Court Strongly Suggests State Parole Killer

In a strongly worded opinion, an appellate court Thursday said the state Board of Prison Terms abused its discretion when it found a Calabasas man convicted of murder unsuitable for parole.

Threatening to hold the board in contempt if it fails to follow its instructions, the three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered that a new parole hearing be held within 30 days.

“We anticipate that the board will find [Robert] Rosenkrantz suitable for release on parole and that a parole date will be set,” Justice Miriam A. Vogel wrote.

The ruling was hailed by critics of the parole board, who have long charged that its decision-making process is flawed and unfair.

“The court’s decision suggests that the board has been too stingy in finding people suitable for parole,” said Donald Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, which helps inmates with legal matters. “It also says the board has flouted the law and thumbed its nose at the courts.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Robert Wilson, who represented the Board of Prison Terms, had not read the decision late Thursday and declined to comment. He said no decision had been made on an appeal.

The 26-page ruling was considered extraordinary in part because it was released the day after oral arguments in the case--a highly unusual move.

The decision also sets up a potential showdown between Rosenkrantz and Gov. Gray Davis, who has said the inmate has not served enough time for his crime.

Rowan Klein, the Los Angeles-based attorney for Rosenkrantz, said he would seek a court order blocking Davis from thwarting his client’s parole.

Klein also predicted the court’s decision would have “far-reaching ramifications in terms of how the board makes parole suitability determinations.”

Rosenkrantz, 34, was sentenced to 15 years to life for the 1985 murder of a schoolmate who attacked him and exposed him as a homosexual on the night of his graduation from Calabasas High School.

The disclosure led Rosenkrantz’s father to disown him and order him out of the house. Rosenkrantz bought an Uzi, confronted Steven Redman outside his Malibu condominium and demanded that Redman retract the story. When he refused, Rosenkrantz shot and killed him.

In 1996, Rosenkrantz was found suitable for parole by a three-member panel of the Board of Prison Terms. The panel found that he had committed his crime as a result of extreme stress and would not pose “an unreasonable risk to society” if released.

The panel also noted that Rosenkrantz had been a model inmate and had job plans and family support--including that of his father, who had long since changed his views about his son’s sexual orientation.

The panel’s finding, however, was overturned after an internal board review. And at numerous subsequent hearings, Rosenkrantz has been found unsuitable for parole--despite the support of dozens of community members, including the homicide detective who investigated the case.

In 1998, Rosenkrantz sued, challenging the board’s parole denials. A year later, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz sided with the inmate, saying there was no evidence that Rosenkrantz remains a danger to society and ordering him paroled.

The board complied with her order and set a parole date, but refused to find him suitable, citing three grounds--that his offense was “carried out in an especially cruel or callous” manner, that it was an “execution-style murder” and that it was committed with “exceptionally callous disregard for human suffering.”

In December, Davis reversed the parole date. (Davis has said he will not allow the parole of any convicted murderer--regardless of the circumstances--and he has blocked all grants sent to him for review so far by the board.)

Meanwhile, the board appealed the Stoltz order that had forced it to set the date for Rosenkrantz. The decision released Thursday is the rejection of that appeal.

Justices said the board had failed to produce any evidence supporting its finding that Rosenkrantz should remain locked up.

They said “there was no evidence to suggest that Rosenkrantz poses a risk to society. All the evidence is to the contrary.”

In addition, the justices noted that while the law gives the board broad discretion in deciding whether to grant or deny parole, that discretion “is not absolute.”