As part of a recent lawsuit settlement, the North Carolina Parole Commission has agreed to make changes to its review process for people incarcerated for crimes they committed as minors.
Brett Abrams sued the commission in 2023 for not giving him a “meaningful opportunity” to be granted parole after being denied after each review since 1993. The U.S. courts have held that juvenile offenders serving life sentences must be given a real chance to earn parole.
Depositions from Abrams’ lawsuit revealed that crucial information in his past parole review files was omitted or inaccurate, which a federal judge called “worrying” in his decision not to dismiss the case.
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At 14 years old, Abrams was tried and convicted as an adult for killing his neighbor. He’s been serving a life sentence since 1984, these days at a minimum security prison in Hillsborough where he’s granted work release to work at a nearby meat-packing plant. When he filed the lawsuit, he hadn’t had an infraction in nearly two decades.
The settlement between the commission and Abrams, who was represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, specifies that case analysts may not make recommendations for parole decisions and that they must cite their sources of information provided in case summaries.
Case analysts are Department of Adult Corrections employees who play an important part in the parole review process, putting together case summaries for the four-person commission that votes on more than 100 cases per day.
According to his lawsuit, the analyst for Abrams’ case ahead of his 2020 parole review inaccurately wrote in her summary that Abrams had locked his little brother in a burning camper van a year before murdering his neighbor. That assertion appears to have stemmed from an unfounded rumor about the 1982 death of Abrams’ brother, which local law enforcement ruled an accident.
“The litigation had established there was misinformation being included, helpful information not being included, assertions in the records that mixed fact with fiction or incredible speculation,” Jake Sussman, Abrams’ attorney, told Carolina Public Press.
“Some of these changes, one might think, are pretty basic in that we’re saying we need to be clear whether this is a fact from a court record or triple hearsay being offered by somebody who has a real bias in (Abrams’) case.
“That seems pretty fair and pretty straightforward.”
The case analyst’s summary also omitted a potentially important development: Abrams has sought psychological counseling and treatment based on recommendations given to him after his previous parole review.
As part of the settlement, the commission agreed to give notice to people up for parole review stating that they should provide any medical or mental health records relevant to their case.
CPP reached out to the Department of Adult Corrections for a comment on the settlement but did not hear back before the publication of this article.
To be clear, the settlement doesn’t guarantee that Abrams will be paroled. Courts do not have that power, but they can address problems with the system itself.
Additionally, the changes to the parole review process brought about by the settlement affect only a small portion of the incarcerated population of North Carolina: those serving life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles.
That’s 171 people to be exact, said Ben Finholt, who directs the Just Sentencing Project at the Duke University School of Law.
“The changes that will result from the settlement are positive,” Finholt told CPP in an email.
However, he added a caveat. “The takeaway for me is that these are important steps but will only result in change if they are implemented correctly,” he said.
“In addition, there are still barriers to incarcerated people, their loved ones, and their advocates in fully understanding the Commission’s decision-making processes and what factors each Commissioner values.”
Likewise, Sussman called the changes agreed to in the settlement “necessary but not sufficient.” He’s advocated for a more objective method of making decisions, such as a rubric-based method, that would apply to all prisoners subject to parole reviews.
“There are many more people in prison right now who went to prison after becoming the age of majority, adults who are going through the process who don’t have these agreements in place,” Sussman said.
“That only applies to the subset of people like Mr. Abrams, and so I think a policy change for adults who are in the parole process needs to be looked at.”
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