Original article “Bill would let some inmates appeal lifetime terms,” by Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, August 17, 2011.
Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco is pushing to get a bill passed that would give some relief to juvenile offenders who made the mistake of being at the wrong place and doing the wrong thing and who then end up in prison for life.
Above: Oya Sherrills of El Sobrante holds a photo of her brother Terrell, who was fatally shot seven years ago. The state “cannot just keep throwing away our youths,” she says.
Christian Bracamontes will grow old and die in prison because of a terrible decision he made at the age of 16 – going along with his 19-year-old friend on an armed robbery that escalated into the shooting death of the victim.
Bracamontes didn’t pull the trigger, but under California’s aiding and abetting law, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The shooter, by contrast, will have his first chance at parole in less than two decades because he struck a deal with prosecutors. Jose Luis Morales received a 29-year-to-life sentence after pleading guilty to the 1998 Riverside County homicide, which took the life of 15-year-old Thomas Williams.
“If I could go back, I would have stepped up and tried to talk to him,” Bracamontes said of Morales during a recent phone call from California State Prison in Lancaster (Los Angeles County). “I would have made sure he wouldn’t have pulled the gun out. … It would have been different. No one would have gotten hurt.”
Sen. Yee’s bill
Now 30, Bracamontes says he never thought Morales would fire the gun he’d shown him earlier that day, and had turned and begun to run away when Morales opened fire. Bracamontes, who grew up in Fontana (San Bernardino County), passed up several plea-bargain offers from prosecutors, not understanding that he could spend the rest of his life in prison for a murder he didn’t physically commit.
“When they arrested me and said it was for aiding and abetting, I was like, ‘What is that?’ I was confused,” said Bracamontes, who has been incarcerated for 13 years and works in the Lancaster prison as a building porter, cleaning the inside of the building where he’s imprisoned.
Now, human rights advocates and a state senator are pushing a bill through the Legislature that would let some offenders – juveniles sentenced to life without parole – appeal their lifetime sentences and possibly qualify for parole after serving at least 25 years in prison. Supporters of the bill, SB9, by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, say juvenile criminals should be treated differently than adults because they are not as good at making decisions and have the capacity to change.
They note research conducted by the University of San Francisco’s School of Law that determined that outside of the United States, there are no juveniles convicted of life without parole. They also point out that even in the United States – where such a law exists in 38 states and affects an estimated 2,500 people nationwide – it has begun to fall out of favor.
Regret, rehabilitation
Texas banned juvenile life without parole sentences in 2009; the next year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the sentence violates the Constitution’s cruel and unusual punishment clause if it is imposed on a minor for any crime other than murder.
The California measure, which Yee has tried to make law several times before, is not as ambitious: It would let inmates, after 15 years behind bars, petition the court to change their sentence to 25 years to life, with the possibility of parole. That means that even if the court agreed to modify a sentence, there is no guarantee the inmate would get out: The offender would have to wait until 25 years have been served, then could appeal to the state’s parole board for release. To request a reduced sentence, the offender would have to “describe his or her remorse” and prove he or she has worked toward rehabilitation.
About 295 California inmates are serving juvenile life without parole sentences, a punishment authorized by voters in 1990 as part of a wave of tougher laws that grew out of spikes in violent crime in the 1980s.
Elizabeth Calvin, an advocate in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, estimated that about 45 percent of juvenile lifers were convicted under the state’s aiding and abetting law.
“This bill is a very modest bill, and very limited. At its most elemental, this is really about young people being different from adults,” she said.
Calvin noted that minors already are barred from drinking alcohol or buying cigarettes, and that there are strict limitations on other activities, including driving a car, getting married or dropping out of school. She pointed out that the life-without-parole provision for juveniles was approved 21 years ago, before recent research showing that many parts of the brain are still developing in adolescents.
One of the most vocal opponents of Yee’s bill is defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, whose wife, Pamela Vitale, was bludgeoned to death on the couple’s Lafayette property in 2005 by a 16-year-old neighbor, Scott Dyleski, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Horowitz objects to a number of the bill’s provisions, including that the court may consider whether an inmate has “performed acts that tend to indicate rehabilitation” and has “maintained family ties or connections,” when deciding whether to reduce a sentence.
Yee “put together a bill that would let a wannabe serial killer be released. … He believes that serial killers can go on to become doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs,” Horowitz said.
Need to ‘come clean’
For murderers to have their sentences reduced, he said, they should “confess to the crime, and give all of the information about gang leaders and co-conspirators and come clean.”
“That’s how you show remorse, you come clean – you don’t take courses in music theater and call Mommy. That doesn’t make up for cutting out Pamela’s liver. They don’t balance out,” he said.
Other victims’ advocates believe it would be unfair to force families to relive a terrible crime, possibly more than once. Yee’s bill would give inmates three opportunities to petition the court for new sentences.
“You’re telling victim’s families that there are (multiple) opportunities where they will have to go in and worry about this,” said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which works for tougher criminal penalties.
“Getting out … isn’t fair – they were convicted and sentenced to life for a terrible crime,” he added.
Victim’s sister
Not all victims’ families oppose the bill, though.
El Sobrante resident Oya Sherrills lost her brother, an 18-year-old Humboldt State University student, seven years ago. Terrell Sherrills was fatally shot at a Los Angeles party over his summer break, and his killer was never arrested – though Sherrills said his family and friends believe a 16-year-old gang member pulled the trigger.
She said the state “cannot just keep throwing away our youths.”
“I definitely want my brother’s murderer to be punished. I want him to face the consequences of his action,” she said.
“But I also believe he deserves the chance to transform his very tragic, wrongful actions into right. SB9 gives them the chance to do so.”
Mary says
My Husband is going through the same situation but was sentenced to 26 L with the possibility for parole.I was pregnent when he was arrested and our son is now 17.I know everything you are going through, the only thing my husband is guilty of is driving his cousin home after he seen his cousin at the gas station after work and gave him a ride home, his cousin later confessed to being envolved in the crime and now convicted but they still didnt let my husband go but because he gave him that ride home my husband lost everything.I have lost all faith in the justice system., I pray everyday that one day I will see him come home.
Courtney says
Hi Mary, I am a journalism student at UC Berkeley and I am doing a story on SB9 It’s due next week but I am interested in talking to you and hearing your story about your husband. Please email me at [email protected]. Thank you!