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			    GENERAL-RKBA Digest 322
Topics covered in this issue include:
  1) CRIMESTRIKE: Hostage-Taking Rekindles Florida's Early Release Issue 
     by NRA Alerts 
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Topic No. 1
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 18:53:39 -0500 (EST)
From: NRA Alerts 
To: general-rkba-real.nra
Subject: CRIMESTRIKE: Hostage-Taking Rekindles Florida's Early Release Issue
Message-ID: 
                        CrimeWatch Weekly
             Breaking news on critical crime-fighting
                 issues, policies and legislation
 
Vol. 3, No.  50                                December 16, 1997
      Hostage-Taking Rekindles Florida's Early Release Issue
     Florida's failed efforts to deny prison inmates early
release credits they "earned" under laws passed years ago to
relieve prison overcrowding continue to make national news.  Bad
national news.
     Last week, John Edward Armstrong, 39, vaulted into the news
when he took two young children hostage in an Orlando home.  He
was pursued there by police after allegedly killing a Winter Park
man and wounding a woman.
     One of 400 inmates freed early under a U.S. Supreme Court
ruling issued in February, Armstrong was killed and his young
prisoners safely freed when police stormed the house as Armstrong
dozed early last Friday morning.
     Afterward, an angry Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood denounced
Armstrong's early release.  "How many more families will we
endanger with career criminals who are dumped into our
neighborhoods before their sentences are served?" she asked.
     Armstrong, who had a lengthy criminal record, wouldn't have
been eligible for release until May 1998 without the court ruling
and the early release credits. 
     Just a month earlier, the bad news was the arrest of Micah
Louis Nelson, 21, for the brutal murder of 78-year-old Virginia
Brace, a New Yorker who had arrived in Avon Park to winter. 
Nelson was let out of prison a month earlier, one of 750 inmates 
freed under a September state supreme court ruling overturning
another of the state's efforts to deny retroactively early
release credits.
     Though Florida has passed Truth In Sentencing that will
require offenders committing crimes after Oct. 1, 1995, to serve
85% of their sentences, those convicted earlier apparently will
continue to get out early to make more bad news for Florida. 
Meanwhile, an organization known as STOP, for "Stop Turning Out
Prisoners," continues a drive to amend the state constitution to
bar early releases and to require criminals sent to prison for
life to serve those sentences.
                  Parolee's Victim Arms Herself
     A North Dakota woman slashed across the throat by a parolee
at a roadside rest stop near White Earth, N.D., in September
(CrimeWatch Weekly, 10/14/97) says she has bought a gun and will
get a carry permit for it.
     Julienne Schultz, 35, of Burlington, talked about the attack
she miraculously survived in a recent interview on KFGO Radio,
Fargo. "This guy should never have gotten out," she said of Gary
Puckett, the 38-year-old Washington state parolee who attacked
her.  "I don't care if the jails are overcrowded."
     Puckett took his own life as police sought to arrest him
after the Sept. 28 attack on Ms. Schultz.  A convicted rapist
and robber, he had been in trouble several times since his last
parole in 1994.  He remains a suspect in a Washington woman's
murder.
              West Virginia Prisons Get Court Order
     The West Virginia Supreme Court has ordered the state
Division of Corrections to submit a plan to ease prison crowding
and to remove state inmates from county and regional jails.  An
overseer was named to review the plan.  Thiteen state inmates
held in county or regional jails brought the suit, saying they
were being denied educational, rehabilitative and vocational
programs available to prison inmates.
     Corrections Commissioner Bill Davis said the agency has
seven project underway to add 1,120 prison beds.  "We have a
master plan already," he told Associated Press.  "We are prepared
ot meet the demands of the court."  However, the court said the
state is not in compliance with its previous rulings.
                 Parolee's Bloody Trail Triggers 
                   New Inquiry In Pennsylvania
     Pennsylvania's Senate Judiciary Committee plans a hearing
Friday into the state parole board's handling of the case of
Arthur J. Bomar, the convicted killer arrested last week in the
unsolved rape and beating death of collegiate athlete Aimee
Willard in June 1996.
     It's deja vu for Pennsylvania, which has suffered through
two earlier notorious crimes by parolees, including the murder of
a New Jersey police officer.
     Ms. Willard, 22, a student at George Mason University in
Virginia, was abducted at night from her car on a highway near
her Philadelphia-area home.  Her battered body was found dumped
in a vacant North Philadelphia lot a day later.
     Bomar is also under suspicion in the disappearance of Maria
Cabuenos, 25, a Philadelphia lab technician who hasn't been seen
since Bomar was arrested driving her car in June. 
      Bomar was paroled in Nevada after serving 12 years there
for killing a man in 1978.  In 1990, he returned to Pennsylvania,
where he remained free on parole despite a series of crimes. 
Nevada parole authorities say they asked for Bomar's return, but
they apparently didn't pursue it.  
     Bomar was serving a 3-to-7-year burglary sentence in a
Pennsylvania prison when police developed DNA and physical
evidence in Ms. Willard's death that led to him.
=+=+=+=+
This information is provided as a service of the National Rifle
Association Institute for Legislative Action, Fairfax, VA.
This and other information on the Second Amendment and the NRA is
available at: http://WWW.NRA.Org
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End of GENERAL-RKBA Digest 322
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