SC courts concerned parole board unfairly denying eligible inmates. Why does it keep happening? (2024)

Joseph Kelsey was 16 years old when he hopped into a car with two older teens in the darkness of a Georgia summer night. He had no idea they were cruising toward a killing.

All three eventually went to jail for their roles in the 1994 slaying of 15-year-old Melanie Richey, which has since become true crime podcast fodder as the so-called “Murder at Scary Bridge.”

Jamie Lee, who was 17, drove the car the night of the murder. He cut a deal to testify for the prosecution and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. He received 10 years.

Geoffrey Payne, also 17, knocked out Richey with a wrench, raped her, then lit a pipe bomb to blow her up. He received a life sentence and was released on parole in 2019 after serving about 25 years.

But Kelsey, who made the pipe bombs and also received a life sentence, has been denied parole at five hearings, despite what has been described as a stellar prison record.

That disparate treatment prompted the state administrative law court to call the parole board’s handling of Kelsey’s hearings “nothing but arbitrary and capricious decision making.”

His Greenville-based attorney, former Department of Corrections directorJon Ozmint, pointed to the double standard at Kelsey’s most recent parole hearing in October, arguing that Kelsey was younger and less culpable than his free co-defendants.

“Joe is being judged differently than Payne,” Ozmint told the parole board in October. “He is being considered by a different standard. A different set of scales is being used. Those scales are broken. That is the very definition of injustice.”

Richey’s parents, however, want him to stay in prison. Her father, Steve Richey, told The Post and Courier he was shocked that Payne was paroled and doesn't want Kelsey released.

Her parents spoke in opposition during his October hearing, recalling his deceitfulness after the murder and decrying the unfairness of letting him out.

“We’ve been without Melanie, our little girl, for many years now and will be for the rest of our natural lives,” Steve Richey said. “We see no fairness in him being allowed to go free and live out the second half of his life. What Kelsey did was incredibly horrible.”

The parole board agreed. And Kelsey, now 46, remains at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.

His next hearing is April 24.

He’s one of around a thousand inmates in South Carolina locked up for crimes they committed as minors, according to a study released last year by the nonprofit Human Rights for Kids.

And he’s one of roughly 700 inmates in the state serving a life sentence with parole eligibility.

In recent years, the parole board has been reluctant to release them.

Nullifying parole?

The number of lifers with parole eligibility who have been granted parole has been dropping for years, according to parole data The Post and Courier obtained from the state through a public records request.

During fiscal year 2023, more than 400 inmates serving life sentences appeared before the board. None received parole. It was the first time that’s happened in more than a decade.

“I think our courts are gonna have to determine whether or not the agency is free to effectively nullify state law by eliminating parole,” Ozmint told The Post and Courier.

People serving life sentences with parole eligibility were convicted of crimes that happened before a 1996 change in the law removed that eligibility for those who receive life sentences.

Even the youngest of them are now growing old, and experts point to age and behavior in jail as two of the most predictive factors for whether someone will reoffend after release.

“One of the things that is sort of counterintuitive is that people who have committed a violent crime and spent a lot of time in custody are some of the people who are least likely to re-offend,” University of South Carolina law professor Madalyn Wasilczuk said.

The trend is known as the age-crime curve. Thanks to brain development and other external factors, people are more likely to commit crimes in their teens and 20s.

“Even in your 20s, individuals are a little more irrational, they're a little bit more emotional,” said Julia Laskorunsky, research director for the Robina Institute at the University of Minnesota, which studies corrections. “They tend to not think through the consequences, and that's true of everyone.”

By the time they’re in their 40s, their risk of re-offending drops off.

“And then you're also seeing kind of a cliff where people just stop offending,” Laskorunsky added. "They just age out of crime."

Those stats are borne out by the state Department of Corrections' own recidivism data, which shows inmates who leave prison when they're older than 40 are reincarcerated at half the rate of those who are released at under 25.

The parole board doesn’t appear to give that curve much weight, except as a reason to deny parole.

The board often cites multiple reasons for denial, but records show the most frequently cited one over the past six years was “nature and seriousness of current offense," a factor that inmates can't change with rehabilitation.

