Alabama splits over whether to parole dying inmate the prison system already sent home

Leola Harris spends her days confined to a wheelchair, sitting through dialysis treatments for three days and recovering from the treatments on the others.

"Your decision today should be an easy one," her attorney, Ashleigh Woodham, told the Alabama parole board.

This board had already denied Harris parole once , in 2023. Yet, Harris was so sick that the prison system itself opted to go around the parole board and send her home on a rare medical furlough earlier this year.

But that wasn't necessarily enough to guarantee she'd get parole now.

Yet as her attorney explained this week, her freedom should have been an easy choice. Woodham said her client is "pretty much locked to a machine" for kidney dialysis three days a week.

"(The prison system) got it right when it granted furlough," she said.

Harris has been imprisoned for the shooting death of 45-year-old Lennell Norris. Harris let the man inside her home in the tiny town of Shorter in Macon County early one morning in May of 2000. She said she found him dead in her kitchen later that morning. She initially told police that Norris shot himself, while she was asleep in her bedroom. The autopsy report, included in court records, shows Norris' manner of death was undetermined, and there were varying opinions on whether he could have pulled the trigger.

After a Macon County jury heard the case and in 2003, she was convicted of murder. Shortly after finding herself behind bars, Harris said, she got sick.

She spent the last five years, prior to her furlough release this summer, living in the infirmary at Julia Tutwiler prison.

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While Harris is already physically free from prison, she has to follow strict guidelines while on furlough and can't travel more than a certain number of miles from her Shorter home. Getting parole would allow her to travel the state, allowing her to seek medical care from Birmingham-area hospitals if needed.

Woodham, who works with nonprofit Redemption Earned, told the board, "Leola will only get older and sicker from here."

Not everyone was swayed, though.

Darryl Littleton was the only parole board member to question the attorney, asking how Harris had done on furlough and what her life currently looked like.

Parole board Chairperson Leigh Gwathney asked no questions of either side, nor did board member Gabrelle Simmons.

Representatives from a nonprofit group called Victims of Crimes and Leniency and the Alabama Attorney General's Office spoke briefly and asked the board to deny Harris' parole. The VOCAL representative used a phrase that she said at each of the three parole hearings on the docket that morning—that the victim "will no longer be able to build relationships" with their loved ones.

The attorney general's office representative said the case had "horrendous facts," but didn't go into detail about the crime. None of the board members asked about it, either.

A condition of Harris' parole is that she have a GPS ankle monitor.

In the end, the board split 2-1 and granted Harris' parole. Even though the prison system itself had already sent her home, Gwathney voted to deny Harris parole, and Gwathney asked that she not come back for another hearing for two years.

Parole rates have increased in 2024. Last year, the parole rate was just 8% in Alabama. That's despite the board's own criteria showing about 80% should have been paroled. But as attention mounted, from media and the public and lawmakers, the board began to split votes . The board now lets out three times as many people some months.

Bureau data showed the board granted 21% of paroles in July. This year, the monthly grant rates have ranged from 17%-24%.

Harris was the lucky one on Tuesday morning in the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles' downtown Montgomery building.

The other two people up for parole in the same docket as Harris were both men convicted of murder, one serving a life sentence and the other a 25-year sentence.

The son of the inmate spoke in one of those cases, a teen wearing a shirt with the 'Peanuts' characters Snoopy and Woodstock on the back and the saying, "it's good to have a friend." He couldn't get through his prepared speech to the board without crying.

The victim's family in that case had the same reaction, as his mother spoke through sobs and his sister spoke so quietly the microphone could barely pick up her words.

Both men were denied; one will have another hearing in four years, the second in five years.