Public safety advocates and victims’ families filed a lawsuit this week against California’s controversial parole board and new regulations that critics argue would make it easier for violent criminals to leave prison.
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, headed by former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, said the rules created by the board create a process for inmates who have served at least 25 years to seek a sentence recall through the courts or a gubernatorial commutation.
Thousands of inmates could become eligible under the new process, the foundation said, including those sentenced to life without parole for heinous crimes such as the murders of peace officers or children.
“Life without the possibility of parole should mean exactly that,” Schubert said at a Wednesday press conference.
Also represented in the lawsuit are family members of murder victims. Sandra Cantu was murdered at the age of 8 in 2009 by Melissa Huckaby, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Cantu “deserved a lifetime,” her aunt Angela Chavez said. “Our family has been sentenced to a lifetime without her.”
The lawsuit claims the regulations violates state procedural law and the voter-passed 2008 Marsy’s Law, which expanded legal rights of crime victims to include notification of all legal proceedings and parole decisions.
““The Board of Parole Hearings … has taken it upon itself to expand this recommendation authority into a full-blown system of reviews and hearings paralleling and resembling the system of parole hearings — the system that the people of California voted to curb in Marsy’s Law,” the lawsuit said.
The rules, which were only recently adopted July 9, go into effect October.
The state department overseeing the parole board told Courthouse News Service that it could not comment on the pending lawsuit. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, regardless, defended the regulations.
“What we can say is that these regulations do not release anyone from prison,” a spokesperson said, noting there are only recommendations and that the final decision-makers are the courts and the governor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office also opposed the lawsuit in a statement to ABC 10, claiming state law already gives the parole board the power to recommend criminals for resentencing or clemency.
“California believes protecting public safety means reducing future victimization through evidence-based policies—not political rhetoric,” the governor’s office said.
The parole board’s decisions have attracted plenty of controversy this year, particularly over the release of child predators through the state’s elderly parole program. Still, Democratic lawmakers in May signaled they would approve Newsom’s reappointment of five members of the board.
