INIITAL PAROLE CONSIDERATION AND RECONSIDERATION OF PAROLE
Every offender serving a paroleable sentence in Georgia will be reviewed for parole at least once by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles (the “Georgia Parole Board”), that initial review being automatic. Generally, there are four possible results of the Georgia Parole Board’s consideration of an offender for parole: first, the Georgia Parole Board may grant the offender parole; second, the Georgia Parole Board may deny parole entirely and require the offender to serve out the entire sentence; third, the Georgia Parole Board may establish a Tentative Parole Month for the offender; and fourth, the Georgia Parole Board may instead establish a “Reconsideration Date.” A “Reconsideration Date” is the future date when the Georgia Parole Board will next consider the offender for parole.
Regardless of whether an offender is being reviewed by the Georgia Parole Board for the first time or whether the offender is being reviewed for a subsequent time, a scheduled Georgia Parole Board review of an offender’s case is an opportunity that every offender should seize to present the Georgia Parole Board with important, pertinent information that may not already be in the Georgia Parole Board’s file regarding the offender.
At any given time, the files of thousands of offenders are in the process of being reviewed by the five Georgia Parole Board Members. Due to the overwhelming constraints on the time of the Georgia Parole Board Members to review all of these offenders, each offender’s file may only garner a few minutes of attention from each Georgia Parole Board Member before the Georgia Parole Board Member casts a vote. As such, emphasizing in an application for parole the information that Georgia Parole Board Members will find most pertinent and persuasive is imperative.
It should also be emphasized that when reviewing offenders for parole, the Georgia Parole Board Members review only the Georgia Parole Board’s files of the offenders and do not conduct face to face meetings with them. This makes it all the more important that the key information crucial to a favorable parole decision be contained in concise written materials submitted to the Georgia Parole Board on behalf of an offender.
With a former Georgia Parole Board Member assisting attorneys on all parole cases, McIntyre & Associates has the expertise to review an offender’s case, to identify the areas that should be emphasized in an application for parole, to prepare a concise and comprehensive application for parole, and to represent that offender before the Georgia Parole Board.