Man serving two life sentences receives parole in unanimous decision

In a unanimous decision, the Mississippi Parole Board has granted parole to Paul Murrell Stewart after 24 years.

Stewart and Hart Turner were convicted after a 1995 murder and robbery spree left two men dead: Eddie Brooks, a store clerk in Carroll County, Miss., and Everett Curry, Sr., a guard at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Stewart, then 17, pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony against his partner in crime. Stewart received two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Turner, 22 in 1995, had a long history of trauma and mental illness, including two failed suicide attempts, the first of which left him with a permanently disfigured face at the age of 18. He received a death sentence for the killings, the only crimes he ever committed, and Mississippi executed him in 2012.

In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all juvenile life-without-parole sentences in Montgomery v. Louisiana. In accordance with that ruling, Stewart’s sentence was reduced to a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Turner was the man who pulled the trigger in both killings, according to court documents and Turner’s own words, a factor in Stewart’s successful parole application.

Authorities have not determined a release date for Stewart, now 41, who is imprisoned in the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs.

Everett Curry Jr., son of one of the victims, witnessed Hart’s execution in 2012. He remains adamant that Stewart should have served out his life sentences behind bars.

“I feel like if he was in the car, he knew what was going on,” Curry told the Greenwood Commonwealth. “He should be held accountable as well as the other guy.”