Among the many things Patrick Flaherty has accomplished in his 20 years in state prison, getting a law degree is not one of them.
But that didn’t stop the 43-year-old from noting an irony in the legal strategy employed by the Missouri attorney general’s office in its attempt to keep people in prison, or send others back there.
Flaherty wrote to me this week from the Jefferson City Correctional Center in hopes that I would shed light on his predicament. In 1999, as a St. Charles County resident, he went on a crime spree with a BB gun, holding up four convenience stores in St. Peters and O’Fallon.
For the $459 he took, Flaherty, then 21, received four 10-year sentences to be served consecutively for a total of 40 years. He is not eligible for parole until 2036.
A decade ago, after Flaherty had translated more than 36,000 pages into Braille as part of a restorative justice program, the Post-Dispatch highlighted his case as one of the more egregious sentences in state prison. Flaherty was seeking, but still hasn’t received, a commutation of his sentence.
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Since then, CBS News reporter Erin Moriarty , in a television show and podcast, pointing out that murderers often serve shorter sentences than he has and will.
What caused Flaherty to write me was my series of columns recently on Dimetrious Woods, who had been sentenced on a drug charge in 2007 to 25 years in prison with no possibility of parole. After state lawmakers changed the law on such sentences, Woods petitioned the court for a chance at parole. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Dan Green agreed the new law — passed in 2014 — should apply to Woods, who, like Flaherty, had become a model prisoner. Woods got his hearing and has been free for two years.
But he faces a return to the same prison that houses Flaherty because of a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last month that determined Green misapplied the law. In that case, Attorney General Eric Schmitt argued that the new law couldn’t trump the law that was in place at the time of Woods’ sentencing.
In the case of Flaherty, the state is making the opposite argument.
In December, Flaherty’s attorney, Daniel Hunt, who is also one of Woods’ attorneys, filed a motion seeking a hearing that would allow the state parole board to decide whether Flaherty’s four robbery sentences could run concurrently, instead of consecutively. That would make him eligible for a parole hearing now.
The law at the time of Flaherty’s sentencing allowed for such a hearing. He’s never had one. The state has argued, according to Hunt’s petition, that because the Legislature repealed that law, it can no longer be applied to Flaherty.
“The state argued that an old law should apply to Woods and they are arguing a new law should apply to me,†Flaherty wrote me. “One would think they could not have it both ways.â€
It’s important to remember that Flaherty, like Woods, is not seeking to avoid punishment for the crime he committed.
“I take full responsibility for the harm that I caused,†he wrote me. “I feel as though I have made great strides in making amends to society and my family.â€
The question is: How much is too much? In recent years, the Missouri Legislature has been passing criminal justice reform measures that reduce some of the harsh sentences that were more common a couple of decades ago.
Generally, Missouri allows its parole board to weigh in on such decisions. But the state is blocking Flaherty from having the sort of hearing that might allow the parole board to contemplate a release. Just give him a chance, Hunt argues.
“This guy has done everything he possibly could do to be paroled, if eligible,†Hunt says. “It’s just a matter of somebody giving him an opportunity.â€