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

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.

The bill is, in my opinion, patently unconstitutional. In California, unlike most states, the Legislature cannot amend an initiative statute without a new vote of the people unless the initiative itself says so, and the 1978 death penalty initiative did not. That initiative further provided that if an adult convicted of first degree murder with special circumstances (i.e., capital murder) is not sentenced to death, the only other sentence available is life without possibility of parole.

What part of “without” does Sen. Cortese not understand? The San Jose Mercury-News has this article:

Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat … , said Tuesday that critics are misrepresenting his legislation, which doesn’t do away with life-without-parole sentences but gives some inmates serving them a chance to seek parole ….

The Senator takes the Big Brother Doublespeak award of the day. In answer to my question above, he either doesn’t understand any of it or makes a really good show of not understanding. But wait, there’s more:

But Cortese said current law allows even notorious inmates — such as the Charles Manson killers and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assassin — a chance at parole, while others who were minor participants in a deadly crime get no chance at release.

These are both patent falsehoods. The parole eligibility of Manson (before his death) and his “family” was not the result of current law. Those crimes predated the 1978 initiative. The loophole that allowed Manson, Sirhan, et al. to be eligible for parole after their death sentences were overturned in the 1972 debacle is exactly what the 1978 law’s LWOP provision was enacted to plug. But it could not apply retroactively to pre-78 cases.

As for the minor accomplice problem, that was fixed decades ago.

If the bill becomes law, we will sue to enjoin it. Hopefully sense will prevail in the Legislature for once and it won’t come to that.