Those decisions have now caught the attention of a state appellate court, which in a ruling last year stated its worry that "inmates who offended while juveniles are not given meaningful review regarding parole."

That case was filed by Stewart Buchanan, who in 1973 was a 17-year-old with an unstable home life, absent parents and a peer group prone to drugs and alcohol.

One night, after drinking and taking LSD, Buchanan broke into a neighbor’s house in Fort Mill. When she fled, Buchanan stabbed her to death in her front yard. He took responsibility for his actions and pleaded guilty on the advice of his attorney, who he claims told him he would be paroled within 20 years.

Buchanan received a life sentence and has spent his time in prison volunteering as a tutor and a chaplain. A psychologist deemed him a low risk to the public. Still, he has not been granted parole after more than a dozen appearances before the board.

In court, he argued that because a U.S. Supreme Court decisioneliminated mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders, the state’s parole board should adopt policies that take youth into account during parole decisions.

The appellate judges ruled against him, reasoning that as long as he’s eligible for parole, he may eventually get it. But they were sympathetic to his argument, noting that the board’s actions thwarted the public policies backed by the country’s highest court.

“We are concerned regarding the perfunctory manner in which Buchanan's request for parole was denied,” the appellate court ruled. “The continuing denial of parole based on the same factors, all unchangeable and related to their offenses, gives no guidance to these inmates about what can be done to improve their chances of parole and is, in essence, equivalent to being ineligible for parole.”

But for now, courts have recognized that state law gives the governor-appointed parole board the final say in parole decisions.

“The law specifically says that no person shall be granted parole unless (the parole board members) are satisfied,” said Valerie Suber, the associate deputy director for the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardons Services.

“If they’re not satisfied, it doesn’t matter what the attorneys feel,” Suber added. “It doesn't matter what the inmate feels because the law says they have the discretion, complete and total.”

While the board has a list of criteria it considers when making parole decisions, it’s not bound to follow any particular rubric, and the board has the freedom to give any factor as much or as little weight as they’d like.

Suber said neither she nor the board would discuss specific cases.

“I’m the spokesperson for the board,” Suber said. “They’re not going to sit down with you, and they’re not going to discuss their decisions with you because that would be inappropriate.”

July 1994: The murder of Melanie Richey

Kelsey sat in the front passenger seat of his friend Jamie Lee’s car as Lee sped 90 mph through the dark roads of eastern Georgia, crossing into western South Carolina blaring Hank Williams Jr. while Payne and Richey rode in the back.

Kelsey got into the car thinking they would take Richey home after a night of partying, he testified in court.

Payne, who declined to comment for this story, had other plans.

“By trial’s end, we were fully convinced that Joe had gotten caught up in a bizarre and horrendous experience for which a shocked 16-year-old was ill-prepared to react with mature judgment,” Kelsey’s father wrote to the parole board.

Kelsey’s parents divorced when he was young, and after living with his mom in Colorado, he moved in with his dad, an Army officer stationed near Augusta.

When the Army transferred his dad to a base in Maryland, Kelsey stayed behind to crash with friends until school started at his father’s new post.

“My dad treated me like I was a responsible, well-adjusted young adult, which I was not,” Kelsey wrote to the board. “Once he was gone, I skipped between friends’ houses where I could find the least parental supervision.”

The night before the murder, Kelsey went to a house party in Martinez, Ga. He brought some homemade pipe bombs, hoping to impress his new friends, Payne and Lee. During that party, Payne and Lee drove to a Texaco station, a local hangout for teens.

There, court records say, they found Richey.

At the time, Richey was on the verge of getting her driver's license, and her parents had already bought her a used Toyota Corolla.

She was vivacious, engaging, bright and personable, her father said in an interview with The Post and Courier. She played saxophone in her high school band, was an active member of her church youth group and had her heart set on going to Duke University, although she didn't know what she wanted to study.

“I don’t think she had figured that out yet," her father said. "One of many things that never got to play out.”

The night of the murder, she had cut her foot while sneaking out of her house to see a friend.

She didn’t want to go to a hospital, so Lee and Payne brought her back to the party and bandaged her foot.

While at the party, according to court records, Payne repeatedly tried to have sex with Richey but was rebuffed. So he and Lee dosed her with ecstasy without her knowledge.

