Category: Probation and Parole

California Legislature Considering Early Parole for Murderers and Rapists

by · May 23, 2025 10:08 am

The California Legislature is considering moving up parole hearings and releases for murderers and rapists. The proponents of this change may be having some difficulty rounding up the votes, and they have employed a legislative trick to buy more time. People with sense need to use this time to tell their representatives to vote down this atrocity instead.

In California, sentences of X-to-life (as opposed to a set term of years) are generally reserved for the very worst criminals. Murderers make up the lion’s share of inmates with these “indeterminate sentences.” Most second-degree murders draw a sentence of 15-to-life, and first-degree murder without special circumstances draws 25-to-life. Some repeated or exceptionally heinous sex crimes also draw similar sentences. The Three Strikes Law — which was substantially narrowed in an initiative in 2012 — also provides an indeterminate sentence for the third conviction of felonies from lists designated “serious” or “violent,” but these lists are considerably narrower than their names imply. Assault with a deadly weapon is not on the “violent” list, for example.

Before 2016, all of the minimums above were real minimums. Credits for good behavior or program participation could shorten fixed-year sentences, but they did not move up the minimum eligible parole dates (MEPD) for the X-to-life sentences, with a few minor exceptions. Proposition 57 passed in that year. The state prison department, called the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), subsequently claimed that Prop. 57 authorized it to move up MEPDs via credits, untroubled by the fact that the initiative does not contain a single word about MEPDs.

CJLF and three crime victims filed suit over this and other issues with CDCR’s credit regulations. The Sacramento Superior Court agreed with us regarding MEPDs and issued a writ of mandate to cease early parole hearings and early releases. CDCR appealed, and the writ was stayed pending appeal as to the early hearings but remains in effect as to early releases. Oral argument in CJLF v. CDCR, No. C100274, was heard in the Third District Court of Appeal last Tuesday, May 20.

Assembly Member Ash Kalra is wringing his hands over the murderers and rapists being deprived of their early releases. If he cares anything at all about the victims and their families, he hasn’t shown it. So he took an unrelated bill about prison visitation, amended out all its text, and substituted language that would authorize CDCR to move up MEPDs this way. Continue reading . . .

Early release program for aging inmates helps clear out California prisons, but at what cost?

by · Oct 28, 2024 4:39 pm

Joe Nelson has this Oct. 21 article in the San Bernardino Sun, now mirrored without the paywall at the East Bay Times.

Thirty years ago, before he was sentenced for repeatedly raping his 14-year-old niece in Moreno Valley, Cody Klemp told a probation officer that if he was ever released from custody he would kill the girl for reporting him.

It seemed like he would never get that opportunity when a judge sentenced him to 170 years in prison.

Now, however, Klemp awaits a parole hearing Thursday, Oct. 24, that could free him under a program designed to reduce California’s prison population and slash medical costs by releasing aging, often infirm inmates. The Elderly Parole Program offers parole hearings for those at least 50 years old who have served 20 continuous years of incarceration — even murderers and violent sex offenders.

Klemp’s status page on the California prison department site indicates he was denied parole for five years. But the Board of Parole Hearings has the authority to move that date up any time it feels like it. They are supposed to consider the victims in such decisions, but I have not yet seen any indication that they actually do.

And yes, you read that right. The California Legislature actually defined “elderly” as over 50. Continue reading . . .

U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Supervised Release Revocation Case

by · Oct 21, 2024 9:27 am

The United States Supreme Court issued an orders list this morning, taking up one criminal case. In Esteras v. United States, No. 23-7483, the high court will ponder what factors a federal district court may consider when deciding whether to revoke the supervised release of a federal convict. It is, once again, a question of interpretation of federal criminal statutes which will have little, if any, impact on the state courts that handle most criminal cases in this country. Continue reading . . .

Notorious Rapist Paroled Under Prop. 57 as “Nonviolent Offender”

by · Sep 10, 2024 10:47 am

Dan Walters has this column at CalMatters:

Eight years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown hoodwinked California voters into making it easier for violent sex offenders to shorten their prison sentences.

A month ago, the 2016 ballot measure that Brown sponsored, Proposition 57, allowed one of the state’s most notorious serial rapists, Andrew Luster, to be granted parole after serving less than half of his 50-year prison term. Three weeks later the Legislature passed a bill to close the loophole in Prop. 57 that could allow Luster to be released.

When Brown proposed Prop. 57 to voters, he said it would benefit only those convicted of nonviolent crimes by allowing them to qualify more easily for parole.

“It’s well-balanced,” Brown said at the time. “It’s thoughtful.”

Continue reading . . .

The Consequences of Early Release

by · May 28, 2024 9:58 am

Leniency to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent far too often. CWB Chicago reports yet another example. Zebedee Thomas has been charged in Cook County with rape and other crimes committed last August. A DNA match confirms identity. Thomas previously pleaded guilty to a sexual assault on a 7-year-old committed while a juvenile. In 2022, he was sentenced to four years for unlawful imprisonment in Kentucky.

