BATON ROUGE — Gov. Jeff Landry says a Midwesterner sentenced to life in prison for the 1981 killing of a Baton Rouge man should be given a term of years and become eligible for parole.

William Ollis, 75, had gone before the state Pardons Board in May and it recommended he be given a term of 99 years in prison. With Landry's approval this week, the matter now goes to the state Committee on Parole, which must make a decision within 180 days.

The Board of Pardons cited the amount time Ollis had served, his age and a recommendation from the warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.  

"I'm not the same man I was then when the crime happened," Ollis told the Board of Pardons on May 12. He also apologized to his victim's family.

Unrelated to the parole board decision, two co-defendants who pleaded guilty to manslaughter benefited from a clerical error that voided their prison terms.

Ollis was convicted of beating Richard Bowling, 34, to death with a metal table leg in 1981 in St. Tammany Parish. Media accounts at the time said Bowling had stolen Ollis' 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass and that two men lured Browning to a van so Ollis could beat him.

According to prosecutors, Ollis and Browning had been associates in the furniture business. 

Browning's body was found in a ditch with his hands tied behind his back, court records show. A Slidell policeman chasing a burglary suspect came across the body near U.S. 11. 

Two co-defendants who pleaded guilty to manslaughter never served their nine-year sentences because of a clerical error.

No one picked up Barry Roberts or Steven Couture after their appeals failed in 1983. After a deputy clerk noticed the error six years later, prosecutors argued that the men had an obligation to report to prison.

The Supreme Court said the onus was on the judge to issue an arrest warrant and justices voided their prison terms. They would have been parole-eligible on the day they were picked up, and had lived open, law-abiding lives since entering their pleas.

At Olllis' hearing last May, a representative from the Parole Project said the group would help Ollis find housing and that they had a job lined up as an RV repairman. Prison officials said Ollis was an accomplished painter.

Ollis was part of a prisoner escape with seven other inmates from the St. Tammany Parish Jail while his case was on appeal. He received a five-year prison term for that.

At the time of his trial, Ollis was listed as being from Cincinnati, but during his escape and amid his appeals he was identified as being from Warsaw, Indiana.