Davis’ Parole Policy Raises Questions

Some convicts go to prison and hang on to their criminal ways. Others wallow in bitterness, counting their days of confinement. Then there are the exceptions--inmates like David Ramos.

Convicted of murder for giving a ride to a killer, Ramos has been locked up for 21 years. It has not been wasted time. He has mastered two trades, earned a college degree and, most exceptionally, taught more than 1,000 prisoners to read.

That record was enough for the state parole board. In January, its members--a famously cautious group--congratulated Ramos and declared him ready to go home.

In most states, that would have been it. Ramos, 40, would have packed his belongings and walked out the prison gate. But in California, an unusual law gives the governor a say over his fate. And Gov. Gray Davis said no.

The ruling was not a surprise. Since taking office, Davis has rejected freedom for 108 killers approved for release by his own parole board--a record that makes him far less forgiving than his GOP predecessor, Pete Wilson. Just two murderers have been released by Davis, both of them battered women who had shot their abusers.

That pattern has drawn praise from victims’ advocates but also criticism from legislators, inmates’ families and a growing group of judges. Two cases testing the extent of the governor’s power over parole await action by the state Supreme Court, perhaps as early as this fall.

California is one of only three states--along with Oklahoma and Maryland--that give governors veto power over parole. Some say such authority provides society an extra measure of protection. But many national parole experts say granting this power to an elected official is bad public policy, politicizing the task of deciding which inmates are rehabilitated and should go free.

Indeed, as in California, governors in Oklahoma and Maryland have taken rigid stances on parole. Oklahoma’s Gov. Frank Keating even vowed, like Davis, that during his tenure murderers “will not be released. Period. Exclamation point.”

“It’s inevitable,” said Gail Hughes, executive director of the Assn. of Paroling Authorities International. “If governors release a murderer, they appear soft on crime and risk another Willie Horton ruining their political future.”

Horton is the Massachusetts murderer who raped a woman while on a weekend furlough allowed when Michael Dukakis was governor of the state. In the 1988 presidential race, then-Vice President George Bush used the Horton episode to bash Dukakis, contributing to the Democrat’s defeat.

Other high-profile cases in California--including the kidnapping and murder of a Petaluma 12-year-old, Polly Klaas, by a repeat felon--underscored the Horton lesson for elected officials: You can’t be too tough.

“No politician ever gets in trouble for not letting a prisoner out,” said Susan Estrich, who was Dukakis’ presidential campaign manager and now teaches law at USC. “The political risk is all in one direction.”

The governor’s deputy press secretary, Byron Tucker, said such political perils have no bearing on the governor’s parole decisions. Despite Davis’ 1999 vow that no murderer would go free on his watch, the governor judges each inmate on the evidence, Tucker said.

He added, however, that Davis evaluates eligible prisoners with the feelings of crime victims foremost in his mind: “For them, there is no parole from the loss of their loved ones,” Tucker said.

Paroles are handed down by the nine-member Board of Prison Terms, appointed by the governor. Each year the board holds about 3,100 hearings for murderers, rapists and kidnappers who have served their minimum terms and become eligible for parole. A much smaller number of inmates convicted of more heinous killings are ineligible for parole or on death row.

Board members grant or deny parole on the basis of careful study of the crime, the inmate’s behavior while incarcerated and reports from prison psychiatrists. The law suggests that parole must be granted unless the review shows the prisoner remains dangerous, but the board’s discretion is broad and parole grants are rare. Today, about 1% of those evaluated are cleared for release.

California’s governor was brought into this process through a 1988 ballot initiative, Proposition 89. The measure was pushed by former Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican angered by his inability to prevent the release of a murderer and rapist named William Archie Fain.

Proposition 89 passed with 55% of the vote, and its sponsor in the Legislature, former Sen. Daniel Boatwright (D-Concord), said it has protected Californians from the release of dangerous criminals.

“I think Davis is doing exactly what the people want him to do,” said Boatwright, now a lobbyist. “It’s better to err on the side of caution.”

Victims’ rights advocates agree and say that, whether it’s politics or principles driving Davis, they applaud him: “A lot of us who have been victims feel that, if you take a life, why is it OK for you ever to walk the streets again?” said Maggie Elvey of Crime Victims United.

The initiative’s chief opponent was a Roman Catholic priest and inmate advocate named Paul Comiskey. He warned that the measure would have “a chilling effect on anybody getting out.” Comiskey, now a criminal defense lawyer in Sacramento, believes that prediction has been borne out, noting that paroles dwindled under Wilson before Davis shut the cell door almost entirely.

