SAN FRANCISCO – A divided state Supreme Court yesterday ruled Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was wrong to deny parole to a murderer who was a model prisoner during the more than 23 years she served behind bars.
In a 4-3 decision, California’s high court said the governor must consider more than just the nature of the crime when he overturns Board of Parole Hearings’ decisions granting parole. The majority decision, written by Chief Justice Ronald George, said the governor must show “some evidence” the parolee is a danger to public safety.
The governor’s legal affairs secretary, Andrea Hoch, said the ruling “adds an inappropriate level of review, which unnecessarily limits the governor’s discretion to decide the parole of a convicted murderer based on … the best interest of public safety.”
The court’s ruling yesterday stems from the board’s decision to grant parole in 2005 to Sandra Davis Lawrence, 61, who after rejecting a plea deal for a two-year prison sentence was convicted of first-degree murder in 1983 and sentenced to a life term for killing her lover’s wife 12 years earlier.
In August 2005, the parole board for the fourth time in 12 years granted her parole because it found her to be a well-behaved prisoner who accepted responsibility for the killing, expressed remorse and showed no signs of being a danger to the public. Lawrence volunteered for many prison organizations and earned a master’s in business administration.
Still, Schwarzenegger reversed the panel’s decision as he had done previously, finding the killing to be particularly egregious. Lawrence shot and stabbed Rubye Williams to death in 1971 and then spent 11 years as a fugitive before turning herself in to police accompanied by the late Los Angeles attorney Johnnie Cochran.
Schwarzenegger said in his 2006 veto that Lawrence’s crime was “a cold, premeditated murder carried out in an especially cruel manner and committed for an incredibly petty reason.”
Governors Pete Wilson and Gray Davis made similar reversals when they were in office, likewise determining the nature of Lawrence’s crime made her a danger to society.
In a second, related case yesterday, a unanimous court upheld Schwarzenneger’s denial of parole to an El Cajon murderer it said remained a danger to public safety. Using the legal standards spelled out in Lawrence’s case, George wrote that Schwarzenegger was right to deny parole to Richard Shaputis because the prisoner failed to take responsibility for killing his wife, and there was “some evidence” he remains a danger to society. Shaputis was convicted of second-degree murder in 1987 for shooting his wife, Erma Jeanne Shaputis, 47, and was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison.
(Reprinted with permission from The Associated Press.)