[Moorbey]

By: Leslie Reed, Midlands News Service
06/13/2008

LINCOLN - Edward Poindexter, sentenced to life in prison for the 1971 slaying of an Omaha police officer, is not a candidate for parole, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled today.

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The high court said inmates who are serving life sentences for first-degree murder must have their sentences commuted before they can be considered for parole.

Only the Nebraska Board of Pardons - composed of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state - has authority to commute a prison sentence. The board has not commuted a life sentence for first-degree murder in nearly two decades.

Poindexter, 63, was convicted in the 1970 booby-trap bombing death of Officer Larry Minard. Poindexter twice has asked for a Pardons Board hearing, in 1987 and 1993, and twice been denied.

Poindexter had no attorney when he filed his lawsuit and subsequent Supreme Court appeal.

Under state sentencing laws, prison inmates are considered eligible for parole after they have served their minimum sentence minus credits for good behavior while in prison.

The Parole Board, a five-member body appointed by the governor, decides, after a public hearing, whether the inmate should be released.

However, Nebraska authorities long have considered those convicted of first-degree murder not eligible for parole because they won't complete the minimum life sentence before they die.

Poindexter, however, argued that the law in place when he was sentenced allowed him to be considered for parole "at any time."

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, disagreed with Poindexter.

Judge William Connolly wrote that neither 1970 law nor current law allows first-degree murderers to be considered for parole without first obtaining a sentence commutation.

The high court also rejected Poindexter's arguments that he should have been released from prison by 1988 because other inmates sentenced to life for first-degree murder were granted sentence commutations and paroled from prison within 17 to 18 years.

The court said Pardons Board decisions to commute other inmates' sentences did not mean Poindexter had a right to a sentence commutation.

"The Board of Pardons has the unfettered discretion to grant or deny a commutation of a lawfully imposed sentence for any reason or for no reason at all," Connolly wrote.


©Suburban Newspapers 2008