CREATORS: Punishment Without Limits

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 8, 2026

A new Tennessee law will make it easier for people with felony convictions to vote. For years, Tennessee prohibited former offenders who were behind on child support or court costs and fines from voting. The state legislature recently approved a measure that would permit people who have complied with child support for one year to rejoin the voting and rolls. In addition, the law no longer ties payment of court costs and fines to the right to vote.

According to the Prison Project, laws in 48 states ban people with felony convictions from voting. In 2022, an estimated 4.4 million Americans, representing 2% of the voting-age population, were ineligible to vote due to similar disenfranchisement laws or policies.

These never-ending penalties are known as collateral consequences of crime. Disenfranchising former offenders is one of a myriad of lifetime penalties piled on people convicted of felonies in this country.

Lawmakers nationwide would do well to eliminate some of the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. A criminal record shouldn't be a life sentence. The ever-growing list of collateral sanctions often put former offenders in a position to fail.

A collateral sanction is a penalty, disability or disadvantage that is related to employment or occupational licensing as a result of an offender's conviction. The sanctions apply by operation of law, whether or not the penalty, disability or disadvantage is included in the sentence.

According to The Council of State Governments' Justice Center, a little less than one in three offenders released from prison are reincarcerated within three years, either committing a new crime or violating conditions of parole. While that is an improvement over numbers from a decade ago, it is still too many.

The problems with our crowded prisons are not just the result of punishing offenders for their criminal conduct — the problems are compounded by ongoing sanctions that hinder former offenders from successfully reintegrating into society.

According to a 2024 National Employment Law Project report, an estimated 80 million Americans have a criminal record. The American Bar Association (ABA) has identified over 38,000 penalties — collateral consequences — that can impact people long after they have completed their criminal sentence.

The ABA Task Force on Collateral Consequences found that a former offender "may be ineligible for many federally funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing and federal educational assistance." As a result, their ability to earn a living in their chosen profession may be limited in that an offender "may no longer qualify for certain employment and professional licenses."

Collateral consequences may prohibit military service, possession of a firearm or federal security clearance. A non-citizen may lose the right to reside in the United States.

Supporting a family is that much more difficult when employers refuse to hire former offenders. Employers may be interested in giving a person a second chance, but they are concerned that hiring a person with a criminal record might expose them to liability for negligent hiring if the person commits a crime on the job.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, half of all states punish people who cannot pay fines and fees associated with criminal proceedings by taking away their driver's licenses. This practice impacts nearly 11 million people nationwide and diminishes their ability to secure a job, maintain stable housing and participate in their community.

More states, as well as the federal government, need to take action to remove heavy-handed sanctions that drive up costs, increase victimization and often doom offenders to a never-ending cycle of poverty or worse — reincarceration.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Tennessee law eases former offenders' right to vote

A new Tennessee law has eased up on two longstanding financial hurdles for people with felony sentences who want their voting rights back, including a unique requirement among states that they must have fully paid their child support costs, reported The Associated Press.

The Republican-supermajority Legislature approved the Democratic-sponsored change, which now lets people prove they have complied for the last year with child support orders, such as payment plans. The legislation also unties the payment of all court costs from voting rights restoration.

Advocates for years have sought various changes to Tennessee’s voting rights restoration system at the statehouse and in court. They say loosening these two rules marks the biggest rollback of restrictions to voting rights restoration in decades.

“This is huge and this is history,” said Keeda Haynes, senior attorney for the advocacy group Free Hearts led by formerly incarcerated women like her.

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FOX News: Man who put up $100K to find Nancy Guthrie says tipsters should skip the sheriff and call Crime Stoppers

As multiple agencies collect tips in the Nancy Guthrie case, the man funding a $100,000 reward says Crime Stoppers — not the sheriff — offers the safest path for witnesses to come forward and an enticing one for people who want to get paid for credible information without giving their name, reported Fox News.

"I believe that people will come forward if they’re anonymous and if they get a reward," said Wisconsin attorney Michael Hupy, who is the president of Crime Stoppers Milwaukee.

In Pima County, Arizona, the local Crime Stoppers affiliate is known as 88-CRIME, and the number is 520-882-7463.

Hupy has paid out $75,000 in rewards and posted another $200,000 in an effort to solve crimes in his hometown. But he told Fox News Digital this week he put up six figures in the Guthrie case due to the alarming circumstances of her disappearance.

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Ted Bundy executed 27 years ago claims another victim

The late Ted Bundy, one of the most famous and prolific serial killers in U.S. history, has claimed another victim, reported The Associated Press.

