State lawmakers have rejected a bill from a Santa Clara County senator that would have offered a chance at release to some inmates serving life without parole for murder.
Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from San Jose, authored SB 94 in 2022 in hopes of giving inmates convicted of murders committed before June 5, 1990, who have already served at least 25 years in prison the opportunity to apply for parole.
“After two years of negotiations and more than a dozen deliberate amendments, I am extremely disappointed that SB 94 did not have the opportunity to be heard and the amendments were not considered by the full Legislature,” Cortese said in a statement. “The bill, like those it could have helped, did not make it to the court.”
The bill has been opposed by victims’ rights groups, law enforcement and Republican lawmakers.
“We hear too often about the rights of criminals here in Sacramento, while the rights of victims are trampled,” Modesto Republican Rep. Juan Alanis, a former sheriff’s sergeant, said in a statement. “I am proud that we were able to help ensure that the wounds of victims and their families from crimes as horrific as murder and rape are not reopened by the release of criminals who were rightly sentenced to life in prison.”
The bill was sponsored by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which described it as “a modest reform that allows judges to take a fresh look at sentences that are at least 25 years old.”
If the bill had passed and been signed into law, convicted murderers could have asked a judge to change their sentence from 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. The bill would not apply to those convicted of first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer on duty, or certain sex offenses associated with homicide.
The bill quickly drew the ire of victims’ rights advocates, such as Vanetta Perdue, a North Carolina woman who nearly lost her life in 1982 when her estranged mother’s abusive husband broke into their home near Monterey, doused Perdue’s mother in gasoline and set it on fire, killing her and leaving their children to die with her in the flames. She spoke out against the bill at the state Capitol in Sacramento a year ago, saying that “life without parole is supposed to be just that.”
During the legislative session that ended Saturday, the bill failed to gain the necessary number of votes to pass and was placed in an “inactive file.”
Cortese was not available for comment Monday. But in his statement last week, he said he remains concerned about inconsistencies in existing law that allow some high-profile inmates to have the opportunity to seek parole, while others who participated in a minor way in a deadly crime have no chance. SB 94 follows a series of criminal justice reform measures that state Democrats have pushed in recent years.
“We must continue the conversation and reexamine the racist, inconsistent and harmful sentencing that has disproportionately impacted Californians for over two decades and will continue to wreak havoc until corrected,” Cortese said in a statement.
But Murrieta state Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican who is vice chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee, said the bill “would have been disastrous for public safety and victims’ rights,” and that many of Cortese’s fellow Democrats who hold the supermajority in the legislature agreed. “We know that when voters come together and demand to be heard, even the supermajority has to take that seriously and listen to the will of the people.”
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