INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indiana Parole Board has denied freedom to a man convicted of fatally shooting a sheriff's deputy during a bank robbery nearly 40 years ago.
The board voted 4-0 Thursday to deny parole to 64-year-old Billy Ray Adams. He's serving a life sentence for murder in the 1972 slaying of Marion County Deputy Tom Settles during a bank robbery in Cumberland, east of Indianapolis.
Adams, appearing by video from a Pendleton prison, apologized for the crime and blamed it on post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Vietnam.
Parole Board Chairman Gregory Server says the public expects a life sentence to mean life, not parole. He says Adams might have received the death penalty for the crime had it been allowed under Indiana law at the time.
