For two Virginia women serving life sentences for murder, a life sentence has ended early. The Virginia Parole Board voted on Thursday, October 29, 2026, to release Bessie Hope, 64, and Jaunita Lowery, 63, 7News (WJLA) reported — the latest in a run of releases that has made the board, replaced wholesale by Governor Abigail Spanberger this year, one of the most contested institutions in Virginia government.
Source: 7News (WJLA), reported October 29–30, 2026, via Potomac Local News
Hope was released after serving 30 years of a life-plus-20-year sentence for first-degree murder, malicious wounding and robbery, according to 7News. Lowery was released after serving about 23 years of a life sentence for first-degree murder. The board heard four cases on Thursday: besides Hope and Lowery, it released a woman held for felony drug crimes, and it tabled — postponed — a vote on another person convicted of murder, whose case will return at a later meeting.
A new board, appointed in March, deciding at a new pace
Governor Spanberger, a Democrat, fired former Governor Glenn Youngkin's parole board and appointed an entirely new one; she named all five members on March 4, 2026, and the Democratic-led General Assembly confirmed them. The board, chaired by Shannon Dion, a former Northam administration criminal-justice official, first met in May. By 7News' running count, it has now granted early release in 51 of the 209 cases it has heard — roughly one in four.
Other counts, covering different periods and case types, point the same direction at different magnitudes. A Washington Examiner analysis published October 7 found Youngkin's board approved 1.23% of parole requests in all of 2025, granting 32, while Spanberger's board posted a 13.89% release rate in roughly half of 2026 with 38 grants. WJLA's own count by October 2 stood at 48 grants in 205 discretionary and geriatric parole cases. The figures differ because the counts cover different months and mix different kinds of cases — but every published count shows the new board granting parole many times more often than the board it replaced.
Source: Red Virginia News, parole grant-rate analysis (Washington Examiner and WJLA counts)
Why anyone serving a post-1995 life sentence can be heard at all
Virginia abolished discretionary parole for most crimes committed after 1994, under the truth-in-sentencing reforms of the mid-1990s — which is why Thursday's decisions surprise many victims' families. The people the board can still release come through the routes the law kept open: prisoners whose crimes predate the abolition and who remain under the old discretionary parole system; geriatric conditional release, available to prisoners aged 65 and older who have served at least five years, or 60 and older who have served at least ten; and, since July 1, a new law (SB60/HB318) requiring a meaningful opportunity for release for people serving long sentences for crimes committed as juveniles.
The victims' side: 'life' was the promise they heard
7News' reporting on the board's new pace has centred on victims and their families learning that sentences they understood as permanent are being reopened. Paige Meade, who was sexually assaulted in Prince William County at 19, told 7News she fears her attacker will be released at his parole hearing next year. In earlier months, victims or family members opposed release in at least four cases the board granted anyway, according to the board's own minutes reported by Red Virginia News. Spanberger's office had not responded to WJLA's requests for comment as of the station's September and October reports.
Parole defenders answer that the old board's near-zero rate was itself the anomaly, and that releasing people convicted of murder is not new. The Due Process Institute, citing Virginia Parole Board records, counts 145 parole grants under Youngkin's board between April 2022 and January 15, 2026 — including 24 involving life sentences and 62 listing murder or homicide convictions. By law, the board must investigate each applicant's history, physical and mental condition, character, prison conduct and release plans, and must weigh victim input; its most common reason for denial this year, cited in most August and September denials, is that an applicant still needs cognitive behavioural therapy and greater insight before risk is considered reduced. Denials still outnumber grants by a wide margin.
What the numbers looked like month by month
The board's own decision reports show how uneven the pace is: in August it granted 14 of 44 parole cases decided, about 32%; in September it granted 7 of 85, about 8.2%, denying 78. Thursday's meeting — three releases in four cases, including two life sentences — sits at the high end of that range, which is why individual meetings, rather than the annual average, are what victims' families experience.
Source: Due Process Institute, 'Setting the Record Straight About Parole in Virginia' (board records)
What happens next
The board meets regularly in Richmond and posts its monthly decisions publicly, so Thursday's full written decisions — including the stated reasons for granting Hope and Lowery — are the next document to watch. Ahead sit more hearings that victims are already tracking, including, next year, the attacker whose possible release Paige Meade described to 7News. For Virginia's large immigrant communities, including Punjabi families in Prince William, Fairfax and the Richmond area, the practical lesson is the one both sides agree on: in Virginia, who appoints the parole board decides how the word 'life' is actually served — and that appointment changed this year.