One of the longest-serving inmates in an Illinois prison was granted parole Thursday. Joseph Bigsby was a teenager in 1973 when he shot and killed a Chicago police officer.
Right now, Illinois is holding more than 48,000 inmates. Just 40 of them — less than a tenth of a percent — have been there since 1975 or earlier.
Bigsby had been in that unique class. His case is extraordinary because of who he killed, because it’s rare for men in his position to get parole, and because of his young age when he received essentially a life sentence.
Back in 1973, when he was 16, Bigsby shot officer Edward Barron in the head. He’d committed a pair of armed robberies and was fleeing when a gunfight began. A police officer fired the first shot, but Bigsby emptied his clip before surrendering.
Barron, age 36, was dead. He had a wife and a son and a daughter.
At his trial, Bigsby said he’d been high on pills, and denied involvement in the shooting and murder. The judge gave him a sentence of 100 to 200 years.
Danny Abate patrolled the next beat over from Barron's, “since we were out of the academy, from 1970 to ’73 — 'til the day he died," he said. "It was a good relationship."
Now retired after 36 years with the Chicago Police Department, Abate joined a contingent of uniformed officers — many who came on a chartered bus — to show up at Bigsby's hearing before the Prisoner Review Board.
“I’m very disturbed that this could happen to an individual who deliberately killed a police officer," Abate said after the hearing.
A bit of background here: The Department of Corrections says it has just under 160 people serving what are called “indeterminate sentences” — open-ended ranges like Bigsby's. In theory, the Prisoner Review Board decides whether they’ve been sufficiently rehabilitated to get parole. But many inmates never convince even a single member of the board to support their release.
On Thursday, two men were granted parole, including Bigsby.
“I’m never going to forgive him for what he did, but it’s not about my forgiveness," says Donald Shelton, a member of the board. He’s also a retired Champaign police officer, and says he’s convinced Bigsby made a total turnaround.
“I saw in this inmate more proof of change, than I believe I’ve seen in any other inmates that I’ve interviewed or in any of the other cases I’ve heard in the last two-and-a-half years," Shelton said.
Bigsby has taken responsibility for his actions. He’s also made productive use of his four decades: getting an associate’s degree and two credits shy of a bachelor’s — before the program was canceled. He’s been trained as a master electrician and carpenter, and worked as a teacher’s aide, newspaper reporter and even a locksmith.
Several board members, including Shelton, indicated they were impressed with how much Bigsby has grown.
“If he was 30 years old when he committed these crimes, this would be a totally different story for me," Shelton said. "But he was a 16-year-old boy who was raising himself. Sixteen year olds don’t do a very good job of raising themselves.”
Board member Edith Crigler referred to new scientific discoveries that have changed our understanding of adolescent brain development — basically that teenagers do not have an adult capacity for decision making. Even the U.S. Supreme Court has barred the death penalty and mandatory life sentences for juveniles.
“The main thing was the fact that children should not be held as culpable as adults when we consider sentencing," she said.
Like Shelton, Crigler pointed out her intimate ties to law enforcement in explaining her decision to favor parole: her late husband, son, daughter-in-law, uncle and cousin are all police officers.
“I understand the letter of the law, but I understand also that we as a society must show compassion, and we must look at people as human beings," Crigler said. "And if we don’t acknowledge others’ humanity, how can we ever expect them to honor ours?"
After an hour of testimony and debate, the vote to parole Bigsby was 8-6.
If Bigsby’s parole is unusual, so is the level of support he’s gotten in trying to secure it. He had help from lawyers at Northwestern’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, and the plan is for him to live with a younger sister and her husband in Maryland.
He’s also had the benefit of continued assistance from the men assigned to his case as public defenders back in 1973. One is Larry Suffredin, now a Cook County board member, who has shown up at Bigsby’s prison interviews. The other is John Cullerton, president of the Illinois Senate. Though a spokeswoman, he declined to comment, but he has in the past supported Bigsby's application for parole.
Bigsby is now 58 years old. As one of his lawyers, Steven Drizin, put it: Bigsby went in as a juvenile, and will be coming out practically a senior citizen.
Of course, the survivors of officer Edward Barron might point out that this year he could have been 78.
