Court: Parole measure covers sex offenders
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that inmates who have been convicted of nonviolent sex crimes may be eligible for early parole consideration as part of a ballot measure that nearly two-thirds of voters approved of four years ago.
“The initiative’s language provides no indication that the voters intended to allow the (Corrections) Department to create a wholesale exclusion from parole consideration based on an inmate’s sex offense convictions when the inmate was convicted of a nonviolent felony,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-sakauye wrote in the unanimous decision.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who championed the 2014 initiative as a way to reduce prison populations and costs by speeding up chances for parole, has repeatedly said he and other proponents never intended for it to cover sex offenders.
But lower appeals courts ruled that the plain language of the initiative means they cannot be excluded from consideration as nonviolent offenders, and the high court agreed.
The ballot measure, the justices ruled, “is not ambiguous concerning its scope regarding offenders who were previously convicted of a registerable sex offense or who are currently convicted of a registerable sex offense that the Department has itself defined as nonviolent.”
Under California law, violent offenses include things like rape, sodomy and continuous sexual abuse of a child. But the definition leaves out many other offenses, like pimping, incest, indecent exposure and possession of child pornography.
The ruling could allow parole consideration for about 20,000 inmates, said Sacramento attorney Janice Bellucci, who argued the case and also is executive director of the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws.
But the court put the number much lower, based on the state corrections department’s earlier figures. While about 22,400 inmates were required to register for a sex offense based on a current or prior conviction, more than 18,000 were serving time for a violent offense. That left about 4,400 inmates.
Bellucci didn’t disagree with the lower figure but said it’s unclear how corrections officials will rewrite their regulations based on the high court’s ruling. Sometimes they have argued that all sex offenders are by definition violent, while other times they have used the narrow definition in state law, she said.