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Johnny Holley Jr. still can't quite believe it.

Arrested almost 30 years ago for stealing a toolbox. Sentenced to life in prison without hope of parole. Now out, but only after spending 28 years — more time than many murderers serve — behind bars.

"I still in the world can't figure out how I ended up with that sentence," Holley, 63, said in a phone interview from Tuscaloosa, where he lives with a sister since leaving a state inmate transition center in March. He'd been there since last summer, when the state parole board released him from a prison term that began in 1980.

Holley's story drew statewide attention in 1994 when told on the Press-Register's front page. By then, he'd languished 14 years in prison for a petty theft committed when Jimmy Carter was president.

He took the toolbox from a pickup parked outside a Tuscaloosa church one Sunday morning in early 1980. Because of a record of prior convictions — although never for hurting anyone — he was hammered by a state law that heaped extra time on repeat offenders.

Holley ended up with the toughest possible sentence short of execution.

He is free today only because the Legislature changed the repeat-offender law early this decade.

The change in the law allowed for the possibility of parole. Even so, it took him several years to be resentenced and to get out.

Holley said he's not bitter. He found faith three months into his term, he said, and that "broke the whole cycle."

"I'm glad to be out," he said. "I'm going to try to do all in God's power to stay out."

His niece, Patricia Evans Mokolo, is less forgiving of the state. Only 9 when her uncle was sent away, Mokolo sees his experience as evidence of a profound "imbalance" in the justice system.

"You have people who don't have money, are not well-educated and don't have anyone to fight for them," she said. "They are the ones who are going to bear the brunt of the punishment."

Holley, a high school dropout who admits that he deserved at least a couple of years imprisonment for the theft, questioned whether his lawyer at the time handled the case properly.

He knows he was also sideswiped by circumstance.

The repeat offender law had taken effect only weeks before his sentencing. Confronted while stealing the toolbox, Holley pulled out a pocketknife, thereby turning the crime into armed robbery.

The toolbox's owner, who has since died, didn't want to press charges, but was talked into it by a young deputy district attorney who later concluded that he'd made a mistake.

"I was acting as a knee-jerk prosecutor without the benefit of enough experience to know that law cannot be a 'one size fits all' process," Bruce Maddox, now a lawyer in private practice, wrote in a 2005 affidavit in support of Holley's release.

Maddox wasn't the only one who believed that Holley deserved to be released. In 1994, some 60 guards at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where Holley was then an inmate, signed a petition saying that he had become "a changed man."

"He has built up respect from most people that know him," said Ann Williams, a Saraland woman who became acquainted with Holley through her prison ministry.

But without the 2000 law change, his only ticket out of confinement would have been a hearse. As it is, his imprisonment cost Alabama taxpayers more than $400,000, based on the current annual cost to the state of locking someone up.

Repeat offender laws have been on the books since at least the 1920s and became increasingly popular in recent times as a way of dealing with "career criminals," said John Sloan III, chairman of the justice sciences department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

While there is an argument for putting such criminals away for a long time, Sloan said, "you'd better be ready to get out your wallet."

Since his release, Holley has gone from church to church to share his testimony and dissuade young people from following the "corrupt" path that did him so much harm. He hopes to find a job using some of the skills learned in prison. Assuming that he meets his parole conditions, a pardon is possible as early as 2011.

Relatives and other well-wishers are planning a formal welcome-home party for him a little sooner than that, perhaps at the end of this month, Mokolo said.

"We want it to be a big to-do."

Repeat offender laws have been on the books since at least the 1920s and became increasingly popular in recent times as a way of dealing with "career criminals," said John Sloan III, chairman of the justice sciences department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:He could, of course, have ended up like many other lifelong petty criminals, in and out of jail for the last 15 years, stealing things from people, committing identity theft, etc. Would that really be preferred over a petty criminal spending time in jail? (I ask because those are the only current options)

As it is, his imprisonment cost Alabama taxpayers more than $400,000, based on the current annual cost to the state of locking someone up.

Lord of the Abyss wrote:

SancheztheWhaler wrote:He could, of course, have ended up like many other lifelong petty criminals, in and out of jail for the last 15 years, stealing things from people, committing identity theft, etc. Would that really be preferred over a petty criminal spending time in jail? (I ask because those are the only current options)

Or, he could have learned from his mistakes and reformed. "He MIGHT be a criminal for the rest of his life" isn't justification for locking someone up for decades. How many people have stolen something or committed some other minor crimes, and then stopped ? There's also this :

SancheztheWhaler wrote:That being said, I generally agree with Simplicius' comment regarding three-strikes laws, and would say there are better options. Of course, there are lots of things wrong with America's justice system, but that's another topic altogether.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:There are lots of people who "could have learned from his mistakes and reformed." That's not how the legal system works, however.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:If you commit a crime and are convicted, you receive a sentence as a result. Given that Johnny Holley Jr. knew (or should have known, given his previous criminal history) that one risk of his criminal behavior was this sort of punishment, this shock and outrage is foolish at best and dishonest at worst.

Starglider wrote:If you asked him, I bet he'd rather have taken the Saudi-style punishment of 60 lashes, instead of 30 years in prison.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:

Starglider wrote:If you asked him, I bet he'd rather have taken the Saudi-style punishment of 60 lashes, instead of 30 years in prison.

60 lashes versus 30 years in prison? Hell, I'd take the lashes even if they rubbed salt in between each dozen

Feil wrote:Stealing a toolbox is petty theft. Threatening someone with a deadly weapon while stealing their toolbox them is armed robbery. There's a fucking difference, people.