Virginia state officials said yesterday that they would grant Earl Washington Jr. time off his prison sentence for good behavior after he was pardoned recently for a 1984 capital murder conviction.
Washington, 40, who once was within five days of execution, could soon learn whether he is eligible for immediate release.
Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) pardoned Washington on October 2nd, after DNA tests found no sign that he raped and killed Rebecca Lynn Williams in front of two of her children in 1982. But Gilmore did not address the issue of Washington's sentence on unrelated malicious wounding and burglary charges.
Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Corrections said it would recalculate Washington's 30-year sentence in that case, taking into account 'good time' he could have earned without the murder conviction.
When that time is added, there is a likelihood that Washington could be found overdue for release, said Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. If Washington had earned time off at the average rate for those sentenced for malicious wounding, he would have been released last year, Kern said.
Washington isn't ready to jump for joy yet. 'I don't believe in celebrating,' Washington said in a telephone interview from Keen Mountain Correctional Center. 'I'm still waiting . . . but I think the hard part is over.'
Washington, who has an IQ of 69, has been waiting a long time. Convicted in 1984 of raping and killing Williams, 19, in her Culpeper apartment, he was almost executed because he couldn't find a lawyer to handle his appeals. A DNA test cast doubt on his guilt in 1993, and then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D) commuted his sentence to life in prison but did not release him.
Williams's family also is in limbo after the pardon of the man who confessed to stabbing 'Becky' 38 times. Although Washington almost immediately recanted his confession, Culpeper investigators told the family that he knew details known only to the killer and police.
'They let [Washington] go way too soon. I'm not comfortable with it,' said Williams's daughter, Misty, 19, who was in the apartment during the killing. 'We need to find out what was really going on.'
The lab tests that ruled out Washington turned up DNA from two other people. The man who left semen on Williams's body remains unidentified, but the state laboratory matched DNA on a bloody blanket to that of a convicted and incarcerated rapist, Gilmore said.
Gilmore's spokeswoman, Lila Young, declined to identify the inmate, saying, 'There's not necessarily a link between that DNA and this crime.'
Washington's future is up in the air because he is still serving time for a 1983 attack on his neighbor, Hazel Weeks. State law says death row inmates cannot earn good time, and even after his sentence was commuted to life, he earned it at only half the normal rate because of the life sentence.
Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said the department is trying to complete computation as soon as possible, perhaps by this weekend. 'If he's eligible for parole, we're going to make sure the parole board knows it. We don't want to hold anybody we're not supposed to,' he said.
Under state law, inmates must be let go when they have served all but six months of their sentence minus good time.