COURT CLEARS PATH FOR INMATE APPEALS

State’s high court won’t review ruling on felony-murder law

The state Supreme Court decided not to review a San Diego appeals court ruling that upheld changes to the state felony-murder law, a decision that opens the door for thousands of inmates to seek lower sentences or, in some cases, freedom from prison.

The high court decided at its weekly conference Wednesday not to review a ruling issued last year by the 4th District Court of Appeal that rejected arguments from the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office that the law, known as Senate Bill 1437, was unconstitutional. Prosecutors contended the law passed by the Legislature in 2018 illegally changed two voter-approved initiatives, but the appeals court disagreed in a 2-1 decision.

The District Attorney’s Office asked the Supreme Court to review that decision, but the court declined.

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Since prosecutors decided to challenge the law, all pending requests from inmates seeking a reduced sentences had been halted. But now those cases will begin moving through the court system, though how many cases are at issue is unclear.

According to the San Diego Superior Court, there had been 279 petitions from inmates filed as of Feb. 14. But prosecutors say there are far fewer. Deputy District Attorney Mark Amador said Thursday his office had been served with 226 petitions.

The discrepancy could be attributed to many inmates mailing in their petitions, or requests for a hearing on a possible new sentence, directly to the court and not serving them on the District Attorney’s Office. Of the 226 requests, Amador said judges had dismissed 59 soon after filing, because the inmates did not qualify for consideration under the new law. That leaves a backlog of 167 cases currently pending, he said.

Hundreds more may be on the way. State prison officials had estimated that close to 1,000 inmates from San Diego were serving sentences for first-degree or second-degree murder and were not on death row or serving life-without-parole sentences. But Amador said not all those serving sentences qualify for relief under the revised felony murder law.

The bill the Legislature passed was one of the most far-reaching changes the state has made in the recalibrating of the criminal justice system that began in 2011.

For years, defendants who were accomplices to a felony crime that resulted in someone’s death, but were not the actual killer and had no intent to kill anyone, could be charged with murder and be sentenced to life in prison. So under the old law, someone who agreed to be the getaway driver in a liquor store robbery and remained in the car while a partner robbed the store, then killed the cashier, would face a first-degree murder charge.

Under SB 1437, an accomplice can only face murder charges if that person directly participated in the killing, aided and abetted it, or was a “major participant” and acted with reckless indifference. The law does not apply to killings of police officers.

Advocates said the change was needed, because for decades the doctrine had unfairly punished individuals for crimes they did not personally commit. The bill applied retroactively, meaning prisoners who were convicted under the old law could apply for resentencing and have their convictions vacated, or erased. For many who have served a decade or more in prison, that could mean immediate release from custody.

Law enforcement opposed the law, and after it went into effect, prosecutors around the state have fought its implementation. While some counties have granted release to inmates, judges in some counties — such as San Bernardino and Riverside — rejected all requests that were filed. Opposition has softened elsewhere: Los Angeles County prosecutors, who also contended the law was unconstitutional, dropped that opposition in late December, after the San Diego appellate court ruling.

In some cases the requests for resentencing date back many years, complicating the process for contesting them, Amador said, Prosecutors who tried the cases have left the office. Court records are difficult to find or they are incomplete.

If a judge determines a request is eligible for resentencing, a hearing will be held in which prosecutors have the burden of convincing the judge the sentence should not be changed. Those hearings will be held in front of the judge who issued the original sentence, but if the judge is no longer on the bench, it will be assigned to one of a panel of designated judges the Superior Court has tapped to hear older cases, said court spokeswoman Karen Dalton.

Amador said challenges to the law are still pending in other appeals courts around the state. If one of those agrees with prosecutors that the law is unconstitutional, that could create a split among courts in the state, since the appeals court in San Diego ruled in favor of the law. Such a scenario would force the Supreme Court to resolve the issue, Amador said.

But Kate Chatfield, who drafted the law and now works on legislation and policy with the criminal justice reform group, The Justice Collaborative, said the law is on firm ground.

“The California Supreme Court case law on what constitutes an amendment to a ballot initiative is clear,” she said in an email. “That these DAS and some judges do not want to see that does not make the California Supreme Court case law go away.”