As WJLE reported in August, 64 year old Gerald Wayne (J.B.) Bounds of McMinnville will be up for another parole hearing this Thursday, October 20..
Bounds, convicted of first degree murder, is serving a life prison sentence at the Southeast Regional Correctional Facility in Pikeville.
Last fall, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to concur with a recommendation by two of it’s members Yusuf Hakeem and Charles Taylor that Bounds be denied parole due to the seriousness of the offense in the 1981 fatal shooting of 27 year old Sherman Wright of DeKalb County.
Following Bounds’ last parole hearing in October, 2010, Hakeem and Taylor recommended that Bounds be “put off” for two years before his next parole hearing, but the state board decided instead to review Bound’s case again in October, 2011.
The board requested that Bounds undergo a psychological evaluation prior to his next hearing, as was recommended by parole board members Hakeem and Taylor.
Bounds is serving a life sentence for the first degree premeditated killing of Wright, who was shot once in the head just outside the Odyssey Arcade on West Broad Street, across from the Dairy Queen. The incident occurred on the afternoon of February 2nd, 1981, allegedly over a gambling debt. The game room no longer exists. The building now serves as the location for the Discount Tobacco Outlet. Had Wright survived, he would be turning 58 years old on October 25th.