Alabama man served 29 years for stealing toolbox

Montgomery Advertiser
By Stephanie Taylor
May 26, 2009


TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — In another time and place, Johnny Holley Jr. would not have spent nearly half his life behind the walls of Alabama's prisons.

But Alabama in 1980 was the wrong time for Johnny Holley to steal a toolbox.

Combined with seven previous felony convictions, the robbery was enough to earn him a life sentence with no possibility of parole. Changes to the state's Habitual Offender Act in 2000 cleared the way for Holley to be released two months ago because his previous convictions were not for violent crimes.

It was a Sunday morning when Holley, now 62, made the worst mistake he'd ever made.

He was walking past the parking lot of Beard Chapel AME Zion Church near his Alberta home and decided to steal a toolbox from a truck.

The sound of the breaking truck window disrupted services. Seconds later, members of the congregation were outside, demanding he return the toolbox.

Holley pulled a pocketknife and said he would use it against anyone who came near, dropped the toolbox and ran.

A few days later, police took him into custody, where he remained until two months ago.

Holley was not a model citizen during his 20s and early 30s.

He admits that and says he is sorry for it.

He already served time from shoplifting and receiving stolen property convictions -- he once stole a pork chop from a grocery store, a record from a music store and space heaters from another business. None of his seven previous convictions involved violence.

"It was never anything big-time," Holley said.

He became the first person in Tuscaloosa County sentenced under Alabama's then-new Habitual Offender Act when he was convicted of the first-degree robbery charge. He did not take a plea bargain that offered him the same sentence of life without the possibility of parole, so a jury decided his guilt.

"There is no way in the world someone would get that kind of sentence today. This was an absolute miscarriage of justice," said criminal defense attorney Joel Sogol, who represented Holley in the toolbox case. "It wouldn't even go to trial today. A sentence now would be 10, 15 years maybe or even a community corrections program."

Sogol appealed the case, and said he recruited two of the best appellate lawyers in the state to help. They wrote briefs and even asked for the United States Supreme Court to hear the case.

"We did everything we could. Nobody would look at it. Something like this that is so egregious, you just can't put out of your mind," he said.

Eventually, judges and prosecutors realized that if everyone was sentenced as the law was written, the state would spend all tax money to house prisoners, he said.

"There was some sense that you couldn't go around the law, this is what the law said, this is what you had to do," he said. "I think that to a certain extent, prosecutors were trying to flex their muscles, showing what they could do."

In 2000, the Association of County Commissions of Alabama lobbied for the Legislature to change the law to give judges more discretion and look at the nature of prior offenses. It was their effort to address the growing amount of money spent to house inmates in overcrowded jails. Using today's rate of $15,223 per prisoner per year, it cost Alabama taxpayers around $441,000 to keep Holley in prison for 29 years.

Bruce Maddox, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Holley, wrote in a 2005 affidavit that he supported Holley's release.

"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," he wrote, according to a story that appeared in the Mobile Press-Register. Maddox, now a criminal defense attorney in Montgomery, couldn't be reached for comment.

In 1994, Holley said, about 60 guards at the Atmore Correctional Facility signed a petition in support of his release, noting he had changed and was unlikely to commit more crimes.

Even Baylock Sledge, the owner of the toolbox, wrote letters that the sentence was too harsh.

"Until the day he died, Mr. Sledge protested that sentence. He thought it was grossly unfair from day one," Sogol said.

Holley said it wasn't easy to receive such a damning sentence.

He feels like he was unfairly treated by overzealous prosecutors.

He embraced Christianity during the first few months he was in jail, which he said helped him accept it.

"I didn't bother me like it would bother a lot of people -- people who come into prison and steal or kill and just lose it because they feel like their life has been taken from them," he said. "God gave me a peace that I'd never had. That's the main thing that got me through. That's the only thing."

Over the years, he saw people who had committed similar or more serious crimes come and go. People convicted of murder, rape, assault who were sentenced to fewer years and were eligible for release.

"They'd make parole and go straight to the streets," he said.

Since his release in March, Holley has been living with his sister on a quiet, oak tree-lined street in Alberta, a few blocks away from the church where he made that life-changing mistake.

He has reveled in the simple pleasures of his freedom. He takes walks every morning and enjoys the newness of everything he was isolated from for so long.

"In prison, you see the same old folks over and over. I see new faces every day. Everything looks alive and bright, not like the dull prison walls," he said. "Everything is different. I can just get out, hit that road and go."

He's making plans to speak at churches and assist prison and jail ministries, hoping to encourage young people to avoid lives of crime.

"A lot of free-world people used to say that I have a reason to be bitter, but I have to forgive," he said.