By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
Two men who were convicted in Escambia County Circuit Court and sent to prison, were freed from their respective correctional facilities last week after the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles granted each a parole.
Another man — convicted in 18 different Alabama counties, including Escambia, for fraudulent schemes he devised and implemented from behind bars since 1999 — was denied parole.
Brian Shane Marshall, 42, was paroled after having served nearly 80 percent of a 20-year sentence (11 years and most of 6 months inside state facilities and 1,825 days in jail while awaiting trial and transfer) for a 2014 first-degree robbery conviction here. Marshall was also convicted in Escambia County in 2015 for third-degree burglary, but that sentence ran concurrent with the robbery term.
Marshall’s 2014 conviction came less than three years after he was released from the state penal system in 2011 after having served most of a 5-year sentence he was given for another local first-degree robbery, this one in 2007.
Parole was also granted to 45-year-old Larry Ray Johnson Jr., who was convicted in Escambia County in 2018 for felony possession of or receiving a controlled substance and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Johnson had previously served all but a few days of a 3-year sentence handed down here in 2011 for possession of a controlled substance.
The paroled inmate had only been inside the state system for a little more than two years but spent nearly a year (317 days) in jail while awaiting trial and transfer. He had also built up a 2,030-day bank of “good time,” the equivalent of 5.5 more years.
The board denied parole for 50-year-old Dennis W. Greer, who entered the state prison system in May 1999 and has since then been charged with 48 more crimes, almost all of them either for or related to fraudulent use of a credit card.
The list of convictions for Greer, who has 22 aliases listed on his Alabama Department of Correction rap sheet, indicates he has been found guilty of defrauding victims in 18 counties, with all but the initial crime committed from behind prison walls. That includes a 2007 Escambia County conviction for criminal possession of a forged instrument and first-degree forgery, for which he was sentenced to 15 years.
Greer’s 49 prison sentences total more than 625 years but are running concurrently. He has served 15 years and 5 months of his original 20-year sentence and is currently housed at North Alabama Community Work Center in Decatur.