California Supreme Court ruling makes it easier for prisoners to win parole

The 4 to 3 ruling, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, could affect nearly 1,000 parole cases now on appeal. Lawyers on both sides said it was the first time in recent history that the state high court ruled in favor of a prisoner in a parole case.

The decision upheld the release of Sandra Davis Lawrence, who spent nearly 24 years in prison for shooting and stabbing her lover’s wife in a jealous rage. The state parole board had approved her release four times since 1993, but three governors, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, overturned the board’s decisions.

In denying her parole, Schwarzenegger cited the “shockingly vicious” attack and Lawrence’s use of various aliases to avoid arrest for 11 years after the murder.

An appeals court said Schwarzenegger’s denial was not supported by evidence that she remained dangerous.

In Thursday’s ruling, George said there was “overwhelming” evidence of Lawrence’s rehabilitation while in prison and her suitability for parole. She earned two degrees in prison, learned trades that included plumbing and data processing, was president of the inmates’ Toastmasters Club, worked as a library porter and tennis coach, cofounded a tutoring program and remained discipline free. She apologized repeatedly for her crime.

The court said decisions on whether to grant parole to prisoners who received life sentences should be based on whether the inmate would pose a danger to the public if released. The court’s action marks a departure from a 2002 ruling, which held that the crime itself could justify denial.

In reviewing parole denials, courts should not merely consider “whether an inmate’s crime was especially callous, or shockingly vicious or lethal,” George wrote in Thursday’s decision. Courts should also examine whether the nature of the crime and other evidence support “the ultimate conclusion that an inmate continues to pose an unreasonable risk to public safety,” he said.

The majority said that other evidence, such as the inmate’s prison record or his or her mental state or demeanor, should be considered in deciding whether the felon posed a safety threat.

George said state law requires the parole board and the governor “to normally grant parole to life prisoners who have committed murder.”

Once a prisoner has completed his or her base sentence, he wrote, the circumstances of the crime “alone rarely will provide a valid basis for denying parole when there is strong evidence of rehabilitation and no other evidence of current dangerousness.”

Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn M. Werdegar and Carlos R. Moreno joined the holding.

Thursday’s ruling means that Lawrence, who now lives in Los Angeles, will not have to return to prison.

“I am a free woman!” said Lawrence, 61, who has been working sporadically cleaning houses and selling shoes since her release in July 2007. “I’m ready to start living my life. I couldn’t do that before because it was so up in the air.”

Andrea Hoch, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, said the ruling changed the legal standard for denying parole and would limit the governor’s discretion in such cases.

Justice Ming W. Chin, joined by two other court conservatives, dissented and accused the majority of distorting earlier rulings in parole cases.

“The awesome responsibility of deciding whether to release a convicted murderer on parole — an act that inherently runs the risk . . . that the inmate will again kill an innocent person — lies with the executive branch, not the judicial branch,” Chin wrote. He was joined by Justices Marvin R. Baxter and Carol A. Corrigan.

Lawrence shot Rubye Williams several times, then repeatedly stabbed her with the peeler, Chin wrote.

“She did this as a ‘birthday present’ to herself because she was disappointed that her lover would not leave the victim for her,” Chin added.

In a companion case Thursday, the court made it clear that some inmates would not meet the new test.

The court unanimously overturned a lower court’s decision to release Richard Shaputis, an El Cajon man convicted killing his wife, Erma. In that case, the court said there was some evidence that Shaputis remained a danger.

Shaputis, 71, had an even better prison record than Lawrence. But unlike Lawrence, Shaputis had “a long and sometimes violent criminal history” that included a conviction for lewd conduct after he was charged with raping his teenage daughter twice when he was drunk.

The parole board in Shaputis’ case also had first decided Shaputis should not be released because he remained dangerous. Only after an appeals court overturned that decision did the parole board “reluctantly” decide to approve parole, the court said.

Schwarzenegger rejected the board’s decision after concluding Shaputis remained dangerous. Shaputis challenged that decision and prevailed in a second ruling by an appeals court. Shaputis has remained in custody pending the Supreme Court’s action.

Unlike Lawrence, whose crime was an “isolated” event spurred by emotional distress, Shaputis’ wife’s “murder was the culmination of many years of . . . violent and brutalizing behavior toward the victim, his children, and his previous wife,” George wrote.

Chin, Baxter and Corrigan said in a concurring opinion that they saw no basis to distinguish the two parole cases and observed that Lawrence had been convicted of first-degree murder, whereas Shaputis was convicted of second degree.

UC Irvine Law Professor Carrie L. Hempel, who represented Lawrence as part of a legal clinic at USC, said the court’s decision “sends a clear message to prisoners that . . . if they work really hard to rehabilitate themselves they are going to get some justice in the justice system,” Hempel said.

But Assistant Atty. Gen. Julie L. Garland, who represented the governor in the case against Lawrence, said she was surprised and disappointed.

“Hopefully it won’t be opening the door for a lot of life inmates to get out,” she said.

When a convicted murderer is granted a release date by the Board of Parole Hearings, the governor has the ability to reverse it.

Since taking office in late 2003, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has been far more generous with parole grants than his predecessor, Gray Davis, a Democrat who allowed only nine inmates to be released in nearly four years.

Schwarzenegger has permitted 192 inmates given life sentences to be released on parole, according to his office. Those prisoners represented only about 1% of the more than 16,000 inmates, most of them murderers, who appeared before the Board of Parole Hearings during that time.

Inmates’ lawyers have long complained that the state denies parole to convicts who have proven their rehabilitation or become so old and sick that they no longer pose a threat to the public.

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Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.