A federal court has ruled that two California parole laws are unconstitutional.
Proposition 89, amended the state’s constitution in 1988 and gave the governor the authority to review parole board decisions on inmates convicted of murder.
The court ruled that Proposition 89 was intended “to give the Governor ‘the power to block the parole of convicted murderers.’”
According to court records, from 1991 to 2010 California governors reversed more than 70 percent of the thousands of parole grants” by the parole board.
From 1991 to 2011, all previous governors reviewed only three decisions by the parole board that denied parole. However, the governor affirmed all three denials.
In 2005, Richard M. Gilman and a group of other California life prisoners filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California to challenge the practices of past governors and the parole board review process for inmates sentenced to life with the possibility for parole.
The court found Proposition 89 to be ex post facto and violated the rights of the life prisoners who committed their crimes before November 1988.
The other parole law that the court found unconstitutional was Proposition 9, commonly known as Marsy’s Law, which was passed by California voters in 2008.
Marsy’s Law amended California law and changed the periods between parole board hearings for inmates sentenced to life with the possibility for parole.
Before Marsy’s Law, the parole board was required to give hearings to inmates sentenced to life with the possibility of parole each year. However, under certain circumstances in murder cases, hearings could be put off for two to five years.
Marsy’s Law changed the law and authorized the parole board to deny parole to inmates sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for up to 15 years, with 10, seven, five, or three years as alternatives.
The determinate for which period to apply under Marsy’s Law says the parole board must defer for a longer period if it is not “highly probable” that the prisoner may be granted parole in lesser time.
The court ruled that Proposition 9 and 89 retroactively increased the punishment for inmates sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. “The court finds that both propositions, as implemented, have violated the ex post facto rights of the class members,” the final order read.
