On March 13, 2009, the Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed Judge Condron’s unprecedented order against the state parole board on behalf of five Santa Clara County inmates who committed murder and are seeking parole release.
In a San Jose Superior Court, Judge Condron made a ruling that the Board of Parole Hearings (Board) was violating the constitutional rights of inmates serving potential life terms by issuing typical boilerplate parole rejections of their requests for release.
She supported her findings and order by supportive statistical evidence (2,700 selective board denial decisions) that the Board members were issuing “formulaic” decisions without regarding an inmate’s rehabilitative reform. She concluded her findings on the fact of the Board’s arbitrary and capricious reliance on unchanging circumstances of the nature of the original crime, and not providing specific reasons for the denial.
In addition, Condron ordered revisions to the Board’s procedures and for members to undergo specific training to correct the apparent problems of its “malfunctioning” process of deciding an inmate’s sentence in a term-to-life case.
The Sixth District Court of Appeal’s three-justice panel unanimously found Condron’s incomplete and undetailed evidence for the Board’s reasons to deny inmates with term-to-life sentences unreliable. They found that Condron’s order was wholly unsupported due to a lack of evidence and exceeded the scope of the Board’s arguably capricious policy.
Donald Lewis paroled after serving thirty-years for a 1977 killing. The other four inmates (Arthur Criscione, Viet Ngo, Morris Bragg and Donnell Jameison), who all have twenty plus years incarceration, will most likely continue their appeal. They will argue the Sixth District’s ruling in an effort to correct the complex and dysfunctional problems of the Board, and that they are suitable for parole under a just and timely California Supreme Court ruling on August 21, 2008. (See In re Lawrence, 44 Cal.4th 1181).
