RICHMOND, Va. -- A House Committee has killed two bills related to a CBS 6 investigation of the Virginia Parole Board.
One of the bills killed on Wednesday would have required the Board to contact either a living victim or a dead victim's family member prior to deciding whether an inmate should be paroled, while the other would have made the board post the prior convictions of parolees in its monthly report.
The bills were sponsored by Republican Delegate John McGuire, and were motivated by the case of Vincent Lamont Martin, the man who killed a Richmond police officer in 1979.
CBS 6 was first to report that Martin was being paroled and that the victim's family said they were not properly notified and given the chance to contest his release.
The State Inspector General later investigated and found that theboard violated state law in its handling of that case.
