Snyder: A new vision of how criminal JUSTICE might work

 Rachel Louise Snyder writes in The New York Times:

The avenues that lead women to jail tend to differ from those for men. Criminologists have long understood this. What happens with women is often a layering of trauma and abuse. They might have economic instability or mental health challenges that allow them to be exploited by violent partners. They might exchange sex for food or housing, and then get arrested for any number of infractions: prostitution, trespassing, drugs. The criminal-justice researcher Stephanie Kennedy calls these “crimes of survival.”

These avenues have contributed to shocking rates of incarceration for women: Between 1978 and 2015, the number of women in state prisons has grown by 834 percent. The overwhelming majority are primary caregivers. When a woman goes to prison, the downstream effects can be staggering: children might enter foster care, itself often a traumatic system. Aging parents might be put into subpar facilities, or have to find alternative care and housing. All too often, the cost of such upheaval results in a cycle of crime, incarceration, addiction, poverty and broken families.

Courts have long struggled with how to respond. The question is: Can we create a system of justice that looks wholly different from what most of us imagine when it comes to crime and punishment, while still demanding accountability from perpetrators? What if court were a place that afforded someone the opportunity for a complete reset, with entryways to jobs, housing, education? What if instead of punishing people who’ve been broken many times over, we helped to heal them?

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Rejection Board: South Carolina granted parole to 4% of applicants in 2024

“Have a seat please, and tell us what we can do for you today.” 

This is the kind of greeting parole seekers receive in South Carolina when they sit down to discuss their chance at freedom. But the warm welcome belies a cold, harsh statistic. 

In 2024, South Carolina granted parole to 4% of applicants, or 25 out of 3,000 people. Prison Policy Initiative rates South Carolina as the lowest of the 35 states that grant discretionary parole, which allows people to leave prison before their sentence is complete. It’s so low that one lawyer who works on parole cases nicknamed the parole board the “rejection board," reported the Prison Journalism Project.

Even as parole rates have plummeted across the country in recent years, South Carolina remains an extreme outlier. Nearby Southern states grant parole at much higher rates, including Georgia (28%), Alabama (20%) and Mississippi (49%).  

Shifting criteria

What does it take to win freedom via parole in South Carolina?

James T. had what he thought was a promising application. He was officially deemed “minimal risk” to reoffend and had no disciplinary record, and that wasn’t all. “I had five character witnesses, a home plan, job plan, no write-ups and I still got turned down,” he said.

Most prisoners I spoke to said they received a standard form letter that stipulated the primary reason for denial as “the nature and severity of the crime.”

“Tell me just how I’m supposed to change the nature of my crime?” asked James T., who was convicted of aggravated assault. “They can use that so-called reason ’til doomsday. No matter what programs I take or how perfect my conduct is, it won’t change what I did.” 

In fact, 27 of the 35 state parole boards use “nature or severity of crime” as a primary reason to deny parole, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that researches the U.S. prison system. It is only superseded by one’s “criminal history”  — which includes one’s history of incarceration, supervision and arrests.

No one I spoke to argues that it’s unreasonable for the parole board to ask applicants to demonstrate that they have “reformed” and will lead a productive life if paroled. The problem, they said, is the vague and subjective criteria used by the parole board to make their decision. 

“We’ve found that in practically every state, parole boards cite a denial based not just on the nature of the crime but [on the idea] that to grant parole would diminish the severity [of the crime] and promote a disrespect for law and order,” said Brian Scott, director of Our Journey, a North Carolina-based transition service for people released from prison. “It’s all just rhetoric.”

‘They answer to nobody but themselves’

South Carolina’s parole board considers at least 15 criteria when granting parole, according to a memo from the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Good conduct while in prison, participation in programs, education and treatment (such as for substance abuse and addiction) are touted as central to parole decisions. 

Billy D. checked all of those boxes.

“I plum ran out of programs to take years ago,” he said with a chuckle. “I took every class, got a college degree in business that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, and have been in recovery for over 20 years.” 

Billy D. is an accredited HVAC technician and has a commercial driver’s license and carpentry certificate, along with a record of serving as a peer support specialist to others in recovery. 

“It really don’t make any difference to the parole board of South Carolina,” said Billy D., who was convicted of possession of a controlled substance, breaking and entering, larceny and driving under the influence. “They do what they want. They answer to nobody but themselves.” 

While South Carolina does give you the standard form citing the reason for their parole denial, they do not explain the reasoning.

Each member of the state parole board is appointed by the governor for a six-year term. There are no term limits. The board has more independence than most parole boards as they control not only parole, but all pardons in the state — South Carolina is one of only a few states where the governor cannot grant pardons.

When denied parole, your lawyer can request a parole reconsideration, but it must be filed within 15 days of the denial, according to a manual from the South Carolina Board of Pardons and Paroles. Reconsideration is far from guaranteed. Your lawyer must prove to the board that they can provide additional pertinent information that the board did not have during the hearing, or that the board based their decision on “erroneous information.” I have not heard of a case in which someone has had their denial reversed. 

Some reformers have argued for replacing discretionary parole with presumptive parole. Presumptive parole means that a prisoner would automatically be granted parole if they met certain criteria, usually involving good behavior, completed programming and a certain amount of time served. These advocates have argued that greater use of presumptive parole, as has been adopted in states such as New Jersey and Vermont, would free up parole boards to devote more time to complex parole hearings.

Still, as long as public officials fear being painted as soft on crime, the prospect of parole reform remains unlikely.

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New Jersey Governor wants to reduce locking up technical parole violators

New Jersey officials would return potentially hundreds fewer parole violators to prison and cap how long they could be held under changes Gov. Phil Murphy will announce in his annual state of the state address next week, reported the New Jersey Monitor.

Murphy will urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would reduce how many people get hauled back to prison for technical parole violations, which is when someone violates the conditions of their parole rather than commits a new crime. Between 1,100 and 1,200 parolees are in state custody on any given day for technical parole violations.

“Right now, roughly 10% of our state’s entire prison population consists of people who are being held behind bars for committing a technical parole violation, like missing a scheduled meeting or forgetting to report a move to a new town,” Murphy is expected to say in his speech Tuesday afternoon at the Statehouse in Trenton. “Nobody should lose their freedom because of a technicality.”

The state Parole Board decides who is granted parole, under what conditions, and when, as well as whether to charge someone with a parole violation that will land them back in prison. Murphy included $1 million in the current state budget — which runs through June — for a consultant to examine how those decisions get made, although that work hasn’t yet started.

