Posted by
The CL Project on Tuesday, June 02, 2009 4:55:46 PM
California faces a $24.3 billion deficit and a looming cash crisis that jeopardizes its ability to pay its day-to-day bills. However after the Governor presided over a relatively unusual joint session of the Legislature to discuss the budget crisis, the budget isn't necessarily the topic de jure.
After taking time to discuss the mandatory sterilization of pets and the issue of "milk pooling" the California Legislature will discuss a democratic proposal to open the possibility of parole to inmates convicted of special circumstance murder.
Under California law, an offender as young as 16 convicted of special circumstance murder can be sentenced to life without parole. Currently more than 250 California inmates are locked up without possibility of parole for crimes they committed before the age of 18.
Senator Leeland Yee (D-San Francisco) wants to change all of that. Today the California Senate will hear Senator Yee's SB 399 a bill which would open the possibility of parole to inmates who were sentenced to life before age 18.
The penalty of life without the possibility of parole for these juvenile offenders was put into law by Prop. 115, which was approved by the voters in 1990.
Let us be very clear: The sentence, life without the possibility of parole (LWPOP), is reserved for individuals who have committed the most egregious crimes. The individuals in question are 16 or 17 year-olds who were involved in a heinous murder and were found unanimously by a jury and judge to be a major participant in the crime that acted with reckless indifference to human life and were deserving of the more serious of the available sentence options. A judge must then agree that the crime was so severe that the individual should not have the right to parole at any point.
At best, SB 399 creates defacto lifer hearings for LWOP juveniles that is costly and unnecessary.
As worst, SB 399 is another attempt to move toward the "watering-down" and eventual elimination of the voter approved penalty of life without the possibility of parole in special circumstance murder.
This is a comprehensive system that already provides ample opportunity for review and appeal. We do not need to have a judge consider new factors, completely unrelated to the crime itself, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years later for the purpose of reducing a convicted individuals sentence.