New DNA testing confirmed Bundy was responsible for the 1974 killing of a 17-year-old Utah girl who disappeared after leaving a party alone on Halloween night, the local sheriff’s office said Wednesday.

Laura Ann Aime was found dead on the side of a highway in American Fork Canyon about a month after her abduction. She was bound, beaten and without clothing.

Investigators long suspected that Bundy killed her — police said he confessed without providing any details before his execution in Florida in 1989 — but the case remained open until they could be certain.

“It’s really quite amazing that people are even still interested in Laura’s case,” her sister, Michelle Impala, said at a news conference Wednesday. “Know I speak for my family when I thank you, and thank you media, too, for even caring.”

Bundy was linked to the deaths of at least 30 women and girls across several states in the 1970s. His murders — which occurred in sorority houses, parks and elsewhere — set the nation on edge. Bundy’s arrest drew widespread fascination, in part because many considered him to be charming and handsome.

Investigators had carefully preserved the evidence from Aime’s case, and forensic analysts were able to identify portions that seemed most likely to have usable DNA samples, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said.

The state crime lab got new technology in 2023 that allows investigators to extract DNA from samples even if they are small, degraded from age or contain DNA from multiple people, he said. That technology allowed them to identify a single male DNA profile, which they submitted to a national law enforcement database.

Bundy’s DNA was a match, Mason said.

That profile can now be used by other law enforcement agencies who have long suspected Bundy of additional unsolved killings, he said, adding that more families could get similar closure.

“Laura Aime is the quintessential daughter of Utah County,” Sgt. Mike Reynolds said. “We felt the pain the family feels when she was taken. We felt the pain that you felt this whole entire time, and we’ve had the desire to deliver to you some type of healing.”

Impala was only 12 when her older sister died. Even with a five-year age gap, she said they were very close and did everything together. They shared a bedroom on the family’s farm in Fairview, Utah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Provo.

Impala reminisced Wednesday about riding horses with her sister and watching Aime feed her horse red licorice nibs.

“When she died, he would not eat those anymore,” she said.

It’s not known when Bundy first began his attacks, but by 1974, young women — many of them college students — began disappearing in Washington state. Authorities were still investigating those cases when Bundy moved to Salt Lake City and began killing in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.

At the time of Aime’s killing, Bundy was studying law at the University of Utah.

In August 1975, he was arrested for the first time in connection with the attacks. Police pulled him over and found incriminating items in his vehicle including rope, handcuffs and a ski mask.

He was found guilty the following year of kidnapping and assaulting a teen in Utah who had managed to get away. Bundy was sentenced to 15 years in prison for that crime, and while imprisoned he was charged in connection with the earlier death of a nursing student.

He was brought to Aspen, Colorado, for a hearing in that case in 1977, and he escaped custody by climbing out a second-story courthouse window when he was left alone for a time. He was caught after about a week, but escaped again six months later by breaking through the ceiling of a jail.

Bundy fled across the country, eventually making his way to Tallahassee, Florida. On Jan. 15, 1978, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, bludgeoning two women to death with a large branch and leaving two more badly injured. He then went to another house nearby, badly injuring another woman.

Less than a month later, he abducted, sexually assaulted and killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City, Florida. Kimberly Leach was believed to be his last victim before he was arrested again and executed by electric chair years later.

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Ohio AG wants to end eight year moratorium on executions

The state’s outgoing Attorney General is again urging Ohio to resume executions, even though it is highly unlikely before the end of his term or Gov. Mike DeWine’s, reported Statehouse News Bureau.

Ohio’s death row wait time now stretches longer than 22 years, with more and more inmates dying from natural causes—or by suicide—than from a sentence, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s mandatory 2025 capital punishment report. The state ranks 12th of 28 states for its wait time.

“During my years as attorney general, not a single sentence has been carried out—a mockery of the justice system and of the dead and their families,” Yost writes in the report, released Wednesday. “Yet other states, which get their life-ending drugs from the same companies Ohio could, have found the will and a way to carry out these sentences since 2019.”

The de facto execution moratorium is closing in on eight years and extending the entirety of Gov. Mike DeWine’s tenure. DeWine has delayed every scheduled one since January 2019, some more than once, blaming pharmaceutical companies’ opposition to use of their products in the drug concoction that creates a lethal injection.

But with his time in office closing, DeWine has for months hinted at coming out against capital punishment altogether. That announcement hasn’t come yet.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which opposes capital punishment, has asked DeWine to grant some death row inmates clemency.