“The governor picks his appointees for the parole board, and yet, even in the rare cases when they find someone suitable for release, he vetoes it,” Comiskey said. “If that’s not politics, what is?”

Wilson was the first California governor to use the new veto power. A Republican who signed laws that toughened criminal sentencing, Wilson was no softie when it came to parole. But in his last three years in office, he allowed 25 murder convicts to go free under Proposition 89.

“We looked at these cases very carefully, because a life was taken and you can’t take that lightly,” Wilson said in an interview. “I was very tough. But there were cases where people did not represent a threat and showed true remorse.”

Those who know David Ramos believe he fits that description. They say it is hard to imagine an inmate who has better fulfilled the goals of the penal system: punishment, atonement and preparation for life on the outside.

Though he was convicted of murder, his role had been driving the killer to the crime scene, not wielding a weapon. And though Ramos says he is remorseful and takes full responsibility for the victim’s death, his public defender blames himself for the conviction, saying he bungled the case.

“I have been haunted by this, and will continue to be until we get a governor who is not a moral coward and will do the right thing,” said attorney Bernard J. Rosen, now in private practice in Santa Monica. “David’s life has just been thrown away. And yet he’s managed to stay positive and do amazing things in prison.”

The murder took place in March 1981, taking the life of a retired Coast Guard chief named Febrillium Ponce. Ponce’s wife, Joan, had hired Thomas Gomez to murder her spouse for $10,000, court documents say. Gomez, 19, shot Ponce in the parking lot at Harbor College in Wilmington.

Ramos was 19, had no criminal record, was attending night school and had just enlisted in the Army. Prosecutors labeled him a co-conspirator, saying he had given Gomez, his brother-in-law, a ride to the scene of the crime, and stood to collect $5,000.

Joan Ponce did not implicate Ramos when she confessed, and her daughter testified that Ramos had sat with her watching TV while the other two plotted the crime in another room of their home. A judge initially dismissed the case against him, citing insufficient evidence. Prosecutors refiled charges, and the case went to trial.

Rosen said he made “every mistake in the book” defending Ramos. Like Ponce and Gomez, Ramos was found guilty of first-degree murder. The sentence: 26 years to life.

At his parole hearing in January, Ramos said he had overheard Gomez and Ponce talk of the killing, but never thought they were serious. He said he believed Gomez planned to use a gun to scare Ponce because Ponce had been beating his wife.

At the January parole hearing, prosecutors said Ramos should serve more time. But Los Angeles Police Det. Larry Kallestad, who investigated the case, believes Ramos deserves parole, calling him “an immature teenager who believed he was playing a game.”

Ramos, however, made no excuses. “I take full responsibility for my actions,” he told the board. “I am in no way trying to hide or diminish my role in any way.”

The hearing outlined Ramos’ near-perfect prison record, marred only by a 1990 fight in which he was attacked by a mentally ill inmate. He receives exceptional reviews from correctional counselors and psychiatrists, and was praised as a hero by prison authorities for rescuing a supervisor who had fallen into an excavation hole.

Most unusual, however, has been Ramos’ work teaching illiterate inmates to read.

In 1997 he was named tutor of the year by the group California Literacy, chosen not just from among the few prisoners who teach reading, but from among 13,000 Californians who donate time to the cause. “This is someone whose dedication truly stood out,” the selection panel said.

The January parole hearing was the fourth for Ramos, and the chairman was a hard-liner, Tom Bordonaro. A former Republican assemblyman from Paso Robles, Bordonaro wrote a law that toughened sentences for criminals who use guns. He also has experienced violence in his own life; his sister was shot and killed by a drug dealer.

But he and a deputy parole commissioner, meeting to review the case, decided that Ramos had excelled in prison and deserved to be freed. “Congratulations,” he told the inmate. “Just keep doing what you’re doing and ... hopefully, it will stick.”

For five months, the parole grant did stick, surviving the board’s administrative review. Then it landed on the governor’s desk. On June 21, Davis rendered his verdict. Though praising Ramos’ accomplishments behind bars, Davis concluded the inmate had “participated in a grave crime” and had “actually regressed” by expressing a “denial of culpability.”

“I believe Mr. Ramos remains a danger to public safety at this time,” Davis said.

In a telephone interview from Avenal State Prison, Ramos said he had expected the governor to block his release. Though his large extended family in Los Angeles has been devastated by the news, he is taking it well, hoping that action by the state Supreme Court may ultimately lead to freedom.

“The guys in here are pretty upset, because they figure if somebody like me can’t get out, then they certainly won’t get out,” Ramos said. “But hope springs eternal.”

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Times researcher Patti Williams contributed to this report.