EUGENE, Ore. — October was already a rough month for Susan Wehner.

On Oct. 18 two years ago, a hit-and-run driver struck Wehner and her partner, Lucy Lahr, as they walked in a crosswalk near Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene.

The impact injured Wehner's legs and knocked her to the ground. From there, she watched helplessly as the driver's truck dragged, ran over and killed Lahr.

Each autumn, as the awful anniversary nears, Wehner remembers "hearing the body bag zip up in the bed next to me" as she and Lahr lay in the nearby emergency room.

The last thing Wehner needed was the letter she got this Oct. 7 from the Lane County district attorney's office, telling her that the state was considering giving the driver, Robert Thomas Berryhill, early release from his 3½-year prison sentence.

"To even see Robert Berryhill's name in front of me again was horrifying," Wehner said. "I got totally ungrounded for two or three days."

When the 2009 Legislature pushed through the bill that gave Berryhill and thousands of other convicts the chance at an earlier release from state prison, lawmakers were struggling to make savings in Oregon's cash-strapped budget. They were focused less on the crime victims and their families.

In the past two months, crime victims, prison officials, lawyers and judges have scrutinized the records of nearly 4,000 inmates considered eligible for an extra 10 percent off their sentences. So far 1,877 have been approved for early release, including 240 from Lane County, with sentences shortened by 53 days, on average.

Eventually, lawmakers expect 4,500 inmates to gain early freedom under the law, resulting in a savings to the state of $6 million.

Berryhill, now 41, began serving his sentence Dec. 4, 2007, after pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide, hit and run, and driving with a suspended license. He was scheduled for release Aug. 8, 2010. The 2009 law, however, made him retroactively eligible for an extra 43 days of "good time" credit for his prison behavior. That would have moved his release date to late June 2010.

Wehner objected, forcing a recent court hearing on Berryhill's proposed early release.

Too shaken to attend, Wehner sent a statement telling Lane County Circuit Judge Debra Vogt that Berryhill had already received an "absurdly short" sentence for a negligent act that ended one life and devastated another.

"To release Mr. Berryhill mere weeks after we acknowledge the second anniversary of that horrible day in October is disrespectful, degrading and a betrayal of Lucy and me," Wehner wrote.

She reminded Vogt that Berryhill's crimes included "not only the crash that ended Lucy's life, but his cowardly and inhumane decision to hit-and-run."

Citing the "inconvenience I have experienced in the past two years, and which I will continue to experience for the rest of my life as a result of my injuries and my unbearable loss, it seems completely reasonable to demand that Mr. Berryhill be inconvenienced for a few more months. It is the least that he and the justice system can do."

In a recent interview, Wehner said it has been difficult recovering from her injuries and resuming her remodeling business, Susan's Mobile Toolbox, after losing the medical benefits she had received as Lahr's domestic partner.

Berryhill did not appear at the recent court hearing. He participated by speaker phone from prison. His attorney, James von Boeckmann, told Vogt that Berryhill already has completed the portion of his sentence related to the homicide. The early release would apply to his penalty for the hit-and-run count, von Boeckmann said.

Vogt swiftly ruled in favor of Wehner's position. Berryhill is responsible for killing a person, she said. "I'm not going to grant (him early release.)"

Victims of less serious crimes also have found it upsetting to learn that those who wronged them might be let out early.

When Dr. Richard Apollo received notification that a multiple-count thief who stole his mountain bike in Eugene was eligible for an early prison release, he wasn't sure what to think. With an adult son living in a local group home for people with disabilities, Apollo said he's aware of the financial difficulties government-financed programs face as the economic recession makes taxpayer dollars more scarce.

"Yet, I want to see this person serve more time," he said of the convicted bike thief, Joshua Chapman. "And that's going to cost more money."

The 64-year-old doctor makes several trips a year to Eugene from his home in California, staying with his ex-wife here while visiting his son. He kept the bike in Eugene.

Apollo said the loss of the bicycle hurt because of its sentimental value. He said he used a modest inheritance from his deceased mother to buy the mountain bike for $1,500. He even nicknamed it "Annie's Bike" in tribute to his late mother.

In a letter to the state arguing against Chapman's early release, Apollo wrote that he wept when he saw his bicycle in the police impound, "all chopped up and rebuilt" with other bike parts by Chapman. The thief had remodeled the bike to make it less recognizable.

"It may sound corny and irrelevant in the eyes of the law, but I want Mr. Chapman to spend another month in prison and to know it is because he stole Annie's bike," Apollo wrote.

Chapman, 35, entered prison in February, with a scheduled release date of Dec. 13, 2010, for two first-degree theft convictions and one conviction of methamphetamine possession. Despite Apollo's protest, the courts approved moving his 2010 prison release date to Oct. 6.

State Rep. Andy Olson opposed the bill last spring in the Legislature. The Albany Republican and retired state police station commander said the anguish for victims should have been avoided.

"It rips off a scab and puts salt in the wound for the victim," he said.