New Jersey law gives the parole board little discretion.

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Colorado voters to decide on increase length of sentences

Colorado voters will decide whether to force people convicted of certain so-called crimes of violence — like murder, assault and kidnapping — to serve out more of their prison sentences before they are eligible for parole, reported the Colorado Sun. 

Initiative 112, which qualified Thursday for the November ballot, would require anyone who commits those crimes after July 1, 2025, and is convicted, to serve 85% of their sentences before they are eligible for parole, up from 75%. It would also prevent them from being eligible for good-behavior or other reductions in their sentence until they have served 85% of their prison penalty. 

Other felony convictions that would be affected by the change are those for:

• Second-degree murder
• First-degree assault 
• First-degree kidnapping
• First- and second-degree sexual assault
• First-degree arson
• First-degree burglary
• Aggravated robbery

Initiative 112 would also make it so people convicted of those offenses committed after July 1, 2025, ineligible for parole if they have been twice-previously convicted of a crime of violence.

To make the ballot, supporters of the initiative had to collect signatures from roughly 125,000 Colorado voters.

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Lawmakers nationwide rolling back criminal justice reform

California, once a leader in finding ways to lock up fewer people by lowering sentences for some drug and property crimes, is now considering reversing course. And it is not alone. Lawmakers across the country have rolled back reforms meant to decrease reliance on police and prisons, even though data suggests that crime rates are broadly trending down, reported The Marshall Project.

In California, a new ballot initiative could toughen sentences for shoplifting and selling fentanyl. Earlier this year, Louisiana all but eliminated parole, expanded execution methods in capital cases and increased the time people spend behind bars. The changes came after a period of reform, during which the state shrank its prison population by a third. Kentucky also passed sweeping legislation that criminalizes sleeping in the streets, limits charitable bail organizations and prohibits probation and parole for some incarcerated people.

“This is a time of extraordinary political divisiveness. It's a time of economic confusion and upheaval. It's a time where, frankly, we're still recovering from the significant social impacts of COVID,” said Lenore Anderson, co-founder and president of Alliance for Safety and Justice, which advocates for community-based approaches to safety. “When things around us start to feel more like quicksand, voters get nervous about everything, right? And crime is among the things.”

This article was published in partnership with USA Today.

In other states, recently enacted reforms are holding up, but in moments of uncertainty like these, Anderson said politicians often reach for old playbooks and “tough-on-crime” messages. That is what she sees playing out in California, where Proposition 36, a measure on the November ballot, would roll back parts of Proposition 47, a decade-old law that downgraded some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, among other reforms.

The law played a big part in driving down mass incarceration in the state and addressing chronic overcrowding. But Anderson argues it did something else that voters want to see: It improved public safety by investing money previously spent on incarceration in drug treatment, prevention, mental health care and victim services.

One lesson those advocating reform should learn, she said, is that it’s urgent to discuss how changes can improve public safety. “We have to not only talk about safety — we need to lead with it,” Anderson said.

The news in many places has been dominated by a narrative of out-of-control crime, featuring videos of coordinated shoplifting or stories about people who repeatedly commit crimes and don’t remain behind bars.

Despite those portrayals, the data paints a much more nuanced picture, and violent crime is trending down. But researchers at Vera Action, an organization working to end mass incarceration, argue that focusing on statistics isn’t convincing for many voters.

Brian Tashman, deputy director at Vera Action, said if people who have witnessed or experienced violence feel unsafe, citing data about dropping crime rates can make them feel unheard or misunderstood. Instead of messages about “dropping crime” and increased funding for police, Vera’s polling suggests voters want to hear about new approaches to safety that don’t increase incarceration, like improved access to schools, jobs and housing.

The polling indicates voters are more open to approaches that emphasize prevention than traditional “tough-on-crime” policies like harsh sentences.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that efforts to undo criminal justice reforms in California have been led by Republicans and funded by large retailers like Target and Walmart. But some Democrats are also throwing their support behind the rollbacks, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who did not return a request for comment.

Anderson, of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, said she believes elected officials like Breed are afraid of being attacked as “soft on crime,” a strategy that has been effective in the past. In a report focusing on California, Vera Action researchers wrote that California Democrats lag behind Republicans in voter trust on crime and safety. But, they argue, the “confidence gap” can be narrowed by discussing how progressive policies improve safety and security. “It’s the silence that’s deadly,” they wrote. The study pointed to Illinois as an example of a state where reformers successfully owned the issue of safety, without returning to “tough-on-crime” tactics.

In 2021, Illinois state Sen. Robert Peters stood behind Gov. J.B. Pritzker as he signed a historic law that made Illinois the first state in the nation to completely eliminate cash bail — so that no one would be in jail awaiting trial because they didn’t have enough money. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, but he remembers bracing himself for backlash.

Peters is a student of history, and knew about the backlash that came after the civil rights movement. He’d seen more recent examples, too. In 2019, New York passed a law limiting, but not abolishing, the use of cash bail. Politicians immediately faced negative media coverage. Within weeks after the law went into effect, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was saying the law would need to be adjusted. And politicians soon expanded the number of crimes that would allow a judge to assign cash bail.

The attacks Peters feared did eventually come in Illinois. Campaign ads connected to Republican operative Dan Proft, deceptively designed to look like newspapers, attacked supporters of the reforms for ushering in the “end of days” and “murder, mayhem.”

But as the attacks flew, Illinois organizations that advocate for the rights of victims and survivors of violence voiced their support for the reforms. Groups working to end domestic and sexualized violence, like the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, had been deeply involved in shaping the law. The same bill that ended cash bail also included increased access to funding for victims of crime, more opportunities to file for protective orders and a requirement that prosecutors notify survivors about pretrial hearings.

“We’re finally going to have a system that centers survivors more and takes the time to review their cases, hear back from them, notify them about what the circumstances are of their cases, or what decisions are being made and how they can contribute,” Madeleine Behr of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation told The Chicago Sun-Times just before the elimination of cash bail went into effect in 2023.

A coalition of organizations supporting the law, which included violence prevention organizations like Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings, pointed to a study that showed, despite fears of spikes in violence, a decreased use of cash bail in Cook County had no statistical effect on crime. But they went beyond numbers, and also argued that when people are held in jail because they can’t afford bail, they risk losing their jobs, housing, health care and family connections. That kind of destabilization makes communities less safe, they argued, but eliminating cash bail would make it easier to maintain stability and security.

