San Quentin News

Written By Inmates - Advancing Social Justice

Two California Supreme Court justices against capital punishment

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Two California Supreme Court justices have joined the debate against capital punishment.

“California’s death penalty is an expensive and dysfunctional system that does not deliver justice or closure in a timely manner, if at all,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in a published opinion.

The opinion upheld the death sentence of Thomas Potts, convicted of two murders in 1998. Liu’s opinion was cosigned by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, the San Francisco Chronicle reported March 28.

Liu noted the California execution moratorium imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and said it should be a signal for a renewed examination of capital punishment.

Justice Goodwin Liu wrote that he has voted to affirm many death sentences and would “continue to do so when the law requires,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Liu wrote,” I express no view here on the morality or constitutionality of the death penalty,” then derided “the promise of justice in our death penalty system” as “a promise that California has been unable to keep.” He also said the 2016 Proposition 66 initiative aimed at speeding up executions “promised more than the system can deliver.”

Proposition 66, upheld by the courts, limited prisoner appeals and prohibition on regulatory review of one- drug lethal injections. But then the courts rejected its five-year deadline for deciding appeals in state court as being unfeasible and unconstitutional. Liu said the ballot measure’s goal could not be met unless California devotes “considerable additional resources to its judicial branch.”

The opinions were challenged by Kent Scheidegger, a death penalty advocate and legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. He said other states handle death penalty appeals faster and less expensively, California could follow their example by limiting successive appeals.

Pending in the state Legislature is a measure that would place another death penalty repeal on the November 2020 ballot. A poll by the Public Policy Institute found 62 % of adults surveyed said they would prefer a life-without-parole sentence instead of death for first-degree murder.

Former Chief Justice Ronald George said in his 2013 memoir that the death penalty system “places the ad- ministration of justice… in a very bad light” because of its costs, delays and overall ineffectiveness.

After the governor of Washington declared a moratorium on executions, the state’s Supreme Court struck down Washington’s death penalty law on the grounds it was used in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory manner.

California’s next governor faces executions

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Electric chair

California’s next governor could be forced to make a life-or-death decision that the state’s top executive hasn’t faced in over a decade; whether to spare an inmate facing execution.

There are nearly 750 people on death row at San Quentin State Prison, more than any other state, and decisions made by the next governor will help set the pace of executions going forward. Five of the top six top candidates oppose the death penalty. But few say they’d use the office’s commutation power to broadly move inmates from death row to life in prison.

“Unless Jerry Brown steps in or one of these candidates for governor steps in, I think there’s going to be executions in California,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of  UC Berkeley Law School. “It seems like it’s a matter of time.”

California hasn’t executed an inmate since  Clarence Ray Allen on Jan. 17, 2006. And more than half of the inmates on California death row have waited more than 20 years since their convictions, according to state data. In 2016, Golden State voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative  to speed up the death penalty, Proposition 66, and several legal barriers to execution have fallen since then.

It’s too soon to say for sure when – or whether – executions will restart. Prop 66 was upheld by the state Supreme Court last year, and the state correction department put forward a new single–drug execution procedure in January. In March, a state judge in Marin County lifted one of several injunctions against carrying out executions.

More than a third of millennial say that if a man compliments a woman’s looks it is harassment, according to a recent survey by The Economist/YouGov reports The New York Times 1-17-18.

Still, other legal barriers remain, including a long standing federal court case in San Francisco questioning the legality of lethal injections. The judge handling the case, Richard Seeborg, has issued stays on the execution of roughly 20 California death row inmates who have exhausted the appeals. Any decision to lift those stays could be further appealed, although  U.S. Supreme Court precedent makes it difficult to challenge lethal injection procedures.

Commutations

A California governor hasn’t commuted the sentence of a death row inmate since Ronald Reagan spared convicted murderer Calvin Thomas in 1967. But several anti-death penalty  governors around the country, including Martin O’Malley in Maryland and Pat Quinn in Illinois, have issued blanket commutations removing inmates from death row in recent years.

With 343 homicides in 2017, Baltimore “had the highest murder rate in its history, and by far the highest among the nation’s 30 largest cities,” according to The New York Times 1-17-18

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner in the race, said he wasn’t planning to follow in their footsteps. Instead, he wants to put the issue of the death penalty “back on the ballot” even though California’s have rejected a repeal measure twice in the last six years.

