Denied parole 6 times, inmate featured in 'Milwaukee 53206' documentary wins release

Bruce Vielmetti | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In 1996, Baron Walker was sentenced to 60 years in prison for being part of a pair of bank robberies in which no one was hurt.

No one thought he'd serve it all. It was before Wisconsin adopted Truth in Sentencing, when it was expected that after serving 25 percent of a sentence, a deserving inmate would be paroled. There was also a presumptive mandatory release after two-thirds of the sentence.

But 22 years later — seven years after he became eligible for parole — Walker, 44, remains in prison, despite having taken every possible avenue for treatment and education while incarcerated.

He's also maintained close contact with his wife and five children, and they were all featured prominently in the award-winning 2016 documentary film "Milwaukee 53206," about the ZIP code with the highest incarceration rate of African-American men in the nation. More than 60% were imprisoned by age 34.

In the documentary, Walker is heard asking in a phone call, "What more does Wisconsin need to know in order to find out I'm not a menace to society? That is actually the question I would like to know myself."

On Thursday, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Mark Sanders modified Walker's sentence to time served on one count, and a stayed seven-year sentence and five years of probation on the second, plus 40 hours of community service and re-entry programming after agreeing with lawyers that Wisconsin's changed policy on granting parole is a new factor unknown to the original sentencing judge.

Walker's family, who had been waiting all afternoon for the hearing to begin, broke into whoops and cries of joy when Sanders finalized the new sentence shortly before 5 p.m.

"I couldn't contain my emotions because it seemed like I was numb from being disappointed so much," said Walker's tearful wife, Beverly Walker.

"I'll feel better when I can have him next to me, but how do I feel? I feel amazing."

It was unclear Thursday exactly when and where Walker would be released. He had been serving his sentence at Oak Hill Correctional Institute, a minimum-security facility in Dane County and was moved to the Milwaukee County Jail before Friday's hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Potter, a 33-year veteran prosecutor, said the office has never been about always getting the maximum possible punishment but about doing justice. It jointly recommended the new sentence after months of collaboration with defense attorney Craig Mastantuono.

Potter said the bank manager who testified about the emotional trauma of the robberies at Walker's original sentencing was surprised he was still in prison and supported the modification.

Sanders said the state's backing was critical to his decision to grant the motion.

During his years in prison, Walker has earned certification in food service, pesticide application, forklift operation and building maintenance. He's done cognitive group intervention three times, restorative justice training and a parole re-entry simulation program.

"No therapeutic or vocational training programs remain for Mr. Walker to complete to achieve parole, yet he has not been released," wrote Mastantuono, in a motion to modify Walker's sentence.

Modifying a sentence requires an inmate to show a new factor exists that was not known or considered at his sentencing. For Walker, and hundreds like him, Mastantuono argued that factor is Wisconsin's sharp change in parole policy since Gov. Scott Walker was elected.

In effect, the administration's approach functions like an ex-post facto law, one of the first things prohibited in the U.S. Constitution. About 3,000 of Wisconsin's more than 22,000 inmates were sentenced before 2000, when it was understood that parole was a built-in element of the sentencing decision.

But far fewer than 10 percent of those who have sought parole have gotten it since Walker took office. Last year about 187 were granted out of 1,738 hearings, said Tristan Cook, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, a 10.7 percent rate. It was the same year the Parole Commission and staff were cut in half after the governor proposed eliminating it entirely.

Mastantuono's motion cited the specific language of then-Circuit Judge Patricia McMahon when she sentenced Walker in 1996:

"You need extensive rehabilitation treatment, but that needs to be in a secure setting so society’s protected from your preying on them. And whether you accept that treatment or not will have an impact on whether you will return to the community," McMahon said.

Mastantuono argued that McMahon's warning to Walker that how well he accepted treatment would bear on his release reflects a clear indication she intended he would be paroled sooner if he embraced rehabilitation.

If she had known that Wisconsin would years later change its parole policy to extending the vast majority of sentences to the maximum two-thirds, she would not have imposed a full 60 years, he suggested.

He also found audio from Walker's last parole hearing, when a commissioner told him, "You were sentenced at a time when judges thought, like, programming was the cure-all, and you know, and then we found out it's not."

Sanders said that language was "a direct line" back to McMahon, confirming to him that the Parole Commission's changed policy was a new factor. Mastantuono said it was like "changing the rules in the middle of a contest, changing the matrix," or context McMahon relied on.

Sanders noted Walker's character as a young man was bad — he had a record, and a bad attitude, before the bank robberies — but that over the past 20 years, he has shown, "on the whole, significantly improved character."

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Last year, the governor proposed virtually eliminating the state's Parole Commission. Instead, it was cut from eight to four members and its staff reduced. The state prisons still hold about 3,000 inmates convicted before Truth in Sentencing who are eligible for parole.

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The governor has also never granted a single pardon since he's taken office, and has criticized Democratic challengers' vows to reduce the state's prison population of more than 23,000, more than twice as large as Minnesota's. He said he sees "no value" in visiting Wisconsin's prisons.

The Parole Commission declined to answer questions and referred a reporter to the Department of Corrections spokesman, Cook.

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Beverly Walker has been actively involved in the effort to win parole for her husband, and other parole-eligible inmates, maintaining a website that tells people how to write support letters.

For a year, she's been helped by Odyssey Impact, which has conducted a social justice campaign keyed to "Milwaukee 53206" to raise awareness about Walker's case and parole and sentencing reform in general.

The film has been screened 150 times in Wisconsin and about 70 times around the nation, which prompted thousands of viewers to write letters about Walker's case, according to Melissa Potter, with Odyssey.