Sept. 13, 2013
“I am urging you to treat Elizabeth Kelly as you would treat anyone else with the same case file. I am asking you to demonstrate that we are all ‘equal under the law.’ Any other inmate with the same sentence and clean record would have been eligible for parole the minute she walked through the gates of the prison…. I am appealing to you not to withhold that which she would otherwise likely receive — minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians. I am imploring you not to deal more strictly with her than with others simply because she is Elizabeth Kelly.”
– From a letter to the North Carolina Parole Commission by Jane W. Duffield of Raleigh (April 5, 1994)
The Parole Commission proved unable or unwilling to consider Betsy Kelly’s case “minus her publicity, minus the rhetoric of politicians.” Bill Hart, vengeful over her unwavering insistence that she was innocent, reneged on a plea agreement not to contest her release, and the Parole Commission obediently sent her back for seven more months of wrongful imprisonment.