Newsom thinks he could change that by running a stronger anti-capital punishment campaign.

“We need to have a more sustainable conversation with the public, and I would like to lead that,” he said. “We haven’t had a governor, with respect, that’s led this conversation. There’s been a  lot of  timidity on the death penalty.”

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, said he would be willing to commute the death sentences of individual inmates “where the record shows that that would be appropriate.” However, “the next governor’s going to have to enforce the law, and the death penalty’s the law of the land,” Villaraigosa stressed.

Pro-death penalty 

State Treasurer John Chiang, a Democrat, and San Diego County businessman, John Cox, a Republican, have both cited their Catholic faith for their opposition to capital punishment. But both said they would respect the pro-death penalty decision in the last ballot initiative.

“I am personally opposed to the death penalty and voted for Proposition 62, but as governor, I would enforce the will of the voters,” Chiang said.

Intimate partner violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime. One in three women and one in four men in the United States has experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. Husbands are five times more likely to kill wives than vice versa. A third of female homicide victims are killed by an intimate male partner or ex-partner, according to FBI reports. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ndv0312.pdf

Former state schools chief  Delaine Eastin, who has trailed in the polls, sounded the most willing to make use of commutation. If elected, she said she would want to use the governor’s clemency power to commute the death sentence of inmates “who’ve shown some sense of remorse or some sense of contribution to society.”

“I actually think some of them would be better served if they had to live with the consequences of what they did, rather than spending a fortune to put them to death,” she said.

The only candidate who personally supports the death penalty is Assemblyman Travis Allen, an Orange County Republican who vowed in an interview to “clean out this death row in  California.”

“Why should California allow these people the luxury of life when they have taken it so cruelly from so many others?” he asked.

“Every single day that these people are alive is another insult to the families of their victims.”

Many hurdles

Unlike most states, the executive clemency power is limited in California – the state constitution says governors can’t commute the sentence of an inmate who has two felony convictions  unless four of the seven State Supreme Court justice concur. About half of California death inmates have two or more felonies on the record, experts estimate.

But  the high court justices issued an order in March suggesting that they would give governors more latitude on the issue and only intervene if they believed a use a clemency would “represent an abuse of that power.” That’s a switch from past courts, which have rejected clemency grants based on justices’ determinations about the merits of individual cases.

2017’s low executions only 23

Prison reform could free 30,000 inmates says CSJ


https://sanquentinnews.com/us-supreme-court-hear-death-row-case-hidalgo-v-arizona-challenges-new-arizona-death-penalty-law/

CA Supreme Court juvenile sentence cruel and unusual punishment

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Sentencing a juvenile to 50-to-life for rape and kidnapping may be cruel and unusual punishment, according to a recent California Supreme Court decision.

Defendants Leonel Contreras and William Rodriguez were convicted in a joint trial of kidnapping and sexual crimes they committed as 16-year-olds. Rodriguez was sentenced to a term of 50 years to life, and Contreras was sentenced to a term of 58 years to life.

They were sentenced under California’s One Strike law for the rapes and therefore were not eligible for parole consideration under California’s Youth Offender Parole (YOP) process. The YOP process allows juveniles convicted of homicide or non-sex offenses a chance at parole after serving no more than 25 years.

The Supreme Court in its 4-3 ruling, found that Contreras and Rodriguez’s long sentences were unconstitutional because they were prevented the chance to earn their release from prison based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. The California court cited the U.S. Supreme Court in their reasoning. Graham v. Florida (2010) 560 U.S. 48.

In Graham, the high court held that juvenile non-homicide offenders must be given “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”

“Tennessee is 17.1 percent Black, but Blacks make up 69 percent of all drug-free school zone offenders…” REASON Magazine, January 2018

The California Supreme Court interpreted Graham’s reasoning to extend beyond the notion that the defendants must just receive a parole hearing sometime during their incarceration before their expected lifetime.

“An opportunity to obtain release does not seem ‘meaningful’ or ‘realistic’ within the meaning of Graham if the chance of living long enough to meet that opportunity is roughly the same as a coin toss,” the California courts ruled in People v. Contreras. (Feb. 26, 2018, No. S224566) — Cal.5th —-, [2018 Cal. LEXIS 1008]

The court noted that Rodriguez would be eligible for parole when he turns 66 and Contreras when he turns 74. While a 2010 Centers for Disease Control report states that life expectancy for a 16-year-old boy living in the United State is 76.9 years, the Supreme Court found a lawful sentence must offer “hope of restoration” which goes beyond release from prison. It must also include a chance for redemption and reintegration back into society.

