THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 10, 1995 TAG: 9501100349
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: GOOCHLAND LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Sue Kennon was an upper middle-class housewife who was committing her fourth armed robbery with a broken pistol when a Suffolk pharmacist pulled out his gun and shot her.
The pharmacist - who is now the city's mayor - grazed her in the shoulder. She begged him to finish her off. He wouldn't.
What she was after that day eight years ago, she said, was drugs she could use to kill herself. Instead, because of what some legislators say is an ambiguous state law, she was sent to prison for 48 years - longer than the average murder sentence - for a crime in which no one else was injured.
The state classified Kennon, 44, as a ``three-time loser'' for using a broken or toy gun to steal $180 in four holdups during an eight-day spree in 1987. That precludes her from ever being paroled and means her children - now 8, 10 and 15 - will be 24, 26 and 31 on her earliest release date in 2011.
There are Republicans and Democrats who agree that the 1982 three-time-loser law was misapplied in Kennon's case.
``That statute envisioned three separate criminal acts separated by jail time,'' said former U.S. Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr., a Republican Hampton Roads attorney and former prosecutor who has done pro bono work for Kennon.
Del. Harry Parrish, R-Manassas, a sponsor of the 1982 law, said Kennon's crimes do not appear to be those the bill targeted. ``The purpose was to get the violent criminal off the street and keep them off,'' he said.
Kennon, at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women, says she's kicked her drug habit. She became the first female Virginia inmate on record to earn a bachelor's behind bars. She received her degree in psychology in 1993 and is taking graduate courses through Virginia Commonwealth University.
``Sue is one of those special people,'' said Randy Shipe, principal of the prison's school program. ``It sure is a waste of my taxpayer money to have her locked up here'' - about $17,200 a year.
Until she took up robbery in 1987, Kennon lived in an affluent Chesapeake neighborhood. She became a drug addict after her husband died in an accident in 1979 when she was 6 1/2 months pregnant with her first child. She had two other children by another man.
She said the robbery spree began in hopes of obtaining money and drugs so she could pay for a motel room and commit suicide.
Suffolk Mayor Chris Jones, the pharmacist who shot her, still can't forget how Kennon stuck a gun in his side and demanded drugs. At the time she was sentenced, he thought the punishment just. He doesn't ponder it much any more and offers no opinion on it now.
Norfolk attorney Peter Decker, ex-chairman of the state Board of Corrections, believes she deserves parole. If legislators knew how the three-time-loser law was working, he said, they would want it repealed.
That is unlikely in a get-tough atmosphere. In the past year, the legislature has approved Gov. George Allen's proposals to toughen sentencing. And since Allen was elected, his appointees to the state Parole Board have drastically reduced the percentage of paroles they approve.
KEYWORDS: ROBBERY PAROLE THREE-TIME DRUGS by CNB