Gov. Bev Perdue defended her decision to hire a convicted murderer to work in her office as lieutenant governor as part of a work release program.

"I have been a long believer and supporter of work release programs," Perdue told reporters Tuesday morning, Rob Christensen reports. "I believe prisoners can work to pay back restitution. I believe they must be supervised. I believe they must go back to their units. They must report in and report out. There is a whole set of rules by which they must operate."

She also said she supports parole if the offender receives community supervision. But Perdue said her support of work release and parole are different from her opposition to the proposed unsupervised release of 27 lifers convicted of rape, murder and other violent offenses.

"One has nothing to do with the other," Perdue said.

WRAL first reported Monday that Sally Holloman worked in Perdue's office when she was lieutenant governor. Holloman was convicted in 1981 of murdering her husband and a Selma businessman.

Perdue said it appropriate to release inmates who have gone through the parole process and are closely supervised. But she said that was not the case with the 27 people who were proposed to be released as a result of a court ruling that determined life sentences issued in the mid-1970s were defined as 80 years and could be further cut in half with good behavior credits.

TIME OUT: State officials say prison officials may have overstepped their authority in awarding early release to two dozen lifers in the state's prisons. But that authority may just be written in state law and the release may be unavoidable. (N&O)

NINE DIGITS: Social Security numbers for nearly every doctor in North Carolina were stolen this summer, but many just recently found out about the security breach. (N&O)

NOT WITH US: Conservatives in Watertown, N.Y., are working furiously to defeat a Congressional candidate that they say isn't conservative enough to call himself a Republican. (NYT)

They won't go: Finding a way to keep 20 inmates convicted of rape, murder or assault in prison allows Gov. Beverly Perdue to take a 'tough on crime' stance at a time when polls show her popularity has tanked, writes Rob Christensen. (N&O)

It's about relationships: Pat Gerrick, fired in August from her job overseeing the state's $60 billion-plus pension fund, said firms doing business with the state offered her favors but she did not accept them, writes Mark Johnson.  (N&O)

Gov. Beverly Perdue says she will not release 20 inmates who received life sentences in the 1970s.

Court decisions have said that one of those inmates, Bobby Bowden, appears eligible for release because when he was convicted of a double murder, state law defined a "life" sentence as 80 years. The court said that Bowden appeared to have earned enough credit to qualify for release.

The N.C. Department of Correction identified 20 inmates who would also appear to qualify for release because of their credit for good behavior. Perdue said in a statement that new questions about how the inmates were awarded credit off their sentences will mean the inmates won't get out of prison soon.

Since that ruling, my staff and I have been doing everything we can to stop the release of these rapists and murderers. These are people who have been denied parole repeatedly, and many who have numerous infractions during their prison stay. I do not believe they are ready for release onto the streets of our communities.

Perdue said the good behavior credits that reduced the life sentences may have been incorrectly applied to the inmates, an issue that Republicans have also raised.

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State Reps. Paul Stam and Nelson Dollar want to know why the state is in such a hurry to release 20 inmates who have served 30 or so years of a "life" sentence.

Stam, an Apex Republican and House minority leader, and Dollar, a Cary Republican, sent a letter to Attorney General Roy Cooper and N.C. Correction Secretary Al Keller urging the officials to slow down on releasing the inmates.

One of the inmates, Bobby Bowden, successfully argued to the N.C. Court of Appeals that he has served his time. When he was convicted of a double murder in Fayetteville, the state defined a life sentence as 80 years and the court found that Bowden had earned enough credit to be released.

The Correction department has calculated that Bowden is one of 20 inmates that must be released this month. Stam and Dollar said that no court is ordering the release.

We are concerned with the haste with which the potential release of these felons is being considered. Only inmate Bowden has filed a motion. His case has been remanded for a hearing to determine sentence reduction credits that he is eligible to receive and how those credits are to be applied. It is premature to consider releasing other prisoners.

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Gov. Beverly Perdue said Thursday that the scheduled release of 20 inmates serving life sentences was "unacceptable," and that she was considering defying the courts in blocking their release next week.

"I really don't know what the answer is going to be," Perdue said in a telephone news conference from China where she is on a trade mission, Rob Christensen reports.

"Everybody that I have talked to understands that letting them out is not going to be the answer that I am going to be able to live with," Perdue said. "In other words, if I go to jail, are you going to visit me? Somebody said they were going to bring me cookies."

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The state doesn't have any immediate plans for the the Guilford Correctional Center in McLeansville, which closed on Oct. 1 as part of budget cuts. 

The prison, known as Camp Burton, was one of seven smaller prisons closed to save $22 million, the Greensboro News & Record reports.

The N.C. Department of Correction can consult with state and local officials or talk to private organizations about converting the building.

The DOC must give priority to converting a closed prison to another criminal justice use where it would be cost-effective.

Prison Superintendent James Lacewell said he has heard about the space being used for people released from parole, which he said is not cost-effective, or for a pig museum.

"I don’t know if that was supposed to be a joke or something," he said.

Officials are not taking the proposal from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals seriously. Local leaders want to get a new tennant in quickly before the building starts to look like an abandoned prison. 

The state will have to release 20 inmates serving life sentences for violent crimes because of a some changes over the last 30 years to the sentencing laws.

Altering the way the state punishes crime is the natural result of the fact that the theory behind why people have to go to prison has changed, said Jim Drennan, a professor of public law and government at the UNC School of Government.

Throughout the 1970s, the law judges handed out relatively long sentences with the idea that offenders would likely be paroled long before the sentence expired. The idea, Drennan said, was that an offender would improve him or herself and convince a parole panel that he or she was ready for release.

Halfway through the decade, the legislature enacted a law that defined a "life sentence" as 80 years. This law would later help the 20 inmates win release.

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