In 1993, James R. Jordan, Sr. was brutally shot and left in the wilds of a swampy area in McColl, South Carolina. The father of Bulls legend Michael Jeffrey Jordan, it was a moment that rocked the core of both Michael and the rest of the basketball world.
The suspects were identified as Larry Demery and Daniel Green, who were both just teenagers at the time. Despite the two trying to pin it on the other, they were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Now, more than 20 years later, one of those men is set to be released after being granted parole.
Larry Demery — who was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for the murder of James Jordan — will be a free man on Aug. 6, 2023, the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission announced on Twitter.
As part of a plea deal, Demery testified against Green at trial, saying he was the shooter. However, Green, who was also sentenced to life in prison, claimed Demery asked him to help dispose of Jordan’s body but that he wasn’t there during the killing.
The state’s current sentencing laws eliminates parole for crimes committed on or after Oct. 1, 1994. However, offenders sentenced under the previous guidelines are still eligible.
Demery’s release is contingent on him remaining in good standing as a prisoner. Green won’t be eligible for parole until October 2021, according to local outlet WRAL.
https://twitter.com/StolpWSOC9/status/1295793521199403009
Obviously, there’s no telling what happened that day. And while Demery may have been given a second chance at life, he’ll have to live with what he did for as long as he’s alive.
As for Michael, he has yet to make any kind of statement on the release. It is known that he and his father were extremely close at the time and upon his death, MJ retired from the game for a short time.
This can’t feel great for him.
