Parole boards & public safety

LAW & ORDER

On June 25, 1979, Jeffrey Maria, Marty Spears, Darren Lee and Ronald Anderson tortured and murdered Philip and Kathryn Ranzo. The murder can only be described as act of pure evil. Maria, Spears and Lee approached the Ranzo household armed with handguns, a sawed-off shotgun and knives. They pretended they were out of gas and needed the assistance of the Ranzo family. The Ranzo's phone was not working, so Philip offered to give them a tank of gas. As he led the three to his garage, Spears pulled out a gun. Maria, Spears and Lee hog-tied Phillip, beat him with a baseball bat, stabbed him repeatedly, and then sliced opened his neck. Kathryn was taken by gunpoint to the upstairs of her house, hog-tied and repeatedly raped before being stabbed to death. Philip and Kathryn were so mutilated that at their funerals gauze covered their bodies.

Maria and Spears were sentenced to life without possibility of parole. But the Rose Bird Court struck down the sentences, and they were given an opportunity for parole. Even at their parole hearings they continued to minimize their involvement. Despite demonstrating a lack of remorse, despite the evil they committed, despite attempting to escape from prison, despite the victims family objecting to their release, our state parole board decided it was time for them to be released back into society. Thankfully, Gov. Jerry Brown reversed the parole board's decisions. Again, the parole board voted to release Maria. Brown again reversed their decision.

Over the past few years, Brown has reversed several major decisions, but his authority to do so is limited to murder cases. For all other crimes the parole board is unaccountable. Now, under Proposition 57, the same parole board that wanted to release the men who murdered the Ranzo family will have absolute authority to release whomever they want.

Ironically, the same governor who in 2016 supported giving the parole board this unfettered power by way of Prop. 57 was the one who in 1976 passed the Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act (UDSA) to limit the power of this secretive and unresponsive body.

Before the UDSA, a criminal sentenced to prison did not have a set length for their sentence. The parole board, which was then aptly called the Adult Authority, was the ultimate decision-maker to determine when a prisoner would be released.

The UDSA replaced this Orwellian institution. It fixed specific sentence lengths for each crime. This may sound like common sense today, but it was a major shift supported by consensus. Law enforcement and liberal groups, like the ACLU and Prisoners Union, came to support the change after much debate both within their respective organizations and before the state legislature.

Why did both sides agree on the need for reform? On the law enforcement side, the system was looked at as being lenient. The Adult Authority's mandate was rehabilitation and therefore if a prisoner acted "good" for a few years they could be released. The mean prison term for a second-degree murder was 5.7 years. The mean for robbery was 3.7 years. The sentence was supposed to reflect the criminal, not the crime. Despite its lofty goal of rehabilitation, the system was recognized as failing miserably on that front.

Groups like the ACLU and Prisoners Union opposed the secretive and arbitrary nature of indeterminate sentencing and therefore welcomed the transparency that came with determinate sentencing. Even the courts were starting to intervene on 8th Amendment grounds -- a rare feat -- because the Adult Authority would imprison criminals for decades on offenses that today would result in grants of probation.

The UDSA shifted the primary goal from a system focused on rehabilitation to a system focused on punishment. Driving this reversal in philosophy was the high crime rates that resulted from early release of violent offenders. All branches of government realized the need for the punishment to fit the crime.

Under UDSA, rather than parole boards having absolute authority on release decisions, the California Legislature created a sentencing range for each crime. Judges elected one of three possible terms. Prisoners could earn additional credits, but there were limits on the amount they could earn, and those credits had to be earned by work and good behavior. Today "good time/work time" credits are entirely a joke. They are nearly always granted regardless of whether the inmate earned them.

Yet, despite all the good reasons to get rid of the parole-controlled release system, four decades later Brown resurrected the Adult Authority. Prop. 57 once again shifted all power back to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and parole boards. Under Prop. 57, the same parole board that decided to release the Ranzo murderers will go unchecked on "lesser" crimes like rape, conspiracy to commit murder, and gang related offenses. Future governors may not have the political courage to standup against the criminal lobby and overturn decisions like those made in the Ranzo murders.

The Parole Board's power is now absolute under Prop. 57. Victims, prosecutors, the Legislature, and even the governor are powerless to stop them from releasing whomever they want unless that person committed a murder. Considering parole's failure to lower recidivism rates back in the 1960s and 1970s, and their current recidivism rate of 60 percent, we should not expect any future success.

Victims of course get nothing from CDCR or the parole board. They get no right to appeal the board's decision. In other words, after four decades of progress, victims are left back where they were back in the 1970s -- no rights, no consideration, and no quarter.