ROBERT & MICHELLE LIND

almost 40 years ago, Robert Lind was involved in a shootout with police. No cops were injured. Nevertheless, he’s not eligible for parole until

2032. His wife, Michelle, has not been able to see him since November because they’re both high-risk. They dated in their twenties, separated when he went to prison, and rekindled their relationship years later, marrying in 2008. “I’m all he has,” she says. “There’s no one else. No one goes to visit him, or he doesn’t call anybody else, or everyone’s dead.”

Robert is now 74 and was recovering from treatment for prostate cancer last spring when he got Covid. He suffered from symptoms for months after getting out of the hospital: “My left leg was swollen to three times its size. I couldn’t walk in a straight line. A lot of coughing, headache, and chills.”

He teaches an anti-violence course in the prison and says he can’t fathom why the state keeps elderly people like him locked up, especially in a pandemic. “A lot of us have committed a crime, right?” he says. “You have to serve a sentence, but when you see an individual that walks through a hallway and trembles, or a really sick individual who’s mentally challenged, what is that? Enough is enough.”

Advocacy groups are hoping for an elder-parole bill to pass, which would give prisoners over 55 a chance at parole regardless of their crime, so long as they already served 15 years. Michelle is scared she won’t see Robert alive again if he doesn’t get a compassionate release. “The only way he’ll come home to me is in a body bag,” she says.