“Even assuming defendant’s parole eligibility dates are within their expected life spans, the chance for release would come near the end of their lives; even if released, they will have spent the vast majority of their adulthood in prison,” the Contreras court said. “Confinement with no possibility of release until age 66 or age 74 seems unlikely to allow for the reintegration that Graham contemplates.”

The court left open whether (1) the newly enacted legislation of the Elderly Parole Program (Assembly Bill No. 1448), which offers defendants an opportunity for parole at age 60 or older, after serving at least 25 years, or (2) Proposition 57, which gives incarcerated people a chance to earn increased credits for completing programs and good behavior, would satisfy the Eighth Amendment concerns set forth in Graham. (People V. Contreras, — Cal.5th —-, [2018 Cal. LEXIS at p 59].) 

The court remanded the case back to the sentencing court with instructions to consider any mitigating circumstances of the defendants’ crimes and lives and the impact of any new legislation and regulations on appropriate sentencing. It further directed the sentencing court to impose a time by which defendants may seek parole, consistent with its opinion. (People V. Contreras, — Cal.5th —-, [2018 Cal. LEXIS at p 60].)

New technology aids police oversight


https://sanquentinnews.com/a-higher-risk-of-death/

USSC rules bail hearings undocumented immigrants

Lawyer says: ‘Get prepared for freedom’

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The path to freedom is narrow for the men and women incarcerated in California’s prisons, Stanford law professor Mike Romano told an audience of about 150 inmates, on Jan. 19, in San Quentin’s Catholic Chapel.

“I know it’s very difficult for Mike to come here and tell you these things,” said Kevin “Bilal” Chatman, who accompanied Romano with two of his staffers. “I had six life sentences and 150 years. I thought I’d never get out. I stayed in trouble. But then Prop. 36 passed in 2012, and I wanted to go home bad, so I changed my behavior to show that I wasn’t the same person as before.”

“Some 70 million Americans have a criminal record – a number equal to Americans with a college degree,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. NEW YORK TIMES July 27, 2018 “Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance”

Romano said passing Prop. 36 was “historic.” He said that he believes it was “a first in the nation”—a voter-approved law, releasing people from prison.

The new law allowed Chatman’s release in 2013. He attained employment as an operations manager at a logistics company. He also works at Levi Stadium, where in 2014 he was employee of the year.

“There are jobs out there,” he told the audience as he spoke about ending the practice of employers asking job applicants if they’d been in prison.

“We are working on ban-the-box,” Chatman said. “We are returning citizens. We don’t call ourselves ex-cons.”

Romano took Chatman to the state capitol to meet with lawmakers and show them what a rehabilitated returned citizen looks like.

The legislators, intrigued by Chatman, listened carefully to his story.

Romano said that he was upset at the state leadership because they were the very people who created prison overcrowding.

“They were the same people who sent him to prison,” Romano said. “They acted like they met someone who survived a plane crash. They created the plane crash.”

Romano and his staff worked successfully with other prison reform groups to roll back mandatory sentencing guidelines. The team of prison reformers is seeking to expand time reduction credits for prisoners. They are also asking the California Supreme Court to force prison officials to consider early parole for nonviolent three-strikers.

“Even if the court accepts the case, it could be two years before they decide on it,” Romano said. “That gives you guys two years—stay out of trouble. Get programs. The best case is that a lot of you guys would go before the parole board.”

Many of the questions the inmates asked Romano concentrated on how the parole board operates. Romano responded to most of the questions by saying that Gov. Jerry Brown wants to let more people out of prison, but wants inmates to take more programs.

“I didn’t know how blessed I was to have all these programs at San Quentin,” Chatman said. “If you’re not getting into programs and getting in touch with yourself, you’re making a mistake.”

Romano added, “Keep getting prepared so when you come before a court, the board, or the governor, you are showing that you’re ready.”

 

Corcoran Resilience Program

Parole Board Given Flawed Psych Reports

Supreme Court grants new trial based attorney’s assertion of client’s guilt


http://sanquentinnews.com/us-supreme-court-hear-death-row-case-hidalgo-v-arizona-challenges-new-arizona-death-penalty-law/

Tough choice of taking a plea deal to be with his family

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Guy Miles and family

Guy Miles and family

After 19 years of claiming his innocence, Guy Miles finally got his 75-years-to life robbery conviction overturned. Miles accepted a plea deal instead of going back to trial, so he can be immediately released and be with his ailing parents.

