Parole: No on 89

Proposition 89 would amend the Constitution to allow California governors to second-guess the Board of Prison Terms on matters of parole for killers. The idea may sound good, and with crime so high on the list of public concerns one of its few opponents rates its chances of losing as about that of “a snowball in hell.” But there is no real claim that the power over parole is needed or would be used except as a way for a governor to get an occasional headline for seeming tougher on crime than his parole board. We recommend a No vote on Proposition 89.

Under existing law, the nine members of the Board of Prison Terms, who are appointed by the governor for four-year terms, grant or deny parole based on a careful study of the crime and the prison record of a murderer--decides, in effect, whether to gamble that a prisoner is no longer a threat to society.

The proposition would not change the way in which the Board of Prison Terms reaches its conclusions about whether to grant a parole. Its only purpose would be to give the governor 30 days after the board had decided on a parole date in which to intervene. In reaching a decision, he could not go beyond “the same factors which the parole authority is required to consider”--a text-book description of second-guessing.

The most troubling aspects of Proposition 89 are political. Given the restrictions on the evidence that a governor’s staff could legally consider, denying parole would amount to nothing more than a governor’s substituting his own judgment for that of the nine-member board.

But the possibilities for future mischief are more serious than that. Politics being what it is, if a governor overruled in one case, he probably would conclude that he had to overrule in every case in order to be consistent in his attitude toward criminals. If crime remains high on the list of public concerns, a governor might even be forced to intervene the first chance he got just to show that he was not soft on crime.

Proposition 89 is an issue because Gov. George Deukmejian tried to block a parole in 1983 for William Archie Fain, convicted in 1967 of murder and rape, and found that the law, all the way to the California Supreme Court, was against him. It is his answer to a court ruling saying in effect that, under a rule of law, paroles cannot be popularity contests. The answer of California voters on Proposition 89 should also be No.