Montgomery, AL –Governor Kay Ivey sent a letter in the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles strongly opposing parole of child murderer Judith Ann Neelley. Neelley is scheduled to appear for a parole hearing on Thursday on May 25, 2023.
“Please not give the parole of Judith Ann Neelley. In 2005, when I submitted the same request to this Board and your predecessors unanimously refused parole after just one minutes of discussion. While each of you has been on to the Board following Ms. Neelley’s parole hearing there has been no change since the time of her parole hearing, which would lead to an alternative outcome today Simply put, the Board has decided that Ms. Neelley should not be allowed to step foot out from an Alabama jail,” the governor Ivey in a letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
in 1982 Neelley together with her husband who died in 1982, Alvin Howard Neelley, took 13-year-old Lisa Ann Millican from an Georgia mall and was taken to the Scottsboro, Alabama motel where she was tortured, raped and killed before her body was buried in Little River Canyon. Judith Neelley was convicted of murder in 1983 and sentenced to be executed. In 1999, her sentence to death was changed to life by Governor Fob James and set the conditions for her eventual parole admissibility.
Neelley was also involved in other crimes of violence, such as killing of Janice Chatman and the attempted murder of her lover, John Hancock.
“I think it’s a mistake Governor James to reduce Neelley’s sentence. Neelley’s death penalty in the very first place, and definitely to do it in a manner that gives the death sentence of Ms. Neelley the possibility of parole,” said Governor Ivey. “Now every five years the families of these families are opened while they wait with bated breath to hear the outcome of your vote.”
The Governor’s Letter addressed to the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles is accessible here.
