Manhunt underway for 'dangerous' convicted felon suspected of killing tech CEO | Hacker News Reader

Manhunt underway for 'dangerous' convicted felon suspected of killing tech CEO

sfgate.com

21 pointsbryan09 comments

In this and other discussions of this there have been several wrong explanations of why he was released from prison. Here is what actually happened.

His sentence was for 30 years with 16 suspended, which in effect means a 14 year sentence with the possibility of the other 16 becoming unsuspended if after release he violated the conditions of his release.

Inmates in Maryland can earn credits through good behavior, successful participation in work programs, and successful participation in educational programs. These credits knock time off their sentence.

You can earn up to 30 days worth of credits in a month if your crime was not violent, was not a large drug crime, and wasn't a sex crime. You cannot earn credits if your crime was a sex crime with a victim under 16.

His crime was between those two extemes, allowing up to 20 days of a credit per month. He was able to earn close to that, so after 9 years he had enough credits to cover the remaining 5 years on his 14.

> Billingsley pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in 2009 and second-degree assault in 2011, according to court records. He also pleaded guilty to a first-degree sex offense in 2015 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison with 16 months already served, the records show.

> Billingsley was released from prison in October 2022.

Thanks Maryland. You did a lot of good by giving this guy unlimited chances to improve himself. I'm sure all his victims feel the same.

Allegedly a week ago he broke into a family’s home, raped the woman, doused the couple in lighter fluid, and lit them on fire in front of their child. As the mayor said,

> "There is no way in Hell he should have been on the streets."

Narrator (in a Morgan Freeman voice): But he was....

What's the story for getting out 20+ years early?

anarcho tyranny

Baltimore, like Detroit, St. Louis, and Kansas City, is a generally fucked, dangerous, dysfunctional city. Baltimore specifically has an absurd number of police cameras, highly racialized policing, and massive unemployment. It's generally not a nice place to live. Detroit is especially fucked because of large sections of abandoned residential areas and places so dangerous that the underfunded, understaffed police refuse to go.

> "There is no way in Hell he should have been on the streets," Mayor Brandon Scott said.

And yet.

He was caught

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