Why was a repeating violent criminal who had been sentenced to four years in prison back on the street the very next year to commit yet another horrific crime? Continue reading . . .

CA Lawsuit to Stop Early Inmate Releases Moves Forward

by · Sep 7, 2023 1:13 pm

The California Globe published CJLF’s press release on last Friday’s favorable ruling in the lawsuit to end the state’s early releases of prison inmates.

On Friday, September 1, a Sacramento judge rejected California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s attempt to throw out a lawsuit challenging the Newsom Administration’s scheme to grant early release to tens of thousands of prison inmates. The suit, brought by the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (CJLF) on behalf of crime victims and their families, argues that administrative regulations authorizing the inmate releases, adopted in 2021 by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), violate numerous state laws and ballot measures that specify when and how a prison inmate qualifies for credits to gain early release and when those credits may be used to advance a minimum eligible parole date. The Foundation is seeking a writ of mandate to halt the releases.

Continue reading . . .

Defining “Violent”

by · Aug 31, 2023 3:44 pm

One would not think that defining “violent crime” is all that difficult. Yet in both federal law and California law, there are definitions of “violent” that are excessively narrow, excluding crimes that everyone with sense would consider violent. Dan Walters has this column at CalMatters, titled “California law treats some violent crimes as nonviolent, letting offenders off the hook.” He has an extended quote from this column by Emily Hoeven at the SF Chronicle (behind a paywall).

From Walters’ column:

Hoeven noted that earlier this year, the Assembly’s (perhaps misnamed) Public Safety Committee rejected a Republican bill to classify domestic violence as a violent crime, thereby making it easier to keep offenders behind bars.

This outrageous situation results from a 2016 ballot measure, sponsored principally by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and passed by voters, that purported to give those who commit nonviolent crimes chances to earn their way out of prison.

However, it was deceptive. Proposition 57’s indirect definition of a nonviolent crime was that it did not appear on a specific Penal Code list of 23 violent crimes.

That list only referred to particularly heinous crimes and omitted many offenses that ordinary folks would consider violent, including some forms of rape and domestic violence. The result is that those who commit some unspeakable crimes, including battering one’s spouse, are given kid gloves treatment in the penal system.

How did the definition get so screwed up? The problem in California is, in substantial part, the result of lazy drafting. (The federal problem is a topic for another post.) Continue reading . . .

SB 94 – Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics – Murderers do not “Age Out”

by · Aug 30, 2023 4:35 pm

Steve Smith of Pacific Research Institute has this post on a bill that is exceptionally bad even by the California Legislature’s low standards. The bill  would make a large number of murderers sentenced to life without possibility for parole eligible for parole.  Smith notes:

SB 94 is based on the simplistic and poorly researched premise that, based on arrest statistics alone, criminals age out of crime. The bill’s author, Senator Dave Cortese, argues that “research overwhelmingly shows that people age out of violent crime….”

Both [Sen. Cortese’s] press release and the study [it cites] suffer from a glaring omission. Neither make the connection between age and the crimes for which the offender was sentenced. Continue reading . . .

Under the Radar: How Gov. Newsom Uses Clemency to Engineer Parole for Recidivist Felons and Murderers

by · Aug 29, 2023 10:58 am

Ron Matthias has this op-ed in the California Globe with the above title. The subtitle is If it were up to Newsom, the public would learn nothing more about those prisoners and their claimed rehabilitation. Here is the first paragraph:

Gov. Gavin Newsom is big on demanding transparency and accountability from others, such as school officials and social media companies. But from himself, not so much—and especially not when it comes to using his clemency powers to engineer the future release of recidivist criminals, including some who’ve been convicted of murders so heinous they’re not even eligible for parole. Continue reading . . .

Inadequate analysis yields unintended consequences

by · Aug 22, 2023 11:55 am

Syndicated columnist Thomas Elias has this column with the above title on the consequences of California’s sentence-reducing ballot propositions of the previous decade, Proposition 47 of 2014 and Proposition 57 of 2016.

Here’s a reality that needs to soak into the consciousness of California lawmakers, the governor and voters who put them in office: This state needs far better analysis and vetting of new laws if it’s to avoid negative unintended consequences.

And when we get solid analysis and reliable predictions of some consequences, we need to pay heed, not ignore reality.

These facts of life are perhaps best illustrated by the 2014 Proposition 47, which ended felony status for thefts and burglaries involving less than $950 worth of goods and reduced some other felonies, like stealing a gun, to misdemeanors.

One unintended consequence has been closure of some stores, notably Walgreen’s and Whole Foods outlets that suffered constant shoplifting and no penalties for thieves caught red-handed. That’s an inconvenience making life more complex from San Francisco to San Diego.

Continue reading . . .