By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
A Castleberry man serving his second prison stint in six years, and a Montgomery County man who is serving four life sentences, will each remain in prison for at least another five years after the Alabama Board of Pardons & Paroles recently denied their respective bids for early release.
Lee C. Rabon, 37, is in the early stages of a 104-month (8 years, 8 months) sentence handed down after his 2018 Escambia County conviction on a crime listed by Alabama Department of Corrections officials only as “Class C drug felony.”
He has served only one year and four months, including 85 days in jail, but has accumulated 760 days of “good time.”
Rabon was also convicted in 2015, also in Escambia County, of second-degree forgery and possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to a total of five years and 10 months in prison but was paroled in 2017 after serving less than two years but accumulating more than four months of “good time.”
His minimum release date without parole or a pardon is September 8, 2022.
Also denied parole was Richard Allen Benton, who has been in prison since 1984 and has racked up four life sentences for crimes committed while behind bars.
Benton was initially convicted in Montgomery County, in 1984, of eight counts related to burglary and theft. He was also convicted that year of first-degree theft in Elmore County.
Since then, he has been convicted of escape (1988, bringing his first life sentence) and second-degree assault (1992, second life sentence) in Jefferson County; of first-degree robbery and first-degree escape (1988, third life sentence) in Elmore County, and of promoting prison contraband (1990) and first-degree assault (1998, fourth life sentence) in Escambia County.
Benton has served 29 years behind bars and is not eligible for release unless he is granted parole or a pardon.