Politicians in the state, from Pritzker on down, stood by the law. The reforms remained in place, and despite attacks, the politicians who supported it kept their jobs. Lawmakers have since expanded the law by investing additional funds in mental health treatment, child care and transportation for defendants awaiting trial.

Peters, the Democratic state lawmaker, said the involvement of survivor organizations has been critical because it’s hard to attack a law for being “soft on crime” when victims and survivors are loudly arguing that it makes them safer.

Zoë Towns, executive director at FWD.us, a bipartisan organization advocating for reforms in criminal justice and immigration, said talking about how progressive criminal justice policies improve safety and assist survivors isn’t new. But in recent years there has been greater emphasis from politicians and activists in communicating that the country doesn’t have to choose between safety and justice. “These are two sides of the same coin. You have to be thinking about them together,” Towns said.

There are also plenty of reforms that are holding strong, Towns added. In moderate and conservative places like Lincoln, Nebraska, and Jacksonville, Florida, candidates who promoted justice reforms have weathered attacks that they were soft on crime. Missouri passed a law allowing recreational marijuana use and expungement of past offenses, which remains in place and is helping to fund drug treatment and legal services. And in Mississippi, a state dominated by conservatives, lawmakers recently extended a measure allowing increased parole eligibility, so more people can get released from prison.

Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed out that many reforms remain in place despite attempts at rollbacks. But Mangual doesn’t believe the enduring reforms are a reflection of what voters actually want, and he said he was skeptical that progressives could own the issue of safety. He thinks voters will ultimately decide against experiments limiting cash bail and decreasing the use of police and prisons. Mangual pointed to the current ballot initiative in California as one sign of that tendency.

But Anderson of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which has backed reforms in California and Illinois, said she still thinks the California reforms have a chance of being upheld. She said that, as in Illinois, the way the law addresses safety and crime victims is key. For example, Proposition 47 reallocated money from prisons to victim support groups.

“We can't just sort of say okay, we're going to reduce incarceration. Everything will be fine. That's not the end goal. The end goal is a transformed approach to public safety,” Anderson said.

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Creators: Susan Smith, Infamous Killer of Her Children, Is Where She Belongs

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
July 23, 2024

In the summer of 1994, O.J. Simpson engaged in his infamous low-speed chase with a parade of Los Angeles squad cars loaded with police officers who wanted to take him into custody for the alleged murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Three months later, on the other side of the country, Susan Smith put her children in a vehicle, strapped them into their car seats and started them on a slow roll to the bottom of John D. Long Lake.

Although Smith's case started after and ended before O.J.'s case, it certainly didn't live in the shadow of the so-called trial of the century. When Smith let her car roll into a lake in Union County, South Carolina, she kicked off a media frenzy that has served as a harbinger of things to come. A throng of media descended on Union County and didn't leave until Smith was shipped down state to prison.

Smith was 22 years old when she told investigators that a Black man had carjacked her while the two boys were still inside the car. The man let her out and sped off with her children. The man who prosecuted Smith, Tommy Pope, is now a member of the South Carolina legislature. He recently told Angenette Levy of the Law and Crime Network that Smith's first assertion that "a Black man carjacked the vehicle with her sons inside" stirred international interest in the case.

She wept on national television, pleading for the children's safe return. "Your mama loves you so much," she said during one news conference, according to Fox News.

Smith was convicted of murdering her children. She has been behind bars for nearly three decades and now has a parole hearing scheduled for Nov. 4.

Her adjustment in prison has been anything but stellar. According to ABC News, Capt. Alfred R. Rowe Jr., a supervisor at the Women's Correctional Institution, was terminated and charged with having sex with Smith while she was incarcerated. A second guard, Lt. Houston Cagle, admitted to also having sex with Smith.

More recently, Smith has been hard at work courting her admirers — according to recorded phone calls from Leath Correctional Institution reviewed by the New York Post, Smith carried on romantic and sexual conversations with at least 12 men over the past three years.

"It's time for me to get out," Smith told one of her admirers over the phone earlier this year. "I've done my time. I'm ready to go."

How will her conduct impact her chances at parole?

Some state parole decision-makers use various assessments including risk, sex offending, mental health and drug and alcohol. Risk assessment tools coupled with parole criteria are thought to provide uniformity to a board's decision-making process.

The South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services has a list of criteria it considers when an individual is eligible for parole. Although the board has absolute discretion with regard to parole, there are 16 factors that the board may consider.

Three of those factors weigh heavily against Smith's parole. First, the seriousness of the offense. It is difficult to think of a more callous act than drowning your children. Second, the inmates conduct while in prison. Sex with guards and phone sex with potential financial supporters is not a good look for someone who wants the board's mercy. Finally, a fact that will play a significant role in the board's decision is the position of the judge, prosecutor and victim's family with regard to parole. Pope, Smith's prosecutor, has already said that he believes in truth in sentencing, "life should mean life."

Parole in South Carolina is a privilege, not a right. Smith may be ready to go, but she is likely to remain behind bars for the foreseeable future.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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America’s aging prison population turns prisons into de facto nursing home

In state after state, prison systems have long been plagued by inadequate health care, resulting in the spread of treatable diseases and, in many cases, preventable deaths behind bars, reported Vox. But a key demographic trend threatens to make that problem even worse: Over the last several decades, America’s prison population has been rapidly aging, and, as in Washington’s case, prisoners’ health needs have become more significant as a result.

Here is a link to a column I wrote on prisons as de facto mental health facilities In the Criminal Justice System things are Worse than they Seem

People who were 55 years old or older made up about 3 percent of the US prison population in 1991; by 2021, they accounted for 15 percent. The total number of older prisoners is also steadily growing, with no signs of abatement: In 2020, there were about 166,000 incarcerated people aged 55 years or older; that number grew to about 178,000 in 2021 and 186,000 in 2022.

The graying of America’s incarcerated population is effectively turning the US prison system into a de facto nursing home, leaving hundreds of thousands of older people in its care each year. The result is skyrocketing costs: The Bureau of Prisons’ health care spending on federal inmates rose from $978 million in 2009 to $1.34 billion in 2016, and various state governments have seen similar increases.

Still, conditions in American prisons continue to be detrimental to people’s health and often lead to accelerated aging. Prisoners, for example, are much more likely to exhibit signs of cognitive decline, including dementia, at an earlier age than the general population, and one study found that a 59-year-old in prison has the same morbidity rate — that is, how often people get a disease — as a nonincarcerated 75-year-old.

