Appellate court rejects “past as prelude” myth

In a strongly worded ruling, a federal appellate panel has ordered that a Native American man be freed from civil confinement due to evidence of his rehabilitation while in prison. Both a judge and an expert witness had downplayed this evidence, condemning the man as a future risk based on long-ago transgressions, the Fourth Circuit panel concluded.

Byron Neil Antone, a 41-year-old member of the Tohono O’odham Nation of Arizona, was intoxicated when he committed a series of sexual assaults during his early adulthood. Over the course of 14 years in prison, he remained sober, worked hard, and took other steps to rehabilitate himself. Full Article

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