The increase in "earned time" for eligible inmates from 20 percent — which has been available for years to inmates who don't misbehave — to 30 percent over a four-year period was meant to save $6 million. It was just one element of 2009 legislation meant to reduce corrections spending. The bill's biggest savings, $25.5 million, is expected to result from an 18-month delay in implementing Measure 57, a voter-passed law setting longer prison terms for drug dealers and repeat burglars, thieves and others who commit property crimes.

The bill passed both chambers with the backing of nine Republicans and all but one Democrat.

Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat who took the lead in pushing for passage of HB 3058, said the policy "is playing out as we intended: as a cost savings to the Department of Corrections and as a way to bring back programs that people said are needed."

Keeping beds available for juvenile offenders at Oregon Youth Authority lockups and maintaining round-the-clock patrols by Oregon State Police on major highways were among the programs where dollars went after they were saved through the prison system's early-release policy.

It has been painful for victims and extra work for the courts and prosecutors to review and contest the early releases, Prozanski says, but their involvement has led to the denial of early release under HB 3058 for 310 inmates so far — a sign that the checks and balances are working to keep the worst eligible offenders from gaining early freedom.

About 10,000 state inmates, including those convicted of violent crimes covered by Measure 11's mandatory minimum sentencing, and others specified in HB 3058, are not eligible for early release under the new law.

District attorneys and groups with victims' rights and anti-crime agendas have been among the most vocal critics of the early-release policy change, but Prozanski said their alternative, which most lawmakers rejected, would have raised even greater concerns for crime victims and public safety proponents. That plan would have cut prison costs through the release of 2,000 nonviolent low- or medium-risk offenders six months before completing their full sentences.

"Can you imagine just telling victims that, straight across the board, that when someone has six months left to go on their sentence they get to walk?" Prozanski said.

Not all victims of the convicts up for early release are upset about the state's cost-cutting move.

Eugene resident Mary Shotts was recently notified that the state is proposing 144 days of extra "good time" release for prolific thief Jacob Allen Glenn, now 26.

In 2003, at age 19, Glenn broke a window in Shotts' locked car in a downtown church's parking lot. As she attended an afternoon memorial service inside, he helped himself to her purse and camera. He later made purchases with some of her credit cards.

Shotts, now 83, told the state that she did not object to Glenn's early release.

"There was no physical harm to anybody," she said. "It was money and possessions. And I forgive things like that."

Shotts feels that way even though she has never been reimbursed for $590 in losses that included $60 cash from her wallet and the camera.

Shotts said the early release might let Glenn find work and pay restitution sooner.

Glenn may not have the opportunity for that head start, however.

Shotts was just one of three dozen people Glenn victimized in a 2003 crime spree. The series of vehicle break-ins, thefts, identity thefts and auto thefts resulted in a 90-count indictment.

Glenn already has served nearly six years of his December 2003 sentence to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to more than four dozen of the crimes. Glenn owes his victims $28,709 collectively.

And at least one of his other victims has filed an objection to his proposed early release date of March 1, 2010. A hearing has not been set yet. If a judge rejects the extra "good time" credit for Glenn, he is scheduled for release July 22, 2010.

Some local offenders released early already have found jobs and begun rebuilding their lives, said Paul Solomon, executive director of Sponsors, a Eugene nonprofit agency that helps former inmates transition to freedom. Among the roughly 15 early-release men and women the agency is in touch with, several are working and paying taxes, he said.

"The number of early releases is too small and not enough time has passed to tell" how they're doing, he said.

Research from other states suggests that inmates who are "successful in prison" taking part in substance abuse treatment and other programs reoffend at lower rates than prisoners released after serving their full sentences.

Most of those released early under the 2009 law received just a small time off their sentences — an average of 54 days — and already were preparing for their release before getting the extra 10 percent of "good time" credit, Solomon said.

Critics have highlighted the more violent crimes on which inmates are now up for reduced sentences, but the most common convictions that are up for shorter prison stays are the type legislators had in mind when they passed the law, Prozanski said.

Drug crimes possession, distribution and manufacture represent the largest group of inmates up for early release, both statewide and among those convicted in Lane County. That's followed by those convicted of burglary, theft and identity theft.

Even so, the Eugene lawmaker conceded that some criminal convictions "fell through the cracks" when lawmakers were drafting the bill. He is part of a group working to amend the law in February when the Legislature next meets.

Among the possible changes are the exclusion from early release for those who assaulted a police officer or committed felony hit and run.

Of the 73 convictions for assaulting a police officer that are eligible for a sentence reduction, 21 have been approved so far by Oregon courts, including six offenders sentenced in Lane County.

Berryhill's felony hit-and-run sentence is one of 71 such convictions eligible for a reduction under the new law. Of those, 19 have been approved, three denied, 35 are pending and 14 involved offenders who completed their sentences before the courts could decide.

Though the court rejected Berryhill's early release, Wehner said, it is wrong for lawmakers to put victims of serious crimes through the trauma of notification and hearings.

"Unless they have someone in their life that's been through a horrible tragedy, they just don't get it," she said.

"I don't care about Robert Berryhill's behavior while he has been incarcerated. Good behavior in prison should be a minimum standard, not a special condition to reward."