A V.I. Superior Court judge amended a temporary restraining order against the territory’s parole board Wednesday and allowed them to resume hearing applications — except for those filed under a recent law allowing for parole on a geriatric or medical basis.
Attorneys for Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., the board and three convicted participants of the so-called Fountain Valley Massacre — as well as one other man convicted of aggravated rape in 2015 — appeared before Judge Alphonso Andrews Jr. Wednesday morning on St. Croix after asking for a summary judgment in July. Andrews granted a temporary restraining order against the board in June after Bryan filed an emergency motion to halt parole proceedings, claiming the board lacked a quorum and that the geriatric parole statute was unconstitutional. The 35th Legislature approved the measure in 2023, and Bryan signed it into law as Act 8791 in January 2024.
Bryan’s challenge came after Warren Ballantine, Beaumont Gereau and Meral Smith — who were each sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences more than 50 years ago for their part in the Fountain Valley killings — and one other man, Tydel John, applied for parole under the newly-minted law. Sen. Franklin Johnson, who sponsored the measure, told the Source in June that applicants’ notoriety almost certainly played a role in the governor’s challenge.
“What I really believe happened — it’s the folks that then applied for it, who happened to be the Fountain Valley Five,” he said. “Because when I did that bill, the governor said to me, he said, ‘Senator, this is a very good bill,’ and he signed it into law. The governor never challenged it.”
In July, Bryan nominated Roy Moorehead Jr. to fill one of the board’s vacancies, and the parties no longer dispute whether the board has enough voting members to take action. On Wednesday, however, Andrews said the question of whether the board had been operating without a quorum for several years had yet to be answered.
During a hearing in June, Assistant Attorney General Christopher Timmons — representing Bryan — called V.I. Corrections Bureau Executive Assistant Curlita LeBlanc to the stand. LeBlanc told the court that the board has only had three voting members since the resignation of Cherrisse Woods in December 2022. V.I. Attorney General Gordon Rhea also sits on the board as a nonvoting member.
The board’s attorney, Pedro Williams, repeated arguments Wednesday that the presence of a nonvoting member counted toward establishing a quorum and that, per a nearly 30-year-old set of bylaws the board adopted in 1997, only three members are needed to approve parole matters. Timmons challenged the validity of those bylaws, which were not sent to the Legislature for approval. Andrews later said he was “at a loss to identify” what authority the board had to promulgate rules and regulations without oversight.
Williams also argued that the vacancies only occurred because Bryan failed to nominate new members. Andrews questioned whether Bryan was even aware of the shortfall.
“He should know,” Williams said. “He ought to know.”
Later, Andrews heard arguments over the constitutionality of applying the geriatric and medical release law retroactively.
The Justice Department has argued that statutes “are presumed to be applied prospectively, and not retroactively” and that applying the geriatric parole statute here “would impair the sentencing right of the judge who sentenced them; it would impair the rights of the prosecutors who determined which charges to bring and which penalties to seek; and it would impair the rights of the general public who prior enactment of the geriatric parole law could rest assured that these violent and notorious criminals never walk the streets again.”
St. Croix Source
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