'Lifer' finds new life after release from prison at 82
Oct. 2—When Riley Johnson was paroled in March 2022 after more than 40 years in prison, he had a hard time believing he was being set free.
"A pair of brown paper plastic-coated pants, shoes, boxers, a T-shirt, socks and some legal documents. That's what I left prison with," recalled Johnson. "And [when] they put me in leg irons and there was another guy in the van, I thought, 'Oh, my God, I'm going to another prison. They've just been manipulating me all this time.' "
Instead, the van took the 82-year-old Johnson — convicted of killing his wife and sentenced to life in prison in 1982 — from the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility in Santa Rosa to the Raymond G. Murphy Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albuquerque.
Johnson said after he was dropped off at the back of the building, he stood rooted to the spot until someone from the center took him to his room and gave him a booklet of food vouchers. He was told he could use them to get breakfast at the canteen in the morning.
Closer to 100 than 60, Johnson's reintegration into society was just beginning — a long, difficult and ultimately rewarding journey he and other prisoner advocates say should be afforded to "lifers" who deserve a shot at parole.
"In prison there is always someone with authority," Johnson told members of the Legislature's Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee last week. "I walked out the back door and had to [stand] there for about 10 minutes because there was no one there I could ask if it was OK for me to go to the canteen and eat breakfast.
"It took me 10 minutes to take that first step. I was socially crippled."
After spending four decades as an inmate, Johnson said he'd lost many of the basic skills it takes to live on the outside. Now free for more than a year, he said he's relearning how to function.
"I had no sense of direction," he said in a recent interview. "In prison you live on two and [a] half acres. You know all the cracks in the sidewalks. You know every face. When you come out here, everything is just so overwhelming. I mean, I'm sitting there with a little map and I couldn't read a map and I didn't know which way to go."
Slowly, Johnson said, he began to acclimate, walking around the VA in Albuquerque in ever widening concentric circles to orient himself. He would sometimes get lost and ask passing military police where he was.
"They gave me a phone right away and that was a shock," he said. "My parole officer called me the first day, and I had to find someone to show me how to answer. I didn't know how to slide the little ball across the screen. I'm thinking, 'I'm going back to prison because I didn't answer.' "
A few months after his release, he had a panic attack after going to the center's chapel to watch a fireworks show out the window. He feared someone would come in and demand to know who had given him permission to be there and he'd have no answer and be sent back to prison.
"That's my greatest fear," he said. "I don't want to go back to prison."
Johnson — who is nearly legally blind and suffers from hearing loss sustained while in the U.S. Navy — spent about nine months in the Domiciliary Care for Homeless Veterans, one of the country's oldest health care programs for veterans. Established in the late 1800s, it now serves as a clinical rehabilitation effort for veterans facing medical and mental health problems and homelessness.
He now receives counseling twice a week, which helped him realize he no longer needs anyone's permission to roam.
Johnson said he now lives in "a new apartment in a bad part of town" and pays his rent with the help of a federal housing voucher. His living room is furnished with a couch from the waiting room of a retired judge he befriended during his decades in prison — which included an 18-year stint advocating for inmates rights as a prisoner representative in the ongoing litigation over the Duran Consent Decree, a legal agreement that governed prison reforms following the horrific riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in 1980.
He saved up for a year to buy a 43-inch television, an InstaPot and an air fryer, and has learned, with help, to ride Albuquerque's city buses and the Rail Runner. He volunteers for Veteran's Criminal Justice Outreach, using paralegal skills acquired in prison to help others like himself win their own release from prison.
"I work over the phone," he said. "My uniform is cargo shorts and a shirt and New Balance tennis shoes."
If not for the Veterans Affairs program, Johnson said he'd be much worse off.
"I saw a guy on the bus that I knew when he was in prison and he had everything he owned in a backpack and he said he was living under a bridge, actually living under a tree," he said. "That should never happen."
Recently appointed state Parole Board Director Brianne Bigej wrote in an email the panel often struggles to find appropriate housing opportunities and substance abuse and behavioral health treatment for parolees.