“We have facilities that aren’t considered humane,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice. “They’re not places for elderly people who have dementia and diabetes and maybe walkers or wheelchairs.”

All of this raises both a moral and practical policy question that lawmakers have to face: Why are we forcing older people to spend their dying years in prison when they can get better care elsewhere?

People aren’t just aging behind bars; police are locking up the elderly

One of the explanations for the aging prison population is simple: Since the 1970s and the age of mass incarceration — when the American prison population ballooned and gave the United States the distinction of imprisoning more people than any other country in the world — people have been aging behind bars.

The other explanation, however, is less obvious: Older people have been getting arrested at higher rates than they used to. In 1991, for example, people who were 55 years of age or older made up only 2 percent of adults who were arrested; by 2021, they made up 8 percent, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that does criminal justice research and advocacy. The Marshall Project also found a similar pattern: Between 2000 and 2020, there was nearly a 30 percent increase in the number of arrests of people over 65, despite the overall number of arrests dropping by nearly 40 percent.

So why are arrests among older people suddenly on the rise? The resurging trend across many American cities and states to further criminalize poverty and impose harsher punishments for petty crimes, including things like shoplifting, is partly to blame because the groups of people who become common targets for police are getting older.

“People who are unhoused and people suffering from mental health disorders and substance use disorders are also aging,” said Mike Wessler, the communications director at the Prison Policy Initiative. “If you look across the country right now, we’re obviously seeing efforts to ramp up policing of people who are unhoused, people with untreated mental health disorders, people with substance use disorder. So it’s almost a certainty that in the coming years we are probably going to see this problem get worse.”

People experiencing cognitive decline, including those suffering from dementia, can also be especially vulnerable during interactions with police. Henry Hart, a 76-year-old with dementia in Maryland, for example, was arrested when he had what his daughter described as a mental breakdown. During the incident, Hart had grown agitated and hit her, and when she called for paramedics to take him to the hospital, police showed up at the scene instead. Officers ultimately arrested him for assault despite his family members’ pleas. After spending time in jail, Hart’s condition seemed to get notably worse, according to his daughter.

“As Maryland’s population ages, experts fear that police will encounter people with dementia more often and without recognizing the condition or knowing how to respond to it,” Baltimore Sun reporters Angela Roberts and Cassidy Jensen wrote. “Arrest or jail time can be especially harmful to people with dementia, given their mental and physical vulnerability, experts say.”

There’s also evidence that beefing up law enforcement has had a negative impact on older people. While younger people have become less likely to be arrested for drug-related crimes than in the past, arrests of older people for drug-related offenses have spiked. Between 2000 and 2018, for example, drug-related arrests of people over the age of 50 rose by 92 percent — the fastest increase out of any age group. And while substance use disorder among older people is on the rise, addressing the problem through stricter law enforcement is not a practical solution.

“It’s a heck of a lot easier to order the National Guard to go stand on subway platforms than it is to figure out how to expand mental health treatment in the state; than to figure out how to address substance use disorders in the state; than to figure out how to address the housing crisis in the state,” Wessler said.

The consequences of an aging prison population

Studies have shown that incarcerated people have signs of aging at a faster rate than others as a result of prison conditions, and that each year in prison can shave years off of someone’s life.

“Health care behind bars is bad even in the best scenarios,” Wessler said. “And that’s kind of by design in a lot of respects: Prisons are not places that are therapeutic or designed to heal; they are places that are designed to punish.”

Infectious diseases tend to disproportionately affect prisoners compared to the general population, and the Covid pandemic in particular showed why prisons are especially dangerous for older people. Deaths of inmates rose by nearly 50 percent in the first year of the pandemic, and while mortality rates increased for prisoners across all ages, older people saw the highest surge in mortality. By contrast, among the general population, it was younger people who saw the highest increase in death rates.

From a public policy standpoint, the aging prison population is a failure on multiple fronts. Most importantly, prisons cause people to age more quickly and die prematurely. After all, while so-called “natural” deaths — that is, death from disease or old age — make up the vast majority of deaths behind bars, they often receive little scrutiny despite the fact that many of them have been found to be the result of medical neglect.

But it’s also costing states a lot of money — money that is clearly not well spent. In Texas, for example, the state’s prison health care costs increased by more than $250 million between 2012 and 2019, although the prison population actually decreased by 3 percent during that time. The state’s prison population aged 55 or older, on the other hand, had increased by 65 percent during that same period, according to data reviewed by the Texas Tribune.

Some lawmakers have noted this is unsustainable. As former state Sen. John Whitmire told the Tribune, “Nobody’s tougher on crime than me, but once you’ve incarcerated a guy past the point that he’s a threat to anybody, I’d like to save that $500,000 to put him in a nursing home as a condition of parole, take that money, and spend it on either other public safety efforts or prison costs.”

The system as it is, in other words, isn’t benefiting anyone. It’s both deadlier and more financially costly.

And from a moral standpoint, it’s hard for a society to defend these outcomes. “Do we morally think that it is good to have people spend their dying years behind bars, especially for drug crimes from the ’80s and ’90s?” Wessler said. “That strikes me as morally wrong in addition to being bad public policy.”

Tougher penalties turn into de facto death sentences

In many ways, America’s aging prisons are the expected end result of the tough-on-crime approaches and surge in arrests of the 1980s and 1990s.

A study by researchers at the the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Pennsylvania, and the RAND Corporation, found that young people who were locked up in the 1990s spent more time behind bars than any other generation, in large part because of tougher and longer sentences, higher recidivism rates, and escalating punishments for people who are rearrested. And that generation is now aging behind bars, unlikely to ever come out of prison.

“These extreme sentence lengths paired with narrow release mechanisms — meaning fewer ways to actually leave the system — led to this huge crisis of older adults in American prisons,” Eisen, from the Brennan Center, said. “Because what you had is more people coming in, people staying for longer, and then fewer avenues for release because of mandatory minimums, because of three strikes [laws], because of life without parole.”

While many older people in prison today are being sent there for petty crimes, it’s also true that many others, particularly those serving longer sentences, have been convicted of serious crimes. But regardless of what a person is guilty of, the fate of a death behind bars — which can be the result of inadequate medical care and botched treatments — could itself be seen as a cruel punishment, especially when people no longer pose a threat to society.

Take, for example, the case of Walter Jordan, another elderly Arizona prisoner whose story is eerily similar to Richard Washington’s. Jordan, a 67-year-old man who was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping, was serving a life sentence. In a memo he wrote to a federal judge in 2017, he alleged that the state’s Department of Corrections and its private health care contractor had delayed his treatment for skin cancer. The memo was, in his words, a “notice of impending death.”

