After spending nearly all of his adult life in prison for murder, 49-year-old Frank Gene Powell walked out of the Utah State Prison in Draper on Tuesday morning. He was a free man for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Powell could have potentially been in prison for the rest of his life, punishment for running over and killing someone with a truck on Nov. 29, 1987. The slaying came shortly after he and Glen Candland got in an argument about who had the faster pickup truck.
At a Nov. 7 hearing with the Board of Pardons and Parole — his first since 2011 — Powell said a macho attitude, drinking and the feeling of being above the law caused him to get in his truck as a 19-year-old and mow down Candland, 20, at a party in Pleasant Grove.
But Powell said prison had reformed him. If confronted with that same situation today, he would walk away, he said.
“I don’t think anyone should ever be hurt again,” he told the board during his parole hearing.
Powell, originally charged with second-degree murder, took a plea deal for manslaughter in 1988. He was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison. But a couple years later, he asked the court to withdraw his plea, saying his attorney didn’t explain the ramifications of the deal. The court denied his motion, but he prevailed on appeal.
Following a second trial in 1992, he was convicted of the original murder charge, receiving a five-year to life sentence for the first-degree felony.
While in jail awaiting his second trial, Powell sexually assaulted an inmate. He told the parole board he was first sent to prison during a violent period in the 1980s where it was a fight-or-get-killed atmosphere. He brought that mentality with him to jail.
Powell pleaded guilty to two counts forcible sodomy and received one-to-15-year sentences which ran concurrent to his murder sentence. Powell said he brought the same macho attitude he had when he killed Candland to prison. But over the years, he embraced the opportunities prison provided him, and it changed his outlook on life.
“You have to have empathy for people and you have to understand that you can’t just do stuff to people,” he told the parole board. “You can’t just do things to people and not be held accountable for your actions. That is not acceptable in this society.”
Board member Angela Micklos remarked that Powell seemed far more mature than at his previous hearing. The full five-member board apparently agreed, granting Powell’s parole in a Nov. 28 letter.
Powell said therapy in the prison has exposed him to a lot: Three years ago he had never heard of an emotional trigger, and now he starts everyday by mapping out all the potential triggers he could experience and planning responses to them.
“I have to prepare for everything,” he said of life on the outside. “Being able to recognize triggers and talk about them is something that is huge. I have a lot of negative influences.”
Not everyone was convinced.
Glen Candland’s sister, Laura Candland, told the parole board Powell’s righteous words pale in comparison to the impulses he showed on that deadly night in 1987.
“It’s been 30 years since any member of my family has looked into Glen’s eyes,” she said. “ ... It has been a very long 30 years for us”
Laura Candland requested that Powell never be paroled, and that he should be forced to give up his life for the one he took. Powell apologized for his actions and asked that he be viewed as more than a mistake he made when he was 19.
“I’d trade my life in a minute for his,” Powell replied.
