They Earned Parole. A Court Order Keeps Them From Returning Home

L

ance Gonzalez spent months planning with his wife where to go for breakfast on June 26, the day he was scheduled to be released from Ironwood State Prison after 16 years.

Gonzalez and his wife, Cristal, were deciding between iHop or Denny’s in Palm Springs, roughly 100 miles from the prison. It didn’t matter to Gonzalez where they ate because he’d be with his two teenage daughters and Cristal, his wife of five years.

After breakfast, the family was going to drive home to Los Angeles, where Gonzalez, 38, dreamed of starting a nonprofit organization to help at-risk youth. He would teach them how to build confidence and empathy, skills he developed over a decade through courses he took in prison. In L.A., he was going to take care of his aging parents. He and Cristal, who he’s known since he was 13, wanted to renew their vows, have more kids and build generational wealth, Gonzalez said.

His stomach dropped when he learned his dreams would have to be put on hold.

In an attempt to unwind Proposition 57, a 2016 voter-approved ballot measure aimed to incentivize rehabilitation, promote public safety and reduce prison overcrowding, a lawsuit filed against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation halted his release. Gonzalez is one of at least 100 people whose release date has been delayed as CDCR’s credit-earning regulations are disputed, according to court records. The regulations were challenged by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a public interest law organization that filed the lawsuit.

On May 29, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Rockwell ordered CDCR not to release many people serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole who had earned a slim chance to go home, including Gonzalez. CDCR appealed the ruling.

Now Gonzalez, who was sentenced to 21 years to life, said he likely won’t have breakfast with his family until 2028.

Gonzalez said he learned about Rockwell’s order from a friend who was scheduled to be released days before him. The friend, who had family waiting outside the gates of the prison in Blythe, CA, had already changed into his civilian clothes. He was taken back to his cell.

That’s when Gonzalez understood that it would be years — not days — before he’d be reunited with his family.

“This is the equivalent to the loss of a loved one,” Gonzalez, a Mexican American, said.

The court order has a far-reaching impact on people serving life sentences with the possibility of parole. According to a 2021 report by The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy center, roughly one-third of California’s prison population is serving life sentences with the possibility of parole. The majority of those 34,000 incarcerated are Black or Latinx.

“Unfortunately, the court order punishes the people who have done the most to rehabilitate,” Heather MacKay, an attorney at the Prison Law Office, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that advocates for policy and law changes, said.

Her concern was echoed by other legal experts who spoke with KQED.

“This order is affecting the people who are actually the safest to release,” said Heidi Rummel, director of the Post-Conviction Justice Project at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

According to a 2023 report by the Board of Parole Hearings, roughly 5,200 people serving a life sentence were granted parole between 2011 and 2019. Recidivism rates are less than 3% within three years of release.

In reporting this story, KQED spoke with five people impacted by the order. Some said they received letters from CDCR that they weren’t being released. Others, like Gonzalez, heard through word of mouth. Each person said they were devastated and confused.

In an Aug. 9 statement to KQED, Mary Xjimenez, a CDCR’s spokesperson, said, “Prop. 57 created a durable solution to reduce the prison population.

“Under Prop. 57, CDCR has the constitutional authority to make credit changes to encourage incarcerated people to more actively participate in rehabilitative and educational programming as well as to sustain good behavior,” she wrote in the statement. “This is a critical incentive and a powerful tool to promote public safety by increasing the likelihood that incarcerated people will reenter successfully into our communities.”

According to CDCR, roughly 100 people are granted parole every month. Of those, the agency anticipates roughly 20 people per month will be impacted by the court order.

‘I’ve worked tremendously hard to change the person who I am’

Gonzalez grew up in a low-income neighborhood in East Los Angeles. From third grade until high school, he played sports, including basketball, football and baseball. But at 16, he said he joined a gang. After high school, he attended community college to pursue a degree in criminal justice, hoping to find work in a juvenile hall when he graduated.