Jordan wrote that he was in pain and suffering from memory loss. He alleged that other prisoners were also being denied care, and he wrote that as a result of his delayed treatment, he would be “lucky to be alive for 30 days.”

Jordan was right: Just over a week later, he was dead. A physician who reviewed his case found that Jordan could have survived had he received adequate care. The situation was “horrific,” the physician wrote. “He suffered excruciating needless pain from cancer that was not appropriately managed in the months prior to his death.”

There are more humane approaches. States and the federal government can start, for example, by expanding eligibility for compassionate release, which truncates sentences but tends to be reserved for people with terminal illnesses. Parole — which can sometimes have unintended consequences including strict rules that often result in parolees being sent back to prison — can also be especially beneficial to elderly prisoners who can get better health care outside of prison. And yet, tough-on-crime laws like those recently passed in Louisiana are making it harder for prisoners to be eligible for parole.

Governors can also make use of their pardon powers and commute sentences for older prisoners who have shown signs of rehabilitation. And instead of readopting a tough-on-crime approach that will likely result in more arrests of older people, states and the federal government can support social safety net programs that would lift older people out of poverty and homelessness, reducing their odds of being arrested in the first place.

America’s jail and prison population peaked in 2008, when more than 2.3 million people were behind bars. And while it has mostly declined since then — especially during Covid, when many prisoners were released as the virus ravaged prisons — it has recently been ticking back up.

“We have far too many people in our prisons,” Eisen said. One of the fastest ways to address that problem is to release older people, who generally don’t pose a public safety risk. “This is a population that shouldn’t be behind bars.”

But until lawmakers acknowledge that the current prison system is failing some of the most vulnerable people in its care, cases like Washington’s or Jordan’s will become all the more common. And more and more people who are now serving time in an American prison will slowly come to learn that their punishment has morphed into a death sentence.

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Massachusetts Supreme Court 'emerging adults' entitled to parole

 The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently ruled that 18-year-old sentenced to life without parole is entitled to seek parole, reported the ABA Journal.

The U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders in Miller v. Alabama in 2012, holding that such sentences violate the Eighth Amendment when a youth’s individual characteristics are not allowed to be taken into account.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court went further in 2013, holding that any sentence of life without parole for juveniles under age 18 was unconstitutional.

Sheldon Mattis was 18 years old at the time of the fatal shooting and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Extending its 2013 decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held on Jan. 11 that “emerging adults” ages 18, 19 and 20 are entitled to the possibility of parole under the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. That case is Commonwealth v. Mattis.

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New York Parole Board denies 60 percent of eligible prisoners with little explanation

Over 10,000 people appear before New York’s parole board each year. Hearings are often rushed, lasting an average of 15 minutes. Commissioners are afforded wide discretion in how they decide cases, with little oversight or review. They decide to keep around 60 percent of parole seekers in prison.

New York Focus and Bolts reviewed dozens of parole board decisions and appeals. The decisions run as short as a single paragraph, providing parole seekers little guidance on how to win their release. Many repeat variations of the same vague phrases when denying release, many lifted directly from the state’s parole statute. Applicants are often informed that their release “is not compatible with the welfare of society,” for example, without explaining how the board arrived at that conclusion.

“They’re not giving people any clarity about what they can do to obtain parole the next time,” said Michelle Lewin, executive director of the Parole Preparation Project. “They’re not giving individualized reasons for denials, despite the fact that their own internal regulations demand that they do so.”

The parole board’s lack of transparency creates difficulties for applicants of all stripes. But it especially burdens parole seekers serving lengthy sentences for violent crimes. Despite decades of incarceration, these individuals face the very real possibility of dying in prison, even if they have demonstrated sincere growth and rehabilitation.

“I think it’s time that we gave people a chance to be productive citizens,” said Assemblymember David Weprin, a Democrat who has introduced legislation to increase the parole board’s transparency, “especially in the case when they’ve shown that … they’re not the same individuals that they were when they committed the crime 20 years ago, 30 years ago.”

Advocates for reform have sought to strengthen board oversight from every angle: legislation like Weprin’s, direct pressure on Governor Kathy Hochul, and cases before the Court of Appeals.

Last month, Appellate Advocates, a non-profit organization of public defenders, argued before the state’s highest court that the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision should release the training documents it provides to board members. The documents include hypothetical decisions and sample language — all materials that parole advocates say could help incarcerated individuals understand how the board makes decisions and how to make the strongest case for release.

doccs has resisted, and argued in court that it should be allowed to shield the documents, in a dispute that has dragged on for over five years.

Jose Saldaña, the director of the Release Aging People in Prison campaign, described a similar experience with the board. He spent decades incarcerated in New York, in his case for the attempted murder of a New York City police sergeant when he was 27 years old. Though he had earned his associate degree and led several restorative justice and victim awareness programs, the parole board denied his release four times.

“We discussed these vague reasons … ‘Releasing you at the time would so deprecate the nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law,’” Saldaña said. “What does that really mean?”

“Nobody knows what that means,” Steven Zeidman, director of the City University of New York School of Law’s Criminal Defense Clinic, told Bolts and New York Focus. Not even parole commissioners. Zeidman said commissioners apply the same language differently from one another, even when evaluating the same individual. “What’s the message to people inside preparing? How do you prepare?”

NEW YORK LAW requires board members to consider many enumerated factors in their decisions, but the commissioners frequently emphasize the nature of the parole seeker’s offense over their rehabilitation and growth while incarcerated. Their cases are often dismissed with terse lines like, “Your positive programming to date is noted.”

Reform-minded lawmakers have long supported Weprin’s bill, the Fair and Timely Parole Act, which would reduce the board’s opacity and limit some of the commissioners’ discretion. The legislation would eliminate the vague statutory language cited in board decisions and require commissioners to explain in “detailed, individualized, and non-conclusory terms” exactly why they decided to deny release. It would also require the board to issue a quarterly report that includes the reasons for each denial, which commissioners were assigned to each case, and how they voted.

The bill would establish a presumption that the board would grant parole once an applicant has served their minimum sentence. To deny release, parole commissioners would have to clearly articulate how a parole seeker threatens public safety.

