The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole denied Wanda Barzee an early release date in July after declining to include her eight years in federal custody as time served on state charges.
However, the board announced on Tuesday, September 11, that its ruling has now been reversed.
“Upon further review and advice from legal counsel, the board must count time spent in federal custody toward Ms. Barzee’s state sentence,
” said the board’s director of administrative services, Greg Johnson, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Barzee, 72, will be under federal supervision for five years.
Smart’s father, Ed, told the newspaper on Tuesday that their family is still processing the news. “We’re certainly surprised because we were told she was getting out in 2022,” he added.
Barzee pleaded guilty in 2009 to helping her husband, Brian David Mitchell, kidnap Smart from her house in the Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah.
The couple held the 14-year-old captive from June 2002 to March 2003 before she was found nearly 20 miles away from her home.
Barzee was sent to a Utah state prison in April 2016 after finishing her federal sentence in Texas. Mitchell, now 64, was sentenced to life in prison in 2011.
Smart, now 30, works as a child-safety activist. She is expecting her third child with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, whom she married in 2012.
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