, armed robbery is considered a violent offense.  When a person has been convicted of more than one criminal offense, a concurrent sentence allows them to serve each period of incarceration simultaneously.  Since Judge Russell ordered that Billy's sentences run concurrently, he has already served the 5 years given to him for the voluntary manslaughter and hindering the apprehension of a criminal convictions. For the past 6 years, Billy has been confined to a state prison for the "violent offense" of taking $600 to buy groceries and pay bills.  He is currently, and will continue to be, a "lifer," a person serving a life sentence in prison, unless his writ of habeas corpus is filed and successful or he is paroled.

However, the same year that Billy was sent to prison, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a news release that included the following statement:

      "There's a popular misconception that life in prison doesn't mean all of one's natural life.  In just the last year, there are 21 Georgia lifers who are no longer around to tell you otherwise.  If they could, they'd let you know that parole for a life sentence is a rare commodity."
See The Sentencing Project, The Meaning of "Life": Long Prison Sentences in Context, http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/inc_meaningoflife.pdf


The United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, issues a report containing a set of statistical tables regarding State court sentencing of convicted felons.  The following statistics were reported for 1998:

The estimated number of felony convictions for armed robbery in State courts was 11,977.

76% of felony convictions for armed robbery resulted in a prison sentence.
12% of felony convictions for armed robbery resulted in a jail sentence.
12% of felony convictions for armed robbery resulted in a sentence of probation.

The average maximum prison sentence for felony convictions of armed robbery was 106 months, or 8.8 years.  Billy is currently serving his ninth year in prison.

1.6% of felons convicted of armed robbery and sent to prison are serving a life sentence.

The average age of felons convicted of armed robbery and sent to prison was 26.  Billy, 19 at the time of the incident, was 20 years old.

The report does not dilineate circumstances around the convictions, nor does it have the same set of statistics listed for each state.  It is clear that a life sentence for armed robbery is a rarity and, in Billy Crowder's case, an extreme injustice.

The entire report can be viewed at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/scscf98.pdf

In May of 2004, The Sentencing Project, a national non-profit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy issues, released a report entitled, “The Meaning of ‘Life’: Long Prison Sentences in Context.”  The following are excerpts taken from that report.

Life sentences in many cases represent a misuse of limited correctional resources.  This report challenges the supposition that all of these sentences are necessary or effective in advancing public safety.

A PORTRAIT OF LIFERS

The overwhelming majority of lifers in prison have been convicted of a violent offense. Most lifers fall in the category of the kinds of offenders for whom policymakers and the public assume a long sentence is appropriate and desirable. And among this population are persons whose crimes clearly warrant an extended period of incarceration due to the severity of the crime or because their release presents a potential danger to the public.

But a closer examination of the population of lifers in prison, and the process by which they were sentenced, reveals that the profile of persons serving life sentences is far more complex than often assumed. 
   • Lifers include those convicted for violent offenses but for whom many persons would recognize that a life sentence is overly harsh and inappropriate. These include people sentenced as violent offenders but for whom there are serious questions regarding culpability or persons who have not committed violent acts themselves and who pose little threat of injury to others in the future. 
   • The criminal justice system as presently constituted does not perform well in making the distinction between serious offenders for whom a life sentence is warranted and those for whom a less severe punishment is appropriate and fair. Further, increasingly compelling evidence suggests that, as presently constituted, the criminal justice system’s reliability in determining guilt and the appropriate length of sentencing is far from certain.

Examining some of the categories of persons sentenced to life imprisonment illuminates the complexity of the profile of lifers. Among these categories are the following:

BATTERED WOMEN

A review of women in prison for homicide in Georgia found that more than half had been the victim of domestic abuse, and in nearly two-thirds of the cases in which a woman killed a partner, abuse was claimed to have occurred at the time of the crime. These women most often face the question from law enforcement and legal professionals of, “Why didn’t you just leave?” In addition to the insensitivity to the complexity that many women face in trying to make a decision to leave, this assertion ignores the fact that the risk of additional injury or death at the hands of an abuser often increases after fleeing.

Many battered women have received little help from the legal system, since many criminal justice professionals, including defense attorneys, have never understood or appreciated the significance of abuse.

The law itself works against women who have killed their abusers. The strategy of self-defense, which is the approach likely to be asserted by an abuse victim who has killed, is not written for these circumstances. To assert self-defense, a defendant must show that she was reasonably in fear of her life (or for the life of another) at the time she killed, and that she had taken every reasonable means to avoid the threat. Both conditions are difficult to prove. The abuser is frequently sleeping or otherwise harmless at the time, and the abuse victim is often physically able to leave rather than commit a violent act.
See The Sentencing Project, The Meaning of "Life": Long Prison Sentences in Context, http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/inc_meaningoflife.pdf