by TChris

The Georgia parole board made life easier for itself in 1997, when it adopted a policy limiting parole eligibility for inmates convicted of any of 20 crimes. The policy denied those inmates consideration for parole until they completed 90 percent of their sentences. In the wake of a lawsuit and upon advice of the state's attorney general, the parole board is finally dropping the policy.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jackson Bedford recently ruled that the 90-percent policy wasn't legally implemented in 1997.

"They should've done it a long time ago," [Atlanta lawyer McNeill] Stokes said Wednesday. "I still think this is one of the most massive civil rights violations of our times, by continuing to confine prisoners beyond the terms that they should be."

The doors to freedom are unlikely to swing wide for Georgia inmates -- the board might follow an unstated policy that replicates the abandoned policy -- but prisoners will at least have a chance to show that they are worthy of early release.

[T]he board will reconsider the plaintiffs in the Fulton County case immediately and eventually reconsider more than 7,800 in prison convicted of 90-percent crimes.