Some of those issues came through as Johnson — with former state Parole Board Chairwoman Sheila Lewis at his side — spoke to lawmakers about his experiences trying to get paroled. Though he was what many people would consider a model prisoner, Johnson was denied parole five times prior to being released.
In one instance, Johnson told the committee, he was told he needed to be granted parole before he could file a parole plan — but also that he couldn't be paroled without filing a parole plan.
In New Mexico, a person convicted of murder can be sentenced to life, which means they must serve 30 years before becoming eligible for parole. They also can be sentenced to life without parole — a punishment created in 2009 to replace the death penalty. The latter sentence means an inmate must remain in prison until they die.
Of the state prison system's roughly 5,400 inmates, about 500 are serving life sentences. Three are incarcerated without the possibility of parole, according to a department spokeswoman.
Johnson was sentenced to life, but told lawmakers the state Parole Board acted as if there was no difference between the two sentences, repeatedly denying him parole based on the seriousness of his crime.
Johnson was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his second wife, 34-year-old Sylvia Johnson, on April 24, 1981. He told police he'd gone to bed next to his sleeping wife in their Albuquerque home and awoke in the morning to find her dead, according to court records. He claimed his wife had died from an asthma attack, records show, but an autopsy later revealed she had high levels of ether in her system and bruises on her face and neck and listed her cause of death as strangulation.
Lewis, who served on the parole board from from August 2019 to March 2020 — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham decided not to renew her term — didn't preside over any of Johnson's parole hearings but got to know him while she was working as an appellate defender. She has said his case is a perfect example of why parole laws need to be reformed.
Lifers are among the oldest and most medically fragile inmates in the state prison system, Lewis told committee members during a presentation called "How the Parole Board Handles Lifers." They also represent the lowest risk for recidivism, yet are not eligible for medical or geriatric parole.
"Lifers have developed skills and insights that could be helpful in violence-prevention programs," she wrote in one of the slides. "Keeping them locked up forever is not only illegal, it's a waste of human resources."
The Legislature passed a bill in 2019 that would have required the board to grant parole to lifers who have served 30 years, or to issue specific written findings as to why the person should not be released. Lujan Grisham vetoed it at the request of prosecutors who argued it would have given the government less power over dangerous criminals.
Lewis has said in the past she thinks her time on the board was cut short because she believes more people serving life sentences should be released on parole. She told legislators rules keeping lifers in prison even after they are eligible for parole need to be changed.
Parole board chairman Abram Anaya, who has served on the board for 10 years, said in an interview Thursday the way the board views lifers has "changed dramatically" in recent years.
"It used to be very, very tough for a lifer to get paroled," Anaya said. "It's more of a holistic approach now. We're not just looking at the underlying charges. We look at everything from institutional behavior to self help to programming."
The board granted parole to three people who had served life sentences during his first eight years as a member, Anaya said. In the past two years, the board has granted parole to eight lifers.
The laws that govern parole haven't changed, "but what has changed is how we see these things," Anaya said.
"The Governor's Office has given the board much more leeway. There is much more an air of compassion with leadership. We still take into account the impact on the victim, and we always will," he added. "But if we just say life is life no matter what good deeds that person has done for the remainder of their sentence, there is no hope. Why should they try? We want to give these guys hope."
Gone is the parole board that would "just flat deny everybody for whatever reason," Anaya said. "That was an old way of doing things and that way has ceased. We are a much more open-minded parole board now."
Johnson choked up a bit when the lawmakers thanked him for his presentation last week, replying he was happy they'd been willing to listen.
"Before I went to prison I was not a very good guy," he said in a phone interview. "I was in it for me. I didn't think much about others, and that's a problem. It took prison to get me over that."
Johnson said he reconnected years ago with his first wife, who lives out of state, and they regularly talk on the phone. He's working to rebuild a relationship, albeit long distance, with his adult son and daughter and has become someone who is always eager to show off pictures of his many grandchildren — he's unsure of the exact number. He also has a great-great grandchild.
Once a firefighter and touring musician before going to prison, he has a guitar and has written nearly a dozen new songs.
"My life is a little thin, but it's not impossible," he said. "I live a good life. I don't have a bad life."
