By Louis Hansen
The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. — Vic Soyars is blind in one eye and hard of hearing.
He has the normal health woes that come with living a hard 63 years. Still, an old pistol wound doesn’t stop him from running an hour some days through the streets and hills of Danville, Va.
Friends in his hometown give him odd jobs, clothes and furniture. Most nights, he attends group drug and alcohol counseling at churches.
He sleeps on a twin bed in the parlor of his brother’s home, a small library of self-help and yoga books on a shelf nearby. Sometimes, cats scamper across the keyboard of an upright piano and wake him.
“Everyday is a gift,” Soyars said.
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He is lucky.
He’s one of 11 state prisoners in a system of about 30,000 inmates granted geriatric release this year, according to the Parole Board. In Virginia, a prisoner is far more likely to die behind bars than get released because he’s old and sick.
Geriatric parole is one of the rarest ways for an inmate to leave a Virginia prison.
To qualify, prisoners must be 60 years old and have served 10 years or be 65 and have served 5 years. Offenders convicted of capital murder are ineligible. Their health, criminal history, behavior and potential threat to the community are considered by the state Parole Board when deciding whether to grant freedom. Risk to public safety is the board’s primary concern, its chairman said.
In the last fiscal year, less than 1 percent of about 800 prisoners eligible were granted geriatric release, according to the Parole Board. During the same period, 84 inmates died in state prisons.
Geriatric release also has become the state’s legal keystone for keeping some teen offenders locked up for life.
The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders convicted of crimes not involving murder - such as robbery, abduction and sexual assault - do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Virginia law states that teen offenders have a meaningful chance at release if they turn 60 in prison.
For example, Travion Blount was 15 when he committed an armed robbery with two older teenagers in Norfolk. No shots were fired, and Blount injured no one physically. The other teens pleaded guilty and received 10- and 13-year sentences. Blount went to trial, was convicted of 49 felonies and was sentenced to six life terms, plus 118 years.
Blount, now 23, and at least one other Hampton Roads man are appealing their life sentences in federal court. They join at least 20 other inmates in Virginia who face life without parole for nonhomicide crimes committed as juveniles. Almost 180 Virginia inmates are serving life sentences for crimes committed before they turned 18, according to the Department of Corrections.
State lawmakers also have become concerned about Virginia’s growing population of older prisoners. Today, there are about 6,300 inmates older than 50, a five-fold increase in the population since 1994, according to statistics given to state senators in September. The trend mirrors statistics nationally.
Housing older, less healthy prisoners is significantly more expensive. State taxpayers spent $31,700 to keep an older inmate at Deerfield Correctional Center last year, roughly 65 percent more than the cost for comparable security units for younger populations, according to the department.
The Department of Corrections is planning for the growth of aging offenders, spokesman Larry Traylor said. Deerfield, a medium-security prison featuring assisted living and nursing care for prisoners, has land for expansion, he said. The department is also looking to better manage the population through re-entry programs.
The 11 geriatric releases granted this year by the Virginia Parole Board show a variety of convictions and backgrounds:
- A 64-year-old man convicted of murder and three men, older than 63, convicted of sexual crimes
- A 65-year-old convicted of driving while intoxicated
- Three inmates convicted of drug charges: two 65-year-old women and Soyars
Soyars received his release papers in August, after serving more than 11 years of a 15-year sentence for dealing cocaine.
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Dorothy Soyars, later Wilson, and her sister were convinced her child would be a girl - Vicky Lane Soyars. When the baby was born a boy in January 1950, a girl’s name still went on the birth certificate. Most know him as Vic.
Soyars quit high school his senior year, grew his hair long and joined the counter-culture movement - small as it was - in late-1960s tobacco country. Poor eyesight helped him avoid the draft. He took to entry-level jobs and hung out in pool halls. He got into drugs and began dealing.
Jack Cook, a Danville businessman, met Soyars while riding the bus to high school. Soyars came from a modest background and was raised by a single mother. “He’s just one of those guys who has an addictive personality,” Cook said.
Soyars said he sold drugs to feed his drug and alcohol addictions.
In 1971, when he was 20, Soyars sold six doses of LSD and about a gram of hashish to a police informant and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Soyars said the deals netted him $10.