“It was an impossible decision to make,” said attorney Alissa Bjerkhoel, the litigation coordinator for the California Innocence Project, who fought to bring Miles home. “He’s been fighting for his innocence for almost 20 years. You have to weigh that against how much time you have left with family. At the end of the day, family won out.”

The California State Appellate Court overturned Miles’ conviction on Jan. 23. However, he remained incarcerated, although new evidence supports his actual innocence.

Three men confessed to being the ones who actually committed the robbery, and there were significant problems with the eyewitness identifications made through suggestive photographic lineups and improper prosecutorial tactics, wrote Appellate Court Justice J. Moore in a separate opinion.

“The majority opinion does not find Miles to be ‘factually innocent.’ But there is a strong likelihood that an innocent man has spent almost 19 years in custody for a crime he did not commit,” Moore concluded.

“…an innocent man has spent almost 19 years in custody for a crime he did not commit”

Miles thought he was going home when the attorney general declined to seek review of the appellate decision and only asked the California Supreme Court to de-publish the Appellate Court’s decision. De-publishing keeps the decision out of law books and from being used as a legally binding precedent.

The California Supreme Court gave themselves until May 19 to decide whether to de-publish the case or review it on their own motion.

“He can’t get out of prison until the whole appellate process is complete,” Bjerkhoel said.

“The ironic thing is, when you win in Superior Court, you go home right away,” Bjerkhoel said. “When you win in Appellate court, more can happen. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

Even when the appeal process was completed on May 10, a mishap kept Miles in prison. The California Supreme Court granted the request to keep the case out of law books and decided not to review the decision. However, their court order for Miles’ release from state custody arrived at the wrong prison. It was reissued, but didn’t arrive at San Quentin until May 22, keeping Miles in prison weeks past the appeal process.

“I feel disrespected,” Miles said. “This process needs to be revisited.”

Miles stayed in prison until June 6, awaiting transportation back to Orange County jail for a June 9 court date.

“Out of 25 cases the Southern California Innocence Project has gotten reversed, I think the prosecution has apologized in one case. It’s pretty clear Guy didn’t do it,” Bjerkhoel said.

On the June 9 court date, his bail was set at $1,000,000. Miles couldn’t make the bail.

The prosecution took the stance that they would retry Miles.

“It feels like I have to prove it all over again, starting trial all over again,” Miles said. “It’s not a good feeling. I’m sleepless. Anxiety level is so high sometimes I can’t eat, think. I’ve been through a lot of dangerous things on the streets, but nothing compares to the feeling of going to trial for something that I didn’t do.”

The prosecution offered Miles a deal that allowed him to get out of jail without pleading guilty. Miles suspected that his parents had health issues that they were hiding from the family. He took the deal and came home on June 20, in time for his birthday party on July 9.

“64% of California’s jail population is awaiting trial or sentencing as of December 2016.” Most remain in pretrial custody because they cannot afford bail.  Jail Profile Survey, http://www.bscc.ca.gov/

“He took a deal under People versus West,” Bjerkhoel said. “It allows you to benefit from a plea deal without admitting guilt.”

Miles said, “They (the prosecution) were ready to take me back to trial. I had to get back to my mother and father.”

Now out, Miles enjoys babysitting his grandkids and spending time with his family, but he still worries that his newfound freedom is all a dream.

“Man, being home is a dream come true,” Miles said. “Locked up you have so many dreams of being free and wake and find out you’re still in prison. That what I think is gonna happen now — I’ll wake up and find myself back in prison.”

10 complete the ninth annual 1000 Mile Club marathon

Supreme Court grants new trial based attorney’s assertion of client’s guilt

Death penalty ballot fails to impose strict inmate appellate deadlines

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Viewing room in San Quentin's death chamber

Viewing room in San Quentin’s death chamber

A key provision in last year’s death penalty ballot initiative to speed up executions failed to impose strict deadlines on how much time is allowed to resolve an appeal filed by an inmate’s attorney, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Proposition 66, sponsored by prosecutors and passed by 51 percent of the voters, was intended to remove various hurdles that have prevented the state from executing an inmate in more than 10 years at San Quentin State Prison,” the Times reported.

