Perdue makes another move to stop violent inmates' releases

NEW BERN — Gov. Bev Perdue said Thursday that it is “visceral” to her to ensure that a group of violent criminals serving life sentences from the 1970s will stay in N.C prisons until at least 2054.

The N.C. Department of Correction will not allow those inmates to get any credit for good behavior and will instead require that each of them serves an 80-year sentence, Perdue’s office said Thursday morning. Perdue stood by that stance later in the day when she came home to New Bern, and her move affects more than 20 violent inmates statewide, including two from Lenoir County.

For a period in the 1970s, state law said a “life sentence” was 80 years, and Perdue’s Thursday order sets out to block any potential “good” credit for inmates convicted of murder, rape or other violent crimes. Among the inmates affected are Alford Jones and Steven C. Wilson, both convicted in Lenoir County, and both serving life sentences for their crimes.

Jones was convicted of murder for shooting William B. Turner Sr. in the chest during an attempted robbery in January 1975. Turner died three weeks later.

In 1978, Steven C. Wilson was convicted of the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old girl.

Perdue said the effort to keep those inmates and others from the same group in prison is a “fight worthy of fighting.” She was in New Bern to donate a painting that will be hung in the Craven County Courthouse.

Afterward, she took issue with an appellate court’s recent decision that would have allowed those inmates to go free last month.

“I was incensed as a woman and as a mother and as a grandmother and as a taxpayer,” Perdue said.

She said that people in North Carolina have a right to know that any released prisoners are being closely monitored and that if they break the rules they’ll go back to jail.

“The courts say, ‘Just let them out and Katie bar the door,’” Perdue said.

The governor said her decision was not the stuff of political grandstanding, but was a matter of stopping a bad public policy for North Carolina.

“It was visceral for me … I usually don’t act out of anger or emotion … but it was really emotionally troubling to me,” she said.

Perdue was not troubled by any potential litigation related to her decision.

“I’m sued so often it really doesn’t matter,” she said. “When you serve as governor of the state, you come to think it’s normal. … This is a fight worthy of fighting.”

Nikie Mayo can be reached at 252-635-5665 or nmayo@freedomenc.com.