Weprin first introduced the bill in 2017. Since then, three separate iterations have died in committee, where the 2023 version now sits. Dixon attributes the icy reception in Albany to upstate conservative legislators, whose constituents disproportionately benefit from employment opportunities in the prison system. “Upstate districts have a vested interest to keep this no-sense institution going,” he said.

Senator Patrick Gallivan, the chamber’s Republican minority whip, is a former parole commissioner who opposes the Fair and Timely Parole Act. His district encompasses Erie County’s Collins Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison employing hundreds of people. But he said his opposition to the bill has nothing to do with protecting upstate jobs.

Gallivan said the bill would limit the board’s ability to consider negative aspects of the parole seekers’ applications, such as their institutional records. He agrees with reformers that the Board of Parole has too much discretion — but he sees them stretching the rules to grant release, rather than keeping people in prison. Gallivan said that when he was a parole commissioner, he tried to set his biases as a former sheriff and state trooper aside and vote according to the law. He said he wants everyone on the board to do the same. Some commissioners say at their confirmation hearings that they will abide by the law, he said, but “the minute that they got sworn in, they said, ‘I don’t care what the law is. I’m here to release people and I’m going to.’”

Reform advocates have repeatedly called on Hochul to reform the parole system. As New York Focus and Bolts have previously reported, the board features zombie commissioners serving long past their terms have expired and a medical parole system that leaves most terminally ill people to die behind bars. The vacancies on the board have long afforded Hochul the opportunity to staff it with reformers. But Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, said she does not expect Hochul to expend any of her political capital on the issue. Under Republican pressure, she noted, Hochul has supported other rollbacks to criminal justice reforms in recent years.

Hochul has pointed to fluctuations in crime and rearrest rates when backing down from other reforms. But Bertram claims that lenient parole policies don’t undermine public safety. She points to a federal study showing that people who commit violent offenses are the least likely to be rearrested after release. “The safest person you can release from prison is a murderer, especially someone that served 10 to 20 years,” said Bertram. “That’s just what the data shows.”

Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

FRUSTRATED BY New York’s legislative and executive branches, parole reformers have turned to the judiciary. The state’s courts have limited power to modify parole board decisions, but advocates hope they will at least compel the board to be more transparent.

At a November 15 Court of Appeals hearing, Appellate Advocates argued that the state’s Freedom of Information Law mandates the release of the board’s training documents.

doccs revealed the existence of the training materials in 2020 when they told Appellate Advocates they were withholding certain documents in response to a records request. Michael Higgins, assistant director of the University at Buffalo Law School Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic, says that administrative agencies routinely prepare interpretations of the law that govern what they do, but they often keep the interpretations secret. “Basically, they make up rules that are written down in their training documents or in manuals that the public can’t access,” he said. He says foil requires the release of those documents upon request.

At the hearing, doccs argued that foil does not extend to the training materials because a parole board lawyer prepared them, shielding them from disclosure under attorney-client privilege. (doccs declined to comment due to ongoing litigation.) Appellate Advocates countered that attorney-client privilege covers legal advice on real world scenarios, not abstract training documents.

While the Court of Appeals has shown signs of a leftward shift on some criminal-legal issues, it’s unclear whether the newly reconfigured court will flex its power on behalf of parole seekers. During oral argument, Associate Judge Shirley Troutman, a Hochul appointee, expressed concerns that ruling for Appellate Advocates would foist an “unreasonable burden upon trial courts” handling future disputes over attorney-client privilege. Even Chief Judge Rowan Wilson, the court’s liberal leader, said Appellate Advocates’ arguments had “frightening” implications for attorneys. The court scarcely touched on how its decision would impact incarcerated individuals.

For advocates like Dixon, obtaining the release of these documents would only be a first step. Achieving a truly transparent parole system would require wholesale changes, from data disclosure to board appointment procedures.

“The matrix itself needs to be dismantled,” Dixon said. “The system has to change because it is criminal what is happening.”

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By 2030 people over 55 will make up one-third of all prison inmates

Between 1993 and 2013, the number of people 55 or older in state prisons increased by 400 percent, reported The New York Times. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that by 2030, people over 55 will constitute a third of the country’s prison population.

Research shows that most people age out of criminal conduct. Moreover, the Department of Justice asserts that the risk of elderly people reoffending after release is minimal. Yet decades of tough-on-crime sentencing and increasingly rigid release policies have left many to grow old in a system that was not designed to accommodate them. The cost is high, for both the residents and the public at large.

Older residents who are released should be provided with support. And they should be given the opportunity to use their experiences to drive change in their communities. Advocacy groups have already demonstrated the power of restorative justice programs led by the formerly incarcerated, both inside and outside prisons, allowing for healing and growth for all parties affected by violence — victims, offenders and families.

Reforms have ignited hope among residents who expected to die in prison. In California, the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 provides a process for nonviolent offenders to be considered for parole if their release poses no unreasonable risk to the community. Also in California, the Elderly Parole Program lays out a path for some residents who are over 50 and who have served at least 20 years. The state has also established compassionate release programs for terminally ill or medically incapacitated residents.

Efforts to reduce the aging prison population are driven not solely by compassion but also by the tremendous cost of incarcerating older people. Residents do not qualify for Medicaid, leaving the state responsible for all care expenses. Older residents are more likely to suffer from chronic illnesses like diabetes, dementia and cancer and to struggle with depression and anxiety.

Yet the rules and policies around parole decisions are often obstacles to releasing elderly residents, especially if they committed violent offenses in their youth. These secretive and subjective policies should be changed to focus on risk assessment and rehabilitation rather than the initial crime. 

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Those formerly incarcerated face significant employment obstacles

The U.S. unemployment rate is hovering near lows unseen since the 1960s. A few months ago, there were roughly two job openings for every unemployed person in the country. Many standard economic models suggest that almost everyone who wants a job has a job.

Yet the broad group of Americans with records of imprisonment or arrests — a population disproportionately male and Black — have remarkably high jobless rates, reported The New York Times. Over 60 percent of those leaving prison are unemployed a year later, seeking work but not finding it.

That harsh reality has endured even as the social upheaval after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 gave a boost to a “second-chance hiring” movement in corporate America aimed at hiring candidates with criminal records. And the gap exists even as unemployment for minority groups overall is near record lows.

Many states have “ban the box” laws barring initial job applications from asking if candidates have a criminal history. But a prison record can block progress after interviews or background checks — especially for convictions more serious than nonviolent drug offenses, which have undergone a more sympathetic public reappraisal in recent years.

