How Virginia’s Broken Parole System Puts Criminals First And Victims Last

Public safety should not depend on which party controls the governor’s mansion. A woman sleeping in her home should be safe from a serial rapist. A family that has buried a murdered daughter should know her killer will serve his full sentence.

The principal obligation of government should be to ensure public safety and uphold justice. By putting criminals first and victims last, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s Parole Board is derelict in its duty to all Virginians, especially victims.

Last year, Spanberger ran as a “moderate” who would work with law enforcement, attempting to distance herself from the leftist social justice policies. Unfortunately, immediately upon assuming office, Spanberger shifted left on a host of issues, and the result has been approval ratings that are the lowest among any governor in modern Virginia history.

There is one step Governor Spanberger can take to restore her image: fire her hand-picked Parole Board immediately. Spanberger’s Parole Board is consistently voting to release killers and rapists early, at a rate 10 times that of her predecessor. At the most recent meeting of the Spanberger Parole Board, it released eight out of 10 felons, including convicted murderers and rapists, oftentimes over the pleas of the victims.

Consider the case of Christine Allen. In 1998, this mother was stabbed to death in the Fairfax County home she shared with Troy Demar. At the time, her daughter was only three months old. A jury convicted Demar of second-degree murder and recommended the maximum sentence. This September, Allen’s sisters pleaded with the board to make him serve his time. Her daughter grew up without her mother, and her sisters live every day with the loss.

The board ignored the victims’ anguished pleas and granted parole. One of Spanberger’s board members told Demar, “I want to applaud you,” praising his participation in prison programs. The offender gets applause; the family gets another reminder that its suffering comes second.

Consider Anthony McGaha, the Ocean View Rapist. He broke into six women’s homes and raped them. One survivor awoke with a knife at her throat while her child was in another room. His sentence was life plus 236 years. Now, nearly four decades later, she must again explain why he should remain behind bars.

McGaha is up before the parole board, and his survivors fear identifying publicly because he might be released. The prospect of a parole board hearing alone forces his victims to reopen wounds that their attacker created and time has never healed.

Most startling is Spanberger’s repeating the mistakes of her predecessors.

As attorney general, I investigated the earlier parole board’s misconduct under Virginia’s last Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. Our 2023 report found 83 failures to satisfy victim-contact requirements and 66 failures to satisfy prosecutor-notification requirements in March and April 2020. Former chair Adrianne Bennett also unilaterally discharged 137 violent offenders from parole supervision.

The “criminals first, victims last” approach remains the same today: government betrays its duty when it treats the suffering of law-abiding citizens as an inconvenience to be managed while finding reasons to excuse those who inflicted it.

We concluded that Bennett improperly restored McGaha’s eligibility under an unauthorized interpretation of Virginia’s three-strikes law. Spanberger’s board inherited that determination, and it should consider the legal defects we identified before considering release.

The consequences of earlier releases were real. David Simpkins, with 42 prior felony convictions, left prison in April 2020 and began committing armed robberies three months later. He was subsequently convicted of 15 new felonies, including 10 armed robberies. Cordell Reed, who had already committed murder while on parole, was released again in 2020. Forty-four days later, he was arrested following an attack on a woman and subsequently convicted of unlawful wounding.

Those cases should be teachable lessons for this Spanberger Parole Board, but right now they are prioritizing their leftist social justice worldview over public safety. Rehabilitation deserves consideration, but it does not erase the crime or guarantee that another innocent person will be safe. Legal eligibility creates an opportunity for review, not an entitlement to freedom.

Spanberger cannot delegate these decisions and disclaim responsibility for their consequences since the Board members serve at her pleasure. She should replace them with people who respect lawful sentences, take violent crimes seriously, and put victims’ rights at the center of their decisions.

Virginians deserve safety and confidence that justice matters. The governor should fire her parole board and end the policy of putting criminals first and victims last.

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Jason Miyares served as Virginia’s 48th Attorney General. He is currently a partner at Torridon Law, PLLC.