In 2008, when Gonzalez was 22, he and a friend, Jessie Ramirez, went to a house party. According to court records, they were asked to leave but refused. Gonzalez argued with partygoers. He struck someone in the face with a bottle and a brawl ensued.

Gonzalez and Ramirez ran from the house. On their way out, according to court records, Ramirez shot and injured three people, one of whom was paralyzed from the waist down. Gonzalez was arrested and charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. In 2011, he was sentenced to 96 years to life in prison. The sentence was reduced to 21 years to life on appeal, Gonzalez said.

After sentencing, Gonzalez’s earliest date to be considered for release by the parole board was 2028.

In 2016, Proposition 57 passed, and the California constitution was amended.

The measure was divided into three distinct components. The first component gave discretion to juvenile court judges, rather than district attorneys, regarding whether youth could be tried in an adult court. The second created a parole consideration process for people who committed a nonviolent crime, and the third gave CDCR “authority to award credits to inmates for good behavior and approved rehabilitative or educational achievements,” according to the amended state constitution.

After Proposition 57 passed, CDCR updated its regulations through a regulatory process that expanded credit-earning opportunities for most incarcerated people, including those serving life sentences. In December 2018, the regulations were further revised.

Gonzalez was eligible to earn more credits, which allowed him to have an earlier parole board hearing.

“When I found out that they were changing laws, it felt liberating,” he said.

He said he poured hundreds of hours into self-help groups, including courses on victim impact and cognitive behavior. He led groups on coping mechanisms and overcoming adversity, and he earned seven associate degrees, as well as good conduct credits. On top of that, he worked as a peer literacy mentor and masonry technician.

“I owe it to my victims,” Gonzalez said. “That’s why I’ve worked tremendously hard to change the person who I am today. It’s been an ever-evolving, everlasting journey of self-discovery and self-growth.”

The credits advanced his initial parole hearing by roughly five and a half years. In November 2023, Gonzalez appeared before the board with over 160 pages of handwritten notes, the sixth draft of his parole packet. In 2023, according to a report by the Board of Parole Hearings, of the 4,078 people who were scheduled for an initial parole hearing, only 10% were approved for release.

Gonzalez beat the odds.

“Many people don’t go home on their first parole suitability hearing,” Rummel said. “Some go home on their third. Some go home on their tenth. Some never go home. Some die in prison. So it’s not [that they’re] released under Prop. 57. It’s the ability to make their case to the board.”

Blocking releases ‘A huge step in the wrong direction’

Steve Berinti was released from Valley State Prison about 10 months ago after serving 21 years. Since then, he has secured a job, moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area and enrolled at San Francisco State University, where he’s pursuing a psychology degree.

Berinti attributed much of his success to Proposition 57, which he said had a positive impact on prison culture.

“Prop. 57 decreased the violence and increased hope,” he said. “Once it started kicking in, the prison was almost like a college campus. Nothing else like this had ever happened before.”

He said he managed a packed schedule — working prison jobs, attending classes and self-help groups — all of which motivated him to invest in living a life with purpose and honor those he had harmed. Berinti, who was sentenced to 25 years to life, earned enough credits to advance his initial parole hearing by roughly four years.

“It made transitioning into parole life so much easier,” Berinti, 47, said. “I feel like I started to live free while I was incarcerated.”

When he learned about the court order blocking the release of people like Gonzalez, he said his heart sank.

“It’s a huge step in the wrong direction,” he said.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation filed its lawsuit in January 2022. It’s had the effect of stalling part of Proposition 57’s promise to reduce overcrowding, which has been driven by decades of harsh sentencing in California.

CJLF’s board includes former Republican California Gov. Pete Wilson, who signed the “three strikes” law in 1994. It is one of California’s most significant sentencing laws, which disproportionately harms Black and brown families and communities. According to Stanford University’s Three Strikes Project, more than 45% of people serving life sentences under the Three Strikes law are Black.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of CJLF, previously served as chairman for the Criminal Law and Procedure Practice Group of the Federalist Society, an organization that describes itself as “a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order.”