In an August ruling, the California Supreme Court preserved most of the Prop 66 language intact, prompting one of its sponsors to predict that executions will resume in the coming months.

Five of the seven Supreme Court jurists agreed the initiative’s language that death penalty appeals must be decided within five years was meant as a “directive,” not mandatory, the Times reported.

Justice Carol A. Corrigan, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, said that the deadline is merely “an exhortation to the parties and the courts to handle cases as expeditiously as is consistent with the fair and principled administration of justice.”

According to the article, in order to complete the review of the backlog of cases, the court would have to spend 90 percent of its time on death penalty cases for at least the next five years to meet the five-year deadline, legal analysts said.

Those who complained about the court’s decision said without imposing deadlines, appeals can take decades to resolve.

There are currently 18 inmates on Death Row who have exhausted their appeals, and according to Michael Rushford, president of a pro-death penalty group, they don’t have much time left. “I think months is a reasonable estimate” of when the next execution will occur, he said.

Pleased with the court’s ruling, Kent Scheidegger, another proponent of the initiative, said if the court decides appeals more quickly, “we should see a very substantial speedup”.

“Nobody is going to be executed tomorrow,” said Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn, who represented the challengers to the initiative. However, this ruling does make executions more possible in the short term.

She is very optimistic that federal courts have the authority to delay the resumption of executions in the future, said Von der Ahe Rayburn.

“I just can’t imagine the federal case gets resolved that quickly, especially if it can go up on appeal,” she said.

Despite her optimism, Rayburn said that the decision surprised and disappointed her. She was heartened by language in the ruling “that they won’t make much effort to honor the deadlines.”

Justice Corrigan said “it remains to be seen” how effective Proposition 66 will be in expediting death penalty appeals. Much will depend on whether the Legislature provides more funds for the courts.

California law gives each person convicted of the death penalty an automatic appeal and a separate habeas corpus challenge in the Supreme Court.

According to the article, an inmate’s appeal is based on the written record of what happened at trial and could involve, for example, a challenge of a judge’s ruling on whether to admit or exclude evidence.

The court also considers the inmate’s habeas corpus challenge. Those arguments are based on events that were not reflected in the trial transcripts, such as newly discovered evidence or juror misconduct.

This entire review process can take a decade or longer for the California Supreme Court to rule on an automatic appeal.

The Times article concluded, “The state has 748 inmates on Death Row – the largest number in the country – and legal challenges over lethal injection have prevented executions since 2006.”

CDCR officials seek new execution drug


https://sanquentinnews.com/french-journalist-films-journey-san-quentin-death-row-inmate/
https://sanquentinnews.com/californias-next-governor-may-face-pending-executions/

Study explores lifers going before the parole board

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California is releasing more lifers on parole, according to a Stanford University report.

Between 2008 and 2015, the parole grant rate increased from 8 to 25 percent for those who appeared before the Parole Board in 2015.

“Parole has been viewed increasingly as a means of managing the state prison population,” according to the April 2016 Federal Sentencing Reporter (Stanford Report).   

This has not always been the case. Between 1980 and 2008, the grant rate for lifers was virtually zero. Not only were there few grants, California’s reliance on indeterminate life sentences differs significantly from other states. 

While California has approximately 35,000 lifers, Texas is in second place with fewer than 9,000. More than 30 percent of California’s prison population is serving indeterminate life sentences, followed by Utah (29.2 percent) and Nevada (21.5 percent).

The Stanford Report authors acknowledge that “the number is enormous, representing not only a significant percentage of California prisoners, but a substantial portion of the nation’s lifers.”

The developing trend toward parole grants and release decisions is due to the courts, legislation and Gov. Jerry Brown. 

CA Supreme Court

The California Supreme Court issued two rulings in 2008 (In re Lawrence and In re Shaputis) that said an inmate could not be denied parole based solely on the outrageousness of the crime committed. Rather, the assessment must be based on the “current dangerousness” of the inmate.

These rulings were counter-balanced with the passage of Proposition 9, Marsy’s Law, in November 2008. Prior to 2008, the default denial length was one year. Marsy’s Law changed parole denials’ default length to 15 years, which could only be reduced where there was “clear and convincing evidence that safety considerations did not require longer incarceration.”

Even after the passage of Marsy’s Law, the parole grant rate continued to increase. The 2011 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Plata ruling that California’s overcrowded prisons violate the Eighth Amendment has forced the state to take numerous actions to reduce prison population.

