For the price of a single stamp, you can protect the world from wickedness. You can help keep William Anthony Brooks behind bars where he should stay until a power greater than us decides to set him free.

Brooks has been a guest of the state prison system since 1977. That was the year a jury in Muscogee County convicted him of the rape and murder of Carol Jeannine Galloway.

The case made headlines. It was Georgia’s first televised murder trial, and it came at a time the innocence of a community was being destroyed.

Brooks was sentenced to die and no one winced. He was not a good person. Like the members of that jury, most people believed he deserved execution.

Along the way Brooks became a cause rather than a convicted killer. Those who questioned the quality of justice wielded in this judicial circuit used him as a symbol of what was wrong. They questioned the racial makeup of his jury and the pool from which it was selected.

In 1986, in a new trial, a new jury sentenced him to life in prison -- not because he was any less guilty but because of changes in the judicial playing field.

Twenty-five years later, he is eligible for parole. He wants to be free. Carol Jeannine Galloway can’t plead her case but someone should tell her story for her.

The Board of Pardons and Paroles needs to know that just before breakfast one morning, she was taken from her parents’ carport on St. Marys Road. Her mother saw Jeannine back her car out of the driveway with a man sitting beside her.

Twenty-four hours later her body was discovered near Dawson Elementary School. She had been raped, and she had been killed by a single gunshot to the neck.

Brooks was arrested in Atlanta. He made two statements. In the second one, he confessed. He said that after he raped her she started screaming. He pointed a pistol at her to keep her from screaming. It went off. Then he ran away.

In his original trial, he was sentenced to death on the murder charge, to life imprisonment for kidnapping and rape and to 20 years imprisonment for armed robbery.

Many years ago, on an anniversary of her murder, I visited the Galloway home. Her room was as she left it.

A book she was reading was still open. Her clothes were still hanging in her closet.

The events of that morning in 1977 imprisoned Earl and Hettie Galloway just like they did Brooks. Their lives were forever changed. Before her death, dementia did allow Mrs. Galloway to forget.

William Anthony Brooks is eligible for parole. To keep him in prison, write the State Board of Pardons and Parole, 2 MLK Jr. Drive, Atlanta, GA 30334. Reference Case No. EF-137251

Jeannie Galloway would thank you if she could.