Face of Nation : Alabama man who stole $50.75 from a bakery and has spent the past 36 years in prison for the theft will be free within days. Alvin Kennard was just 22 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now, at the age of 58, he is being set free after Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff Circuit Judge David Carpenter learned of the case and held a resentencing hearing.
Kennard was given the harsh sentence in 1984 because, at the time, Alabama had strict sentencing guidelines that mandated a life sentence after three prior offenses. Prior to the bakery robbery, which was committed with a pocketknife and resulted in no injuries, Kennard had been convicted of three nonviolent property crimes.
The Habitual Felony Offender Act was changed in the early 2000s to give judges the option of giving four-time offenders the possibility of parole, but since the change wasn’t retroactive, Kennard’s case did not automatically trigger a resentencing.
“The judge in this case noticed how odd it seemed that someone was serving life without parole for a $50 robbery,” Kennard’s attorney, Carla Crowder, told. “This was a judge that kind of went out of his way.”
At a Wednesday hearing, Carpenter changed his sentence to time served, paving the way for his release “within a few days.”
Assistant District Attorney Bill North said that Kennard’s behavior was also a factor in the change of sentence. “Other than a few ‘settling in’ issues 30 years ago, [Kennard] appeared to be a pretty exemplary inmate,” he noted.
Crowder said that because there was no retroactive trigger after the rule change, some 250 prisoners in situations similar to Kennard still remain behind bars. Crowder became involved in Kennard’s care after Carpenter told her to look into it.
“As incredible as this opportunity is for Mr. Kennard and as happy as we are for him, we know that there are hundreds of similarly situated incarcerated people in the state who don’t have attorneys, who don’t have a voice,” Crowder said.
After his sentence was changed, Crowder said Kennard still had his mind on those he lived with in the faith-based wing of the Donaldson Correctional Facility. “We talked about his different possessions and who he wanted to give them to, because there’s such deprivation there,” Crowder said.