Around 3:30 a.m., Payne asked Lee to get something he could use to knock out Richey. Lee provided a wrench. Payne asked Kelsey to bring his pipe bombs.

Kelsey testified that he thought Payne wanted to blow up some mailboxes after taking Richey home and needed the wrench to steal a car bumper.

In the car, Richey gave Lee directions to her house, but Lee went the opposite direction. When Richey asked where they were going, Payne told her they were going to drive around awhile and headed toward the state line.

Not long after they crossed into South Carolina, Payne began strangling Richey and then hit her in the head with the wrench. It’s unclear if she died from the blows to her head or from the pipe bomb. Kelsey testified that he checked her pulse in the car and believed she was dead. Lee testified she was unconscious but “definitely alive.”

After Payne knocked out Richey, he told Lee to drive to the “Scary Bridge” over Stevens Creek between McCormick and Edgefield counties, court records say. Lee parked at the bridge, the boys got out and Payne raped Richey.

About 10 minutes later, they drove away from the bridge and stopped. Payne, Lee and Kelsey dragged Richey into the woods. Payne told Kelsey to put one of his pipe bombs in her mouth, and he did so. Payne lit the bomb.

Her body was found the next month, and Kelsey, after weeks of lying about the events of that night, was eventually arrested in Maryland. He confessed to his role and was brought back to South Carolina where he was tried as an adult, convicted and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Since then, Kelsey has apologized to Richey’s family and taken responsibility for his actions that night, including his refusal to stop the murder.

“I’ve tried to hold myself accountable and make amends where I can,” Kelsey said at his last hearing. “Still, I will never be able to apologize enough. The compassion I was shown (by those working in the prison system) taught me the importance of caring for others unconditionally.”

Kelsey’s record in prison

While in prison, Kelsey has maintained employment, earned an associate degree in biblical studies from the Columbia International University Prison Initiative, and then a bachelor's degree. He's currently enrolled in an MBA program.

He also volunteers in SCDC’s crisis stabilization unit, where he counsels other inmates experiencing mental health emergencies.

“I was 16 when I came to jail,” Kelsey said during his last hearing. “The kid I was is gone. I’m now a new man, and I know I’ve been blessed.”

He has letters of support from his family, community members from his hometown, corrections officers, professors and pastors. He has offers of employment and housing.

"The majority of what he’s done, he’s done to continue to try to help others," his niece, Ashlea Kelsey, told The Post and Courier. "A lot of people just skate by with the time, but he is constantly trying to find ways to do more and help more."

A forensic psychologist testified at his last hearing that he poses a low risk to the community and is free of any mental health disorders.

“Joe’s record performance and service to others while at SCDC are perhaps the best in SCDC’s history,” said Ozmint. “I’ve looked at thousands of inmate records, and (it’s) probably the best I’ve ever seen.”

Richey's parents still oppose Kelsey's release, no matter his record.

Her mother, Debbie Richey, said Kelsey’s actions robbed them of the chance to watch their daughter graduate from college, get married and have a family of her own. She's aware of his achievements in prison but told the parole board she doesn't believe that it makes him a better person.

“While we very much believe in forgiveness, and we’ve done our very best as Christians to forgive, that in no way alleviates accountability," Steve Richey told The Post and Courier. "We wish him well, but we wish him well behind bars.”

Another chance for Kelsey

Offenders like Kelsey appear before the parole board every two years, but because of a court decision, he’ll get another hearing on April 24.

For years, the parole board maintained two dueling policies that made compliance impossible: One prevented inmates from reviewing their parole files, which can include letters of opposition, a risk assessment, and in some cases, factual errors. The other made it the inmate’s responsibility to correct the errors in the files they couldn't see.

Last year, following a lawsuit by Kelsey, the appellate court ruled that the competing policies were “logically and legally absurd." The state Supreme Court let the decision stand.

Before he was denied parole in October, Kelsey told the board that a favorable decision shouldn’t be just about whether he deserved it.

“It’s about grace; it’s a second chance," Kelsey said. “I’m grateful to this state and its people for the change that they’ve helped to work in me. I will never forget the pain that I brought to Melanie’s family, and I will live my life in a manner worthy of the grace of a second chance."