Death Row Inmate Hearing Decision Stayed
- {Louisville, Kentucky}...Death row inmate, 41 year old John Mills, was allowed on October 28th to argue for his release before the Kentucky Parole Board - a hearing that officials now agree should not have taken place. The Kentucky Department of Corrections, as well as attorneys involved in the case, say the Parole Board erred in allowing Mills to argue for his freedom. The hearing, the first involving a death row inmate in Kentucky, came months after a judge threw out Mills' death sentence for the August 1995 stabbing death of 79 year old Arthur L. Phipps in Knox County. Mills was still under a death sentence at the time of the hearing because prosecutors and Mills' lawyer appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court. The order was automatically stayed.
