Prisoners who served decades for crimes they committed as children have new hope for parole

Julie McConnell is director of the Children's Defense Clinic at the University of Richmond School of Law. For more than a decade, she has represented inmates who committed horrific things as teenagers and spent decades in state prison. McConnell argues that they are no longer the same people who committed those crimes.

“Their brains were far from fully developed,” she explains. “The part of the brain that was more developed at that point was the risk-taking, impulsive part of the brain that doesn't understand that your decisions and behavior have long-term consequences.”

Her clients include Shabaz Abdullah, formerly known as Reginald Evans – a Norfolk man who began dealing drugs at the age of 13. His parents divorced and his mother became addicted to drugs. She lost the family business and the house she lived in with the children – they became homeless, but Abdullah was afraid to report their situation.

“We kept quiet in front of my father's family because we were too embarrassed and ashamed,” he recalls. “We didn't tell the counselors at school because we didn't want my mother to get in trouble. We didn't want them to take us away or anything, so I had to go out on the streets to survive.”

He carried a gun for protection and once tried to rob a taxi driver. When the man resisted, he fired the gun to scare him, Abdullah says, but the bullet ricocheted off the dashboard and killed the driver.

“This should never have happened to him. Here I am, 15 years old, my co-defendant 17 years old. Here we are trying to rob somebody and we end up killing this man. He was a husband. He was a father. He was somebody's son.”

Now – aged 45 – he expresses remorse, but he cannot bring back his victim and the law does not allow him to communicate with the man's family. Instead, Abdullah has set up a charity and, along with other inmates, buys school supplies for children from poor families in Norfolk. He wants to expand the mission – helping at-risk youth, the homeless and the abused. He has been a model inmate, graduating from school and learning a range of trades, and his lawyer – Julie McConnell – argues that he and most older inmates will surely be released.

“They have become calmer, more mature and have developed empathy. They have a reason to worry about their future, which they simply didn't have as teenagers living in very difficult circumstances,” she says.

One thing speaks against them – the idea that victims of crime feel better if the perpetrators are locked up for life. McConnell denies The Period too.

“This is a false promise. I experienced this when I was a prosecutor. We tell them that the system will take revenge for them. Unfortunately, this usually brings no closure and no comfort to the victims' families. I have even seen cases where victims' families advocated for the release of someone who had served a long prison sentence as a child, and the committee still wouldn't release them.”

Prisoners need three votes from the parole board, and four for capital crimes. By law, the board must have five members, but Governor Glenn Youngkin refused to fill the fifth seat for years, putting prisoners like 47-year-old Marcus Ganzie at a disadvantage.

“I need a full review by the board. I need five members because if one decides to say no, I have a fifth vote,” he explains.

So Ganzie went to court and asked the governor to make that appointment. The case hasn't been heard yet, but last week Youngkin appointed former prosecutor Phillips Ferguson as the fifth member of the panel, which should help ease a workload that McConnell said is overwhelming the current members.

“They decide 2,500 to 3,000 cases a year. In most cases, there is not enough time to get to know these people personally, talk to them or look closely at their files. It's like they don't really take the cases seriously. If they met Marcus or Shabaz, I think they would realize they don't need to incarcerate them.”

One factor in favor of inmates is that the former chairman of the parole board, who now heads the Department of Corrections, had called for face-to-face meetings with those seeking parole. Chadwick Doston is pushing for more educational opportunities behind bars, and since his agency costs the state more than a billion dollars each year, he could also push the board to release more people.