For economic policymakers, a persistent demand for labor paired with a persistent lack of work for many former prisoners presents an awkward conundrum: A wide swath of citizens have re-entered society — after a quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate over 40 years — but the nation’s economic engine is not sure what to with them.

“These are people that are trying to compete in the legal labor market,” said Shawn D. Bushway, an economist and criminologist at the RAND Corporation, who estimates that 64 percent of unemployed men have been arrested and that 46 percent have been convicted. “You can’t say, ‘Well, these people are just lazy’ or ‘These people really don’t really want to work.’”

In a research paper, Mr. Bushway and his co-authors found that when former prisoners do land a job, “they earn significantly less than their counterparts without criminal history records, making the middle class ever less reachable for unemployed men” in this cohort.

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Ohio killer who spent four decades on death row may be paroled

An Ohio prison inmate who has spent nearly four decades on death row in the murder of a convenience store clerk has been resentenced to a term that could allow his release on parole, reported Fox News.

Lucas County Judge Stacy Cook vacated Gregory Esparza's death sentence and imposed a new term of 30 years to life with credit for time served, The (Toledo) Blade reported. Two months ago, Cook had declared capital punishment unconstitutional in the case because prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence in his original trial.

"God is good for everyone," Esparza said to relatives Friday as he was escorted from the courtroom back to the county jail.

Esparza, now 60, was convicted in 1984 of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery with gun specifications in the February 1983 death of Melanie Gerschutz. The 38-year-old wife and mother was working the cash register at Island Variety in East Toledo when she was shot during a robbery of $110 from the register.

Esparza’s initial appeals were denied but a public records request in 1991 turned up a large number of police reports, interviews, and other documents never given to his defense attorneys. A federal appeals court in 1995 overturned the death sentence citing a "defective indictment," but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision. A 2016 appeal was denied on the grounds that federal courts had assessed the 1991 evidence, but a state appellate court later said no court had yet addressed the 1991 evidence in the context of capital punishment.

Cook wrote that although prosecutors may have been unaware of the 1991 evidence, the defense should have had it. More importantly, she said, some of the evidence indicated that Esparza didn't act alone and therefore "may not have been the principal offender," so the death penalty could not be imposed.

In Friday's hearing, Esparza said he had been just 21 and a "confused, lost soul" at the time of the crime but the rigors of life on death row for so long had helped him mature.

"God knows I am not a killer," he said. "Even when offered life without parole if I gave up my appeals, I chose execution."

Marsha Raymond, Gerschutz's daughter, a teenager at the time of her mother's slaying, told the court that the defendant "committed murder in cold blood."

"I am so grateful that I had such an amazing mom, but unfortunately because of his actions my family fell apart," she said. "My dad couldn’t speak about my mom, and he (Esparza) talks about a young child being abused? My younger brother was six years old. He has no memories of my mother."

Julia Esparza, Esparza’s sister, said the family was happy to see this day come.

"It has been very emotional," she told the newspaper. "We appreciate the justice system."

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More than half of the U.S. prison population is serving 10 years or longer

Amy Fettig and Steven Zeidman write in Time Magazine: 

There’s no question: Our legal system loves long prison sentences. From 2000 to 2019, the number of people serving sentences of 10 years or longer exploded from 587,000 to 773,000, according to a new report from The Sentencing Project. Those 773,000 people account for more than half of the U.S. prison population.

Extreme sentences have become so commonplace in the U.S. that 10 years can seem like a relatively minor punishment, perhaps woefully inadequate for serious offenses. But 10 years is an enormously long period of time – one in which people can experience profound growth, especially in their younger years.

That’s why we believe incarcerated people should have the opportunity to have their sentence re-evaluated after 10 years. In fact, the American Bar Association just passed a resolution recommending precisely that.

Make no mistake. This does not mean opening the prison doors for everyone after a decade. It just means giving incarcerated people the chance to show how they’ve changed and why they deserve a second look. An external body (a judge, for example) would then determine whether to reduce the sentence.

From a scientific perspective, this model makes a lot of sense. Everyone may know that young people are more likely to commit crimes than older people. But it’s important to know why. It’s largely because the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, problem-solving, and impulse control – does not fully develop until the mid-20s. So young people often exhibit immaturity, irresponsibility, recklessness, and susceptibility to negative influences and outside pressure – which the Supreme Court has recognized in cases involving extreme sentencing of youth. In 2010 in Graham v. Florida, for example, the Court wrote that because young people “have lessened culpability they are less deserving of the most serious forms of punishment.”

Think about it this way: Many people in their 30s would never dream of repeating the choices they made a decade earlier.

An overwhelming amount of research confirms that people age out of crime. It’s also clear that people released after decades of imprisonment rarely commit new crimes upon release, even those who had been convicted of the most serious crimes.

Revisiting sentences is not just about showing mercy; the entire community stands to benefit from the abundance of talent wasted behind bars. Many incarcerated people take classes, learn new skills, and earn degrees while in prison. Returning citizens often serve as credible messengers to guide at-risk youth, work as violence interrupters, and help promote public safety. They’re hard-working, tax-paying community members.

They also heal communities. Many incarcerated people have been separated from their children and aging parents for years or decades. Second looks can return fathers and mothers to support their sons and daughters, and sons and daughters to act as caregivers to aging parents.

Consider just one example of an incarcerated person who we know is truly deserving of a second chance. RC was 17 years old when an older man assaulted his friend during a dice game in New York. RC reacted by getting a gun and firing a shot that killed the man. At sentencing, the judge referred to RC as an irredeemable menace and in sentencing him to 25 years to life stated that RC should never again walk free. Ten years later, RC became a prison hospice worker, mobility aide, and sign language interpreter, revered by prisoners and staff alike. He languishes in prison with no mechanism for anyone to see the man he has become, one of many people we have met who would be an upstanding citizen outside prison bars.

Fortunately, momentum is growing to make that possible. In 2019, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Karen Bass introduced the Second Look Act to permit people who have served 10 years in federal prison to petition a court for resentencing. In the meantime, federal court judges are utilizing the First Step Act of 2018 – which made changes to compassionate release that enabled an unprecedented number of people serving long sentences to be re-sentenced during the pandemic. Washington, DC, allows those who committed crimes as emerging adults—under age 25—to petition for resentencing after 15 years of imprisonment. And states such as Oregon, Illinois, and California allow individuals serving lengthy sentences to demonstrate that they’ve earned an opportunity for another review.

We’ve changed an enormous amount as a society over the past decade. And yet, our legal system assumes that people can’t do the same. That needs to change. Let’s build on the momentum and ensure all incarcerated people get a second look after 10 years.

