Inmate Terms Are Cheap Fuel for Davis’ Ambition

The Board of Prison Terms is supposed to have nine commissioners. A month ago, it had seven. Since then, one quit and another may or may not be confirmed, so we’re down to six, and by next month, we may well be down to five.

At the rate we’re going, there won’t be a board by the end of the year. That may be a good thing--and it isn’t hard to find support for that position:

* The bipartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, in its “Analysis of the 2000-2001 Budget Bill: Board of Prison Terms,” comes very close to asking why there is a board: “An unwritten administration policy that effectively ensures that no inmate with a life sentence is released on parole has significant legal, policy and fiscal ramifications for the state criminal justice system. The Board of Prison Terms continues to receive full funding for its parole review process, despite the current release policy. . . . The no-parole policy is likely to result in further litigation between the state and inmates seeking parole.”

* The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that the prison board’s continued refusal to follow the law and continued application of “an arbitrary and irrational standard . . . will rise to the level of a substantive due process violation.”

* John Burton, president pro tem of the California Senate, said: “There is no need to have a board that is so egregious in the application of the law that the courts are compelled to move in.”

* Albert M. Leddy, a former chairman of the prison board, former judge and former Kern County district attorney, stated: “The law says a life prisoner is entitled to a parole date unless the district attorney proves the prisoner is a present danger to the public. The U.S. Supreme Court says that prisoners are entitled to a fair hearing on parole matters. So should we forget the Supreme Court and the law and spend a half a billion dollars to carry out Davis’ mandate, so Davis can look like a candidate more electable to higher office? I think not.”

* Clark Kelso, the professor at McGeorge School of Law who has just taken over as acting state insurance commissioner, called the appeals court ruling “an extremely strong message” reflecting “frustration the courts are feeling at the way Gov. [Gray] Davis is managing his responsibility in parole.”

On July 12, the California Supreme Court decided not to review the Court of Appeal’s decision. Although the Davis administration wanted the opinion removed from the law books so that it couldn’t be cited in future cases, it was rebuffed in that regard as well.

Not to gang up or anything, but maybe they’re trying to tell Davis something.

Still, lifer Robert Rosenkrantz awaits Davis’ confirmation or recision of the parole date the prison board granted him in response to pressure from the appeals court. As he has since 1996, when he was first found suitable for parole, Rosenkrantz, convicted of second-degree murder for the 1985 killing of a Calabasas high-school acquaintance who outed him as a homosexual, waits behind bars.

Davis has backed himself into a corner, a suitable place for someone who is breaking the law. If, through the attorney general, Davis is able to find justification for appealing the Rosenkrantz decision to the federal courts, two out of three possible outcomes would be against him. The court could refuse to revisit the case (he loses). The court could reverse the lower courts’ opinions (he wins). The court could confirm the lower courts’ opinion (he loses).

But the sad truth, reflected in Leddy’s letter, is that Davis really can’t lose because, like every California governor in recent memory, he has his eye on the presidency. He acts as if the national stage, the national spotlight, is meant for him. Whether he wins or loses the Rosenkrantz case, name recognition is everything, and coast-to-coast attention for his tough-on-crime stance can only help his future ambitions. The slow taking of thousands of prisoners’ lives is just cheap fuel to his ambition.