The Fair Sentencing for Youth Act, SB 9, passed out of the California State Senate Public Safety committee on Tuesday with a vote of 5 to 2.
In California, we allow kids under the age of 18 to be sentenced to prison for life without the possibility of parole—LWOP. We have, at last count, 263 such prisoners in the state.
(Thankfully, we no longer give kids a death sentence, but that is only because the Supreme Court forbade it.)
SB 9 would not guarantee anyone parole. But it would allow for a review of LWOP juveniles after they had served 15 years and, if they have made significant progress it might mean their sentences could be changed to 25-to-life.
The law has failed to pass before. (The last time it passed through the state assembly but was 2 votes shy of passage in the senate). But maybe our budget crisis has grown bad enough that the spineless lawmakers who are terrified of being labeled soft on crime will, this time around, vote their consciences instead of their political fears.
Let us hope so.
You can be sure I will keep you posted.
TALES FROM A VERMONT JOURNALISTS WHO CORRESPONDS WITH LWOP WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA
And while we’re on the subject, a story: Although not all of the California women that Vermont reporter Elayne Clift corresponds with were juveniles when they were convicted, her friend T.C. was only sixteen…
I’ve been corresponding with an incarcerated woman in California for nearly 15 years.
My friend T.C. is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence for a crime she admits to committing when she was [in her mid]teens: She accidentally killed her stepfather while he was sexually assaulting her.
She should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, in which case she’d be free by now. Instead, because of poor legal representation by a public defender, she was convicted of premeditated murder. Although a model prisoner who has earned a two-year college degree and been an educator herself within the prison where she resides, she has twice been denied parole. Her friends are working tirelessly to secure her release.
T.C. sends out a quarterly newsletter to that network of supporters. The one I just received had something in it that bears reading. The situation described is a real eye-opener. If you are moved by this story as I was, share it and ask that legislators, no matter what state they’re in, act to give kids another chance:
“My name is Elizabeth Lozano. I’ve been incarcerated for 16 years. I’m serving a life without parole (LWOP) sentence for a crime that happened when I was 16 years old. I was sentenced under a murder felony ruling, which means that I was not the one who physically committed the murder. The murder felony law does not require that a person know a murder will take place, or that another participant is armed.
“Approximately 227 youth have been sentenced to die in California’s prisons although they have not been sentenced to death because the death penalty was found to be unconstitutional for juveniles by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. Instead, we have been sentenced to prison for the rest of our lives, with no opportunity for parole and no chance for release.
“Our crimes were committed when we were teenagers, yet we will die in prison. Remarkably, many of the adult co-defendants who took part in crimes for which teens have been sentenced to life received lower sentences; one day they will be released from prison. But youth LWOP is an effective death sentence carried out by the state slowly over a long period of years. In fact, most juveniles serve life sentences without any hope of being released. We feel it’s worse than death.
“Neuroscience has found that teens continue to develop in ways particularly relevant to assessing criminal behavior and an individual’s ability to be rehabilitated. The focus on this discovery has been on teenagers’ limited comprehension of risk and consequences, and the inability to act with adult free will. Societies make decisions about what to weigh when determining culpability. California’s law as it stands now fails to take into consideration a person’s legal status as a child at the time of the crime. Those who cannot buy cigarettes or alcohol, sign a rental agreement, or vote are nevertheless considered culpable to the same degree as an adult. Experts say that even at 16 or 17, when compared with adults, juveniles on averages are more impulsive, aggressive, emotionally volatile, likely to take risk, reactive to stress, vulnerable to peer pressure, prone to focus on and overestimate short-term payoffs and underplay long term consequences. They are likely to overlook alternative courses of action….
Read the rest at the New Hampshire Sentinel-Source.
JERRY BROWN PLANS TO CLOSE SOME STATE PARKS TO CUT BUDGET, BUT WON’T SAY WHICH ONES
Arrrgghhhh. The San Jose Mercury News has the story. Here’s a clip:
In January, Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his proposed budget and announced that California would, for the first time in history, have to close state parks as a cost-saving measure.
Brown instructed the state parks department to draw up by mid-February a list of parks to be closed to save $11 million this year and $22 million next year.
But today, three months later, as millions of Californians prepare for summer vacations to state beaches, forests and historic sites, the names of the parks to be closed remain a tightly held secret.
The lack of disclosure has rangers anxious, legislators uninformed and parks advocates frustrated.
It is assumed that Brown doesn’t want to reveal the parks on the hit list because those legislators whose districts are affected will try to use the parks as a bargaining chip before they sign any budgets.
Not happy news—whenever he reveals it.
MEANWHILE ON A LOCAL LEVEL….
AN INDEPENDENT CITIZENS’ PANEL WILL BE TAPPED TO REVIEW THE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WASTED BY STUPIDITY AND BUMBLING OUT OF THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE REBUILDING FUND
Gale Holland and Michael Finnegan of the LA Times have the story.
AND, ON TUESDAY, THE LA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS “QUIETLY DROPPED” A PROVISION FOR GREATER PUBLIC OVERSIGHT OF THEIR MILLIONS IN DISCRETIONARY FUNDS—AKA TAX DOLLARS—THEY SPEND “WITHOUT VOTE OR PUBLIC DISCUSSION.”
Alexandra Zavis of the LA Times reports.