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President Reagan's would-be assassin John Hinckley released unconditionally

US District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman granted John Hinckley, the man who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, freedom from all his remaining restrictions, reported Jurist.

This unconditional release occurs 41 years after Hinckley’s assassination attempt on President Reagan. In September Judge Friedman stated his intent to release Hinckley from his remaining release restrictions on June 15 as long as Hinckley behaved well. At hearing hearing Judge Friedman confirmed “Hinckley has continued to do well,” and therefore granted his unconditional release which will take effect later this month.

After Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial but has since received mental health treatment. Hinckley was sent to a Washington D.C. mental hospital for treatment but since 2016 has resided in Virginia.

Prosecutor Kacie Weston stated during Hinckley’s court hearing that this case “has demonstrated the success that can come from a wraparound mental health system.” Additionally, she wished Hinckley “success for both his sake as well as the safety of the community.”

After the hearing, Hinckley’s lawyer Barry Levine said Hinkley worked hard “to correct something that he was unable to erase, and this is the best outcome that one could imagine.”

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New NY governor takes on Rikers Island and parole violations

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the release of nearly 200 detainees from New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, underscoring the growing alarm about violence and unbridled disorder at the notorious facility, reported the New York Times.

Ms. Hochul’s move came amid increasing calls for federal or state intervention at the city-run jail, which officials and detainees say has plunged into chaos — Ms. Hochul described it as a “pressure cooker” — and is rife with health and safety risks for inmates and employees alike. Ten detainees have died there since December, including several from suicide.

But the plan will not significantly reduce overcrowding, and it may do little to address two continuing crises at Rikers, one rooted in an acute staff shortage at the complex, the other in an increase in coronavirus cases there in recent weeks.

In addition to the release of the 191 detainees she announced Friday, Ms. Hochul also said she would transfer 200 others to state prisons in the coming days. Even with those moves, Rikers will be far more crowded than it was in spring 2020, when a wave of releases during the pandemic lowered the population below 4,000. On Friday, more than 6,000 people, the vast majority of them awaiting trial, were being held there.

Hochul that seeks to reduce jail populations by ending the practice of incarcerating people who commit certain technical parole violations.

But the law does not tackle what a court-appointed federal monitor has described as the widespread absenteeism among correction officers that has contributed to a deterioration of security and health conditions at the complex. With hundreds or thousands of guards not showing up to work daily, officials and detainees alike say that basic jail functions have ground to a halt: Gangs patrol hallways, detainees are held in showers repurposed as stalls and some incarcerated people are going without water, food or medical care for days.

On Friday, some local officials suggested that the federal authorities might seek to wrest control of the crisis from the city. Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, urged the monitor to ask a federal judge to order authorities to increase staffing levels. The monitor was appointed in 2015 under a settlement between the city and the Justice Department that was meant to resolve a class-action civil rights lawsuit that detailed abuses at Rikers.

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Sirhan Sirhan, RFK's assassin, recommended for parole

More than 50 years after he carried out one of the most infamous political assassinations in American history, the man who gunned down Robert F. Kennedy was recommended for parole in California, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Sirhan Sirhan — who was 24 when he shot and killed the senator at a Los Angeles hotel in 1968 — was deemed suitable for release by a two-person parole panel, the first step toward making him a free man. The panel reached its decision, in part, after two of Kennedy’s children expressed support for Sirhan’s release.

Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant who had written a manifesto calling for Kennedy’s death, had said he was drunk and doesn’t remember opening fire at the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.

Kennedy was considered a leading candidate for president and had just won primaries in South Dakota and California at the time of his death. He was murdered nearly five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed in Dallas.

Sirhan, now 77, admitted to the killing in 1969 and has been in prison for 53 years. He originally faced the death penalty but his sentence was commuted to life after the state briefly outlawed capital punishment in the 1970s.

Don't forget Sirhan's novel "Manchurian Candidate" defense he invented about a decade ago. It didn't work, but it appears the parole board, at least initially, has fallen for see something redeeming in him.

The two-person panel Sirhan appeared before granted parole, but the decision is not final. Parole staff still have 90 days to review the matter. After that, Gov. Gavin Newsom — or whoever might replace him following next month’s recall election — could still decide to block Sirhan’s release.

Sirhan expressed deep remorse for the slaying, and said he had given up alcohol and recommitted his life to peace during the decades he has spent housed in a San Diego prison.

“Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world and I injured, and I harmed all of them and it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed, if I did in fact do that,” he said. “I’m still responsible for being there and probably causing this whole incident, through my own gun or other guns.”

Two of Kennedy’s children submitted letters on Sirhan’s behalf. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has previously expressed doubt about Sirhan’s guilt and echoed others’ claims that a second gunman actually killed the senator — said he believed his father might extend mercy to Sirhan.

“While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Mr. Sirhan because of Sirhan’s impressive record of rehabilitation,” Kennedy Jr. wrote in a letter submitted in advance of the hearing.

In an interview with The Times, Kennedy Jr. said he was “very happy” Sirhan had been recommended for release and reiterated concerns that the wrong man was convicted.

Kennedy, who was a teen at the time of the murder, pointed to an autopsy report indicating the senator had been shot from behind when Sirhan had been standing in front of Kennedy. Some have argued that this would have made it impossible for Kennedy to have been shot in the back by Sirhan, while others have said that Kennedy turned after the first shot.

“I’m happy that the justice system showed some humanity,” said Kennedy Jr., who has sometimes garnered criticism for indulging in conspiracy theories surrounding both his father’s killing and the use of vaccines. “I think that my father, who was the top administrator of justice in this country as attorney general and he fought to assure the justice system was humane. … He would be very happy with this result.”

Paul Schrade, a former Kennedy aide who was one of several bystanders wounded in the shooting, also said Friday that he believed Sirhan was innocent.

“I sympathize very clearly about the way that Sirhan’s been treated,” said Schrade, 96, from his home in Los Angeles. “This was his 16th parole board hearing, when the guy is not guilty.”

Schrade said that he hopes the granting of parole will push police to reopen their investigation of Kennedy’s death.

Douglas Kennedy also said that while he’d lived in fear of Sirhan for years, he saw him now as “worthy of compassion and love.”

“I really do believe any prisoner who is found to be not a threat to themselves or the world should be released,” Douglas Kennedy wrote. “I believe that applies to everyone, every human being, including Mr. Sirhan.”

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