Man who stole $50 from bakery leaving prison after serving 36 years of life sentence

An Alabama man who has served 36 years of a life sentence after stealing $50.75 from a bakery will be freed in the next few days.

Then-22-year-old Alvin Kennard was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1984 due to an Alabama state law requiring a fourth-time offender to receive the harsh sentence.

The law was later changed to allow parole as an option but wasn’t instituted retroactively, so Kennard, now 58, wasn’t eligible for resentencing.

Kennard is being freed not by a new law, but by the curiosity of Judge David Carpenter, who saw his case.

“The judge, in this case, noticed how odd it seemed that someone was serving life without parole for a $50 robbery,” Carla Crowder, Kennard’s attorney told ABC News. “This was a judge that kind of went out of his way.” 

Kennard’s good behavior, along with the fact his crimes and priors would warrant a maximum sentence of just 21 years today, convinced the judge to resentence him to time served, effectively setting him free.

Kennard said he will stary with his family and make a living as a carpenter.

“I just want to say I’m sorry for what I did,” he said. “I take responsibility for what I did in the past. I want the opportunity to get it right.”

His niece, Patricia Jones, told the local Fox News affiliate that they have been talking about his freedom for “20-plus years.”

“All of us [were] crying,” she said. “He says he wants to get him a job, he wants to support himself, and we’re going to support him.”