“Conservative groups have been trying to fight back at all of the criminal justice reform that’s happened in the last 10 years in California and this is part of that,” MacKay said.

In a recent interview with KQED, Scheidegger, who led the lawsuit against CDCR, said that the agency’s regulations hurt crime victims and contradict the law.

“The result of this is to put a lot more criminals back on the street and shorten their sentences to considerably less than what they deserve,” Scheidegger said.

The lawsuit alleges that CDCR was using “dictatorial power to abrogate statutes and even constitutional provisions by mere regulation,” including overriding laws that limit credit earning for people serving life sentences.

Attorneys representing the state of California and CDCR pushed back in court filings.

“The intent of the [Prop. 57] constitutional amendment is to grant CDCR broad authority to issue credit-earning regulations,” attorneys for the state Department of Justice wrote.

In other words, to achieve its duties set forth by Proposition 57, the agency has argued that it has the discretion to award and apply credits in a way it sees fit.

But Rockwell was not convinced. In December 2023, she ruled that CDCR has no authority to advance parole eligibility for lifers based on credits earned.

In her ruling, Rockwell said CDCR’s regulations couldn’t trump an older statute that limits the application of credits for lifers. She also wrote that neither the text of Proposition 57 nor the ballot materials discuss the application of credits for lifers, specifically. As such, she “[could not] conclude” that voters intended to give CDCR the authority it claimed.

MacKay and two other legal experts interviewed by KQED said the ruling was flawed. Specifically, they believe Rockwell curbed CDCR’s discretion by conflating language directed at the nonviolent parole component of Proposition 57 with the credit-earning component, which, according to the state constitution, gave CDCR “authority to award credits” despite existing laws. MacKay said those components are “completely separate clauses.”

“I think the judge overreached beyond either the language of Prop. 57 or whatever’s possible to discern from the voters’ intent from the ballot materials, which is always a tricky undertaking,” she said.

CDCR appealed the case in January. Until the current litigation is resolved, the agency said it is required to advance parole hearings for lifers who have earned Proposition 57 credits. But even if they are found suitable for release, CDCR’s hands are shackled.

According to Rummel, the court’s decision involves major constitutional questions that the 3rd District Court of Appeal will have to address, a process that could take up to two years.

“By continuing to incarcerate people who have been determined not to pose a danger and fall within the lowest risk of recidivism is to contradict what the electorate was choosing when they voted for Prop. 57,” Rummel said.

Keith Wattley, the founder and executive director of Uncommon Law, an Oakland-based law firm, called the ruling an insult.

“This is a horrible decision that is devastating to incarcerated people and their families who have worked very hard under extremely difficult circumstances to change their lives and demonstrate their readiness to return to the community,” he said. “It is an insult to the ‘California Model,’ which is supposed to recognize and reward the kinds of personal transformation being dismissed with this ruling.”

On July 29, over 250 legal advocates and organizations called on Gov. Gavin Newsom, CDCR Secretary Jeff Macomber and Board of Parole Hearings Executive Officer Jennifer Shaffer to exercise their authority to release people like Gonzalez. The letter noted the financial implication of the court order, estimating that it would cost the state more than $13 million per year to continue incarcerating people impacted by the court order.

“In the face of a severe budget crisis that threatens critical resources and social services for Californians, it is unacceptable to incur such exorbitant costs to keep incarcerating people who the parole board has found no longer pose a threat to public safety and can be safely released,” advocates wrote.

Gonzalez said it’s difficult to keep moving forward. He packed up everything in his prison cell while preparing for his release — the photos of his wife and children, cutouts of cars and pictures of successful people, what he referred to as his “manifestation chart.”

The walls are empty now, save the calendar he looks at every morning when he wakes up. It’s a reminder of the days he would have been free.

“I want to start my new life,” he said. “I’m always going to be making amends for what I did. I know nothing is deserved, but I do feel strongly that I earned at least a chance to go back out into society.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a post-graduate fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. For KQED, she has reported on California’s implementation of a 2021 reparations law intended to make amends for a shameful chapter of the state’s history.