With lifers as a significant portion of California’s inmate population, Governor Brown led a restart of the parole process. Brown appointed Jennifer Shaffer as the executive officer of the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) in 2011.

Shaffer has overseen both administrative changes and new professional development training resulting in an increase in grant rates to over 25 percent in 2015. These suitability findings are overturned rarely under Brown. Since 2011, Brown has reversed fewer than 20 percent of the rising number of BPH grants.

The Stanford Report brings Money Ball-style statistical reasoning to understanding the BPH decision-making process. The next article in this series will present a crude statistical model for predicting outcomes.

The model is based on knowledge — meaning anything that increases your ability to predict an outcome. It will help you make better predictions than trusting your cell-mate. In the Stanford Report, the statistical model has over 150 different factors and it determines how much weight to give each particular factor.

A copy of the above-mentioned Stanford Report is available through the Prison University Project (PUP) to all PUP students.

Higher age, fewer write-ups boost parole chances

Prison reform could free 30,000 inmates says CSJ


http://sanquentinnews.com/tasty-graduation-for-the-first-class-of-sq-chefs/
Boatwright

How lifers get better parole board deal

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Justicia rota

Justicia rota

For decades, lifers were rarely found suitable for parole. Now more than 20 percent are being paroled.

Why? Thanks to changes at the legal, executive, as well as an initiative petition and administrative levels.

Many more prisoners will now have access to parole because of the passage of Proposition 57 in November 2016. It will likely allow thousands more inmates to go before the parole board.

That’s great news for the men in San Quentin who yearn to go home. Now they just need to understand how to take advantage of the changes.

In this first of three articles, which are based on a ground-breaking Stanford University study published in the April 2016 Federal Sentencing Reporter (Stanford Report), we’ll see how the system works.

Today about 35,000 individuals are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole in California’s prison system. These “indeterminate” life sentences used to be called “life means life” by the incarcerated because few were ever found suitable. The reasons for their “unsuitability” were unclear to the denied. That is because the Board of Parole Hearings’ (BPH) decision-making process and suitability determinations “are largely invisible to the public eye,” according to the Stanford Report.

Fewer than 50 state employees handle the caseload equal to one-third of U.S. inmates serving indeterminate terms.  There are 12 governor-appointed commissioners and 30-plus civil service deputy commissioners. One commissioner and one deputy commissioner preside over each lifer parole hearing.

Before each hearing, the prison prepares a board packet for the BPH hearing participants. This packet includes key documents from the inmate’s central file (C-File), a summary of the applicant’s crime, criminal record, psychological evaluations, post-conviction progress report, and any prior parole decisions.

A lifer inmate’s initial suitability hearing takes place one year before the minimum eligible release date.

Sacramento, California
State’s Capitol

There were virtually no parole grants resulting in release prior to two 2008 California Supreme Court rulings. Between 1979 and 2007, less than three percent of all BPH hearings resulted in an inmate being found suitable for parole. The vast majority of these were then reversed by the sitting California governor, according to the Stanford Report.

There were few parole grants even though a BPH hearing begins with a legal presumption that an inmate is suitable for release unless “consideration of the public safety requires a lengthier period of incarceration” (California Penal Code 401(b)).

The process has the board consider 15 factors listed in the California Code of Regulations (CCR), Tit. 15, 2402(a).  Six factors relate to unsuitability for release. They are exceptionally callous life crime, violent history, psychological problems, institutional misbehavior, previous record of violence or sadistic sexual offenses, and the presence or absence of exit plans. The remaining nine demonstrate suitability. They include evidence of remorse, absence of a juvenile record, and stable social history.

The grant rate for lifer inmates has risen dramatically from eight percent in 2008 to 30 percent in 2015.   The increase occurred because the BPH granted more “suitable for parole” rulings.  While the governor revoked a fifth of these, there were still close to 25 percent of those who had a parole hearing in 2015 and earned their freedom.

In future articles, we will consider trends in parole and suitability decisions, and variables that have a statistically significant impact on odds of release.

A copy of the above-mentioned Stanford Report is available through Prison University Project.

