New look at murder cases
Law allows release of accomplices who didn’t kill; some DAs object to change
Eleven years into a possible life sentence, Brian Yang won his release from prison. It had a lot to do with where he committed his crime.
Yang, 29, was convicted of murder for his role in a 2008 robbery that led to the death of a San Francisco man. A recent change to state law meant he could petition for resentencing because, although he was involved in the holdup, he was not the one who pulled the trigger.
A month after the San Francisco district attorney’s office conceded the case, sending Yang home to his family, he is still processing his freedom. “I just enjoy being able to step outside whenever I want and just breathe in air,” he said.
Some 400 miles to the southeast in San Bernardino County, the courts have blocked dozens of similar petitions from being heard. Local judges have ruled that the new law, limiting when an accomplice to a fatal crime can be charged with murder, is unconstitutional.
Bombarded by hundreds of petitions to revisit past murder cases, district attorneys across the state are seeking to overturn the accomplice liability law. It is all but inevitable that the legal challenges will end up before the California Supreme Court.
Supporters of the law say about a dozen people, mostly in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, have successfully petitioned for resentencing and been released since the change took effect Jan. 1. But in many counties, prosecutors are aggressively fighting inmates’ efforts.
“It doesn’t matter what you did — it’s where you did it,” said Kate Chatfield, a senior policy adviser for the criminal justice advocacy group the Justice Collaborative, who spearheaded the legislative push to overhaul California’s rules on accomplice liability for murder.
The Legislature narrowly passed the law last year. It was a parting shot for thenGov. Jerry Brown in his crusade to roll back decades of toughoncrime history in California.
Previously, anyone who participated in a crime that resulted in a homicide could be held criminally liable for mur
“I just enjoy being able to step outside whenever I want and just breathe in air.” Brian Yang, former inmate released after change in definition of murder
der, even if they were not present for the actual killing. Sen. Nancy Skinner, the Berkeley Democrat who carried the bill, and other advocates argued that prosecutors wielded the law disproportionately against women and minorities.
Under SB1437, an accomplice can be charged with murder only if he or she directly solicited or assisted with the homicide or “acted with reckless indifference to human life.” The new law does not apply to killings of police officers.
Prosecutors contend that the change ties their hands in cases such as gang homicides where everyone involved wanted the victim dead.
People being freed under the new law “are actually the murderers,” said Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County. “It creates a public safety risk.”
Yang said he heard about the bill last summer as it was moving through the Legislature. After all the appeals he had filed over the years to overturn his sentence, he thought it was too good to be true.
“It sounded exactly like what I was waiting for,” he said.
In May 2008, Yang gave a man he knew only as “Shay” a ride to the scene of the robbery in San Francisco’s Ocean View neighborhood that resulted in the fatal shooting of 46yearold Gregory Chapman, an offduty paratransit bus driver. Prosecutors argued that Yang knew the purpose of the ride — to steal marijuana that Chapman had agreed to sell to Shay. Yang said he had been paid to drive Shay and, once they arrived, Shay flashed a gun and forced him to board Chapman’s bus.
Before dying of his wounds in a hospital three weeks later, Chapman told police he had been assaulted by a black man and an Asian man, though he did not say who had the gun.
Yang testified at his 2010 trial that he did not see the shooting, but admitted that he took Chapman’s wallet, gave the money to Shay and drove him away. Police arrested Yang after identifying his fingerprints on a pair of Chapman’s sunglasses, while Shay was never found. Yang was sentenced to 26 years to life and was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison in far Northern California.
He filed to have his case reconsidered in January, as soon as the accomplice liability law took effect. In June, prosecutors admitted that they could not prove he was responsible for Chapman’s death. Because Yang had already served far more time than he would have for the underlying crime of robbery, he was released and given credit for parole.
“My mom just started breaking out in tears. It was surreal,” he said.
Advocates originally estimated that changing the accomplice law could free 400 to 800 people now in California prisons. But prosecutors and public defenders say that as word of the new law spreads, far more inmates have submitted petitions, many of whom were not convicted under the theory of murder that the law changed.
Hanisee, the Los Angeles County prosecutor, said several people she helped put in prison have applied for resentencing, none of them eligible under the law. The district attorney’s office is wasting taxpayer dollars, she said, to review and potentially retry cases that are years or decades old.
Across the state, prosecutors have filed to block petitions for resentencing because they believe the new law is unconstitutional. Rulings have been divided, and some counties have blanket orders to pause consideration of all petitions while the legal questions are sorted out.
A judge in Orange County first ruled against the new law in February, allowing prosecutors to proceed with a murder charge against an alleged accomplice in a murder case. The judge cited two initiatives passed by voters, Proposition 7 from 1978 and Proposition 115 from 1990, which increased the penalties for murder and expanded the death penalty to apply to accomplices in some fatal crimes. Dozens of judges have since declared the new law unconstitutional, primarily using similar logic to the Orange County ruling.
Advocates for changing the rule contend that those initiatives set punishments for certain crimes, but did not specifically define accomplice liability for murder, giving the Legislature leeway to rewrite the law.
Jacque Wilson, a public defender in San Francisco, said district attorneys and judges who have blocked the change are acting as though they are above the law.
He became an outspoken proponent of the new standard last year because his brother had been charged with murder for allegedly helping plan a robbery in which two people were killed at a marijuana grow house in Fresno County. Wilson’s brother was released from jail in October after awaiting trial for nine years.
“All you had to do was prove an intent to commit a robbery and you could put someone away for life. This makes (prosecutors’) jobs harder,” Wilson said.
Nowhere has the resistance been greater than in San Bernardino County. Kellie Byward, a county public defender, said at least 15 judges have blocked cases petitioned by her office, finding the law unconstitutional.
The rejections have stung her clients, many of whom lost hope that they would ever get out of prison until the accomplice liability law was changed. It has been even harder on families, Byward said, as they sit in court for the rulings.
“It just destroys them,” she said. “I thought we would have people home by now. And instead I’m filing notices of appeal every other day.”
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson, whose office has aggressively challenged the law, said there may be cases fit for review under the new standards that the Legislature adopted. But he said it is not his responsibility to fix lawmakers’ mistakes.
“I can’t just start changing things,” he said. “If we don’t take into account the rule of law, then I think it sets a really bad example for me locally when I ask residents to follow the law.”
Aside from a dinner of oxtail soup prepared by his mother, Yang has not celebrated much since his release from prison a month ago.
He is working for Hustle 2.0, a rehabilitative program he completed in prison that teaches business skills and personal transformation, and looking into how to continue the college English studies he began behind bars.
Yang says Chapman’s death weighs heavily on his mind. He wonders if there is a way he can help others — not to make up for what he did, which he does not think is possible, but to make his community better.
“I used to live a pretty selfish life, and it didn’t really get me anywhere and it hurt a lot of people,” Yang said. “So I kind of want to do the opposite.”