Virginia offered more programs for offenders at the time, and Soyars was granted furloughs to take classes at a community college in Franklin. He earned his associate degree in business. He was paroled after 5-1/2 years. He returned to Danville, got a job in a tobacco processing plant and married and raised a son. He bought a home, coached Little League and became a supervisor at the plant. He lived a sober life into his 40s.
Then his marriage broke up, and his ex-wife shot him and broke his leg during a fight. He eventually lost sight in his right eye after cataract surgery.
Soyars slid back into drugs. Cook tried to get him into rehabilitation programs.
“I’ve got a handle on it,” Soyars assured his friend.
Some people steal to support a cocaine habit. “He sold dope,” Cook said. “He was in it to just pay for his own addiction.”
By 2002, Soyars said, his suburban home became a nest of drug-dealing and his own paranoia. Police visited one day and told him they were ready to arrest him if he didn’t help them catch other users. They asked Soyars why he sold drugs.
“Smoke crack,” Soyars told police, according to a court transcript. “I was going to feed that damn addiction.”
By the time prosecutors charged him, Soyars had been drug- and alcohol-free for more than a year and was dedicated to rehabilitation programs.
Prosecutors charged him with 11 felonies for selling cocaine to informants during four months in 2001. The charges carried the potential of five decades in prison. Soyars pleaded guilty and agreed to a 15-year prison term and more than $5,000 in fines. He has no record of violent or other felony offenses, according to court records in Danville and Pittsylvania County.
Soyars headed to prison in 2003 as a disabled 53-year-old recovering addict.
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When the Parole Board receives a request for geriatric release, it considers public safety as the primary factor. “We don’t like to decide cases based on money,” William Muse, chairman of the Virginia Parole Board said. “We like to decide cases on public safety.”
Medical conditions are weighed heavily, Muse said, to determine whether a person is a risk to the community.
Older prisoners complete a one-page form stating why they deserve to be released. The brief essays are considered along with an inmate’s criminal history, health and prison behavior. The applications are occasionally supplemented by personal interviews with board members, Muse said.
In April 2012, the board wanted to know why only about 1 in 4 eligible prisoners were applying for geriatric release, he said. Members, along with corrections officials, addressed inmates at Deerfield.
Muse said most inmates thought it was unnecessary because they were eligible for discretionary parole. Prisoners convicted before the state abolished parole in 1995 can quality for discretionary parole and have their cases reviewed annually.
A few admitted that they were reluctant to leave prison because they receive better medical care there, he said.
Even though the board wants to keep promoting geriatric release, “we don’t want to give anybody false hopes,” Muse said.
The board has let go 46 inmates through geriatric release since 2002. At least half were granted in two years, 2010 and 2013, according to board statistics obtained by The Pilot.
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In prison, Vic Soyars tried to keep a low profile. He practiced yoga and attended group therapy. He wrote his mother often.
Eventually, he was moved to Deerfield.
He felt safer surrounded by his peers. Many, he said, also committed crimes to support their drug addictions.
At his age, he said, “your criminal days are virtually over.”
Soyars applied for geriatric release last year, the first time he was eligible. The Parole Board denied his appeal, stating concerns about his criminal record.
Soyars reapplied this year and received his approval in August. He cried when he opened the letter.
His brother, Bill Soyars Jr., was glad to have him home. He had no concerns about Vic’s past addictions. “He’s got it all together now,” his brother said.
Vic Soyars’ life in Danville remains spartan and simple. He receives about $900 monthly in Social Security.
He supplements it with money he earns from landscaping and other small jobs for friends and neighbors. Mostly, he looks after his 88-year-old mother, who lives next door. He cooks and has even encouraged her to try his vegetarian diet.
He’s fixed the electric problems at her house and made her first floor safe and clean.
There’s more work for him. Her second floor needs to be cleaned, too, he said. He’ll spruce it up, he joked, and set up his dojo.
He has been drug- and alcohol-free for almost 13 years, he said. He attends 12-step meetings five nights a week. Martial arts exercises round out his running and yoga regimen.
“I am responsible for everything that happened to me,” Soyars said. “I put myself in that position.”
He shared Thanksgiving dinner with his son, grandchildren, great grandchildren and his ex-wife.
He recently found boxes of his prison letters, saved in his mother’s home. He threw them out. He keeps one reminder: his release letter. He’s grateful.
“I’m on this journey,” he said. “I’m just here.”