Higher age, fewer write-ups boost parole chances


http://sanquentinnews.com/game-theory/
http://sanquentinnews.com/tasty-graduation-for-the-first-class-of-sq-chefs/
Boatwright

Overcrowding in County Jails Changes Bail Practices

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Prison yard 1800s


Overcrowding in county jails has California reviewing its bail practices.
California’s bail practices have clogged the jails and become a tool that preemptively punishes the poor. Many individuals who pose no threat to society are jailed while awaiting trial.
Realignment shifted many state prisoners to county jails.

“64% of California’s jail population is awaiting trial or sentencing as of December 2016.” Most remain in pretrial custody because they cannot afford bail.  Jail Profile Survey, http://www.bscc.ca.gov/

Like a flood moving downstream, this prison to county jail overcrowding has become an urgent issue according to the editorial board of The Sacramento Bee.
Does bail “…really serve its purpose of keeping people safe? Because if you’re wealthy and you commit a heinous crime, you can make bail,” said the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Tani Cantil-Sakauye to the editorial board.
The next phase of criminal justice reform may be the courts. California’s court system promises a fair and speedy trail but only seems to offer a choice between jail or accepting a plea deal for the poor awaiting trial. The median bail for California is $50,000 – about five times that of most other states.
What was once a tool to compel the accused to appear in court has become a trap ensnaring only the poor. “We have to take a look at whether we are contributing to the problem,” Cantil-Sakauye said.
Sixty-two percent of the people in county jails are awaiting trial, estimates The Public Policy Institute of California. This stunning statistic had gone unnoticed until jail capacity became stretched by the influx of prisoners resulting from realignment. Further, realignment has lifted the one-year cap on jail terms so that beleaguered county jails now have some inmates serving sentences of five or more years.
Inspired by Arizona’s and Kentucky’s reform of their pretrial court systems so that bail is rarely used, California is participating in a multistate taskforce to identify alternatives to bail or jail. Sponsored by the Conference of Chief Justices, this taskforce seeks to develop best practices for supervised release programs as an alternative to bail. The recommended reforms may be implemented in numerous states, including California.
While a powerful California bail bond industry challenges the dismantling of the bail system, the federal government may require California to implement alternatives to bail such as those being considered by the taskforce. The U.S. Department of Justice warned in March that “any bail practices that result in incarceration based on poverty violate the 14th Amendment” in response to numerous suits challenging bail practices.
The editorial board of The Sacramento Bee contends that in the current environment of criminal justice reform, the indignity of being poor should not include a bleak choice between pre-trial jail, accepting a one-sided plea deal or being buried under bail debt.
http://sanquentinnews.com/criminal-justice-advocates-seeking-bail-system-reform/
https://sanquentinnews.com/chan-zuckerberg-initiative-czi-aids-programs/

Prison reform could free 30,000 inmates says CSJ


Boatwright

California Strikes Unconstitutional

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California’s Supreme Court ruled a portion of the Three Strikes Law unconstitutional. It ruled that there are limits on awarding multiple strikes arising out of a single criminal act.
The facts of the case are as follows:
Darlene Vargas and Oscar Velasquez committed a home invasion robbery against Lynn Burrows and William Alves. Later that night, Vargas and Velasquez were caught prowling near another home in the same neighborhood. A witness later identified Velasquez and Vargas as the man and woman who were walking near the victims’ home. They were in possession of burglary tools and items taken from the Burrows/Alves home.
Vargas was charged and convicted of burglary, grand theft and conspiracy to commit grand theft.
At sentencing, the court ruled that a 1999 carjacking and robbery counted as two strikes against her, even though they happened during a single criminal act.
The court on July 10 ruled that when the Three Strikes Law passed in 1994, voters understood that a person would have three chances before the harshest penalty could be imposed and that no one can receive two strikes on one act.
The court clarified multiple strikes out of a single prior conviction. In the 1998 case People v. Benson, the court ruled that a person who commits additional violence in the course of a serious felony, e.g., shooting or pistol-whipping a victim during a robbery or assaulting a victim during a burglary, should be given multiple strikes as opposed to an individual who committed the same initial felony but did not commit additional violence.
“But where, as here, an offender committed but a single act, we disagree she poses a greater risk to society merely because the Legislature has chosen to criminalize the act in different ways. The Legislature is free to criminalize an act in multiple ways, but that it has done so does not of itself make an offender more blameworthy, or more dangerous, within the meaning of the Three Strikes law,” the court ruled.
The court found that since Vargas’ priors were multiple criminal convictions stemming from the same set of facts during the commission of a single act, they count as one strike.

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