NC governor says she won’t free 20 prisoners

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s governor is refusing to release 20 of the state’s violent offenders next week, saying legal issues involving credits for good behavior must be resolved first.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said in a statement Thursday that she questions whether prison officials had the authority to give the inmates the credits.

Those credits were thought to have shaved time off prison terms, allowing some inmates to be released because of a 1970s state law that limited so-called life sentences to 80 years. The law has since been changed.

Perdue and other officials have sought to keep the inmates behind bars since they lost a lawsuit brought by one inmate. Most of the inmates to be released were convicted of rape or murder and few were to be supervised.

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