“There is a real opportunity to address Ohio’s broken capital punishment system by reviewing individual cases and commuting sentences before it’s too late,” ACLU of Ohio Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Jocelyn Rosnick wrote in an email statement.

More than 100 men and one woman are incarcerated on death row in Ohio, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections data.

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Rejection Board: South Carolina granted parole to 4% of applicants in 2024

“Have a seat please, and tell us what we can do for you today.” 

This is the kind of greeting parole seekers receive in South Carolina when they sit down to discuss their chance at freedom. But the warm welcome belies a cold, harsh statistic. 

In 2024, South Carolina granted parole to 4% of applicants, or 25 out of 3,000 people. Prison Policy Initiative rates South Carolina as the lowest of the 35 states that grant discretionary parole, which allows people to leave prison before their sentence is complete. It’s so low that one lawyer who works on parole cases nicknamed the parole board the “rejection board," reported the Prison Journalism Project.

Even as parole rates have plummeted across the country in recent years, South Carolina remains an extreme outlier. Nearby Southern states grant parole at much higher rates, including Georgia (28%), Alabama (20%) and Mississippi (49%).  

Shifting criteria

What does it take to win freedom via parole in South Carolina?

James T. had what he thought was a promising application. He was officially deemed “minimal risk” to reoffend and had no disciplinary record, and that wasn’t all. “I had five character witnesses, a home plan, job plan, no write-ups and I still got turned down,” he said.

Most prisoners I spoke to said they received a standard form letter that stipulated the primary reason for denial as “the nature and severity of the crime.”

“Tell me just how I’m supposed to change the nature of my crime?” asked James T., who was convicted of aggravated assault. “They can use that so-called reason ’til doomsday. No matter what programs I take or how perfect my conduct is, it won’t change what I did.” 

In fact, 27 of the 35 state parole boards use “nature or severity of crime” as a primary reason to deny parole, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that researches the U.S. prison system. It is only superseded by one’s “criminal history”  — which includes one’s history of incarceration, supervision and arrests.

No one I spoke to argues that it’s unreasonable for the parole board to ask applicants to demonstrate that they have “reformed” and will lead a productive life if paroled. The problem, they said, is the vague and subjective criteria used by the parole board to make their decision. 

“We’ve found that in practically every state, parole boards cite a denial based not just on the nature of the crime but [on the idea] that to grant parole would diminish the severity [of the crime] and promote a disrespect for law and order,” said Brian Scott, director of Our Journey, a North Carolina-based transition service for people released from prison. “It’s all just rhetoric.”

‘They answer to nobody but themselves’

South Carolina’s parole board considers at least 15 criteria when granting parole, according to a memo from the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Good conduct while in prison, participation in programs, education and treatment (such as for substance abuse and addiction) are touted as central to parole decisions. 

Billy D. checked all of those boxes.

“I plum ran out of programs to take years ago,” he said with a chuckle. “I took every class, got a college degree in business that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, and have been in recovery for over 20 years.” 

Billy D. is an accredited HVAC technician and has a commercial driver’s license and carpentry certificate, along with a record of serving as a peer support specialist to others in recovery. 

“It really don’t make any difference to the parole board of South Carolina,” said Billy D., who was convicted of possession of a controlled substance, breaking and entering, larceny and driving under the influence. “They do what they want. They answer to nobody but themselves.” 

While South Carolina does give you the standard form citing the reason for their parole denial, they do not explain the reasoning.

Each member of the state parole board is appointed by the governor for a six-year term. There are no term limits. The board has more independence than most parole boards as they control not only parole, but all pardons in the state — South Carolina is one of only a few states where the governor cannot grant pardons.

When denied parole, your lawyer can request a parole reconsideration, but it must be filed within 15 days of the denial, according to a manual from the South Carolina Board of Pardons and Paroles. Reconsideration is far from guaranteed. Your lawyer must prove to the board that they can provide additional pertinent information that the board did not have during the hearing, or that the board based their decision on “erroneous information.” I have not heard of a case in which someone has had their denial reversed. 

Some reformers have argued for replacing discretionary parole with presumptive parole. Presumptive parole means that a prisoner would automatically be granted parole if they met certain criteria, usually involving good behavior, completed programming and a certain amount of time served. These advocates have argued that greater use of presumptive parole, as has been adopted in states such as New Jersey and Vermont, would free up parole boards to devote more time to complex parole hearings.

Still, as long as public officials fear being painted as soft on crime, the prospect of parole reform remains unlikely.

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