Stolen lightbulb casts only darkness

Having met Mark Smith in Los Angeles County Jail, I can tell you it’s a relief to know we’re safe from the likes of him.

Smith, 51, might not look very menacing, with pale skin and trembling hands. But he’s been behind bars for six months after committing a heinous crime.

He stole a lightbulb from a Rite Aid in Van Nuys.

There’s no telling what kind of mayhem Smith would be up to on the outside, even if he does have Parkinson’s, emphysema, heart disease and dementia. Oh, and he is HIV-positive and recovering from throat cancer.

All right, so there’s a little more to the story than that. Smith has a dark past, as they say, and his lightbulb caper constituted a parole violation. But in a state with a critical overcrowding problem in its prisons and jails, Smith is a poster boy for the insanity of prosecutorial zealotry.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Smith was in the news five years ago in a showdown with then-Gov. Gray Davis. Smith, a punk and thief as a young San Fernando Valley man, served 17 years for a second-degree murder conviction stemming from his presence at a Topanga Canyon drug dispute that turned deadly.

The Board of Prison Terms ruled Smith suitable for release in 2000, and even Smith’s trial judge supported that finding, calling him less culpable than the other man convicted in the 1985 murder.

But Gov. Davis, who played to the peanut gallery with his no-parole policy for murderers, refused to go along. Davis called Smith “a person with little regard for human life” who had committed a “violent act against another.” Did the bloodless governor not realize Smith was an accomplice rather than the killer?

Davis blocked the release, but Smith prevailed in 2003 when the state Supreme Court rebuked the governor. Smith was turned loose after nearly 20 years in prison and moved in with his family in Sun Valley, not far from Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.

His mother, Dolores Padilla, tried to help nurse him back to health. But Smith, who had had two heart attacks while locked up, remained seriously ill and on disability. When he was able, he toured the state speaking out about sentencing and parole reform.

“Because the media knew me, I was sort of drafted into putting a face on inmates and lifers,” says Smith. “I thought it was my duty to do my part to make the world a better place and ... bring fairness to the system.”

Last August, Smith was the opening speaker at a Sacramento hearing on prison overcrowding and the disastrous shortage of rehabilitation and mental health programs. He then went to San Francisco for a television interview on the subject and was mugged after leaving the studio.

“I was attacked on the streets by a group of four or five guys and knocked unconscious,” said Smith, who began seeing a psychiatrist for help with memory loss and confusion.

Two months later, he was arrested after leaving the Van Nuys drugstore. Although he had paid for his other items and still had about $180 in his wallet, a security guard saw him walk out with a lightbulb in his pocket.

“I just forgot it,” said Smith.

I’m not sure I believe that, especially since the guard claimed Smith had used a knife to cut open a lightbulb pack before sticking one of the bulbs in his pocket.

It’s possible that with AIDS-related dementia, along with any damage caused by the mugging, Smith stole the lightbulb because he wasn’t right in the head. But let’s say for the sake of argument that he knew full well what he was doing.

Was a stolen lightbulb a significant enough parole violation to send him back into the slammer?

At his probation revocation hearing in December, Smith’s mother argued that her son’s health had stabilized since his release from prison because he had better care and easier access to the dozens of medications prescribed for him. She said he drew and painted, got interested in computers and eventually moved into his own apartment.

“I don’t think he belongs back in prison, that’s for sure,” she said.

At the December hearing, Smith’s attorney presented medical reports on his “terminal illness,” saying his “dementia is progressive” and his attention and short-term memory impaired. His parole officer recommended that Smith be released, citing his compliance with the terms of his parole. Although Smith acknowledged having a drink or two, which would appear to have violated the terms of his release, his parole officer said he had given him permission.

William Crisologo, deputy commissioner of the state Board of Parole Hearings, wasn’t sold. He called Smith’s “lifestyle” a matter “of personal choice,” saying he saw “some denial on your part with respect to theft and alcohol.”

Smith, his heart sinking, was confused. What did alcohol have to do with the lightbulb incident?

“I understand your circumstances,” Crisologo went on, “the positive things you’ve done ... but today Mr. Smith I regret ... to tell you I will have to revoke your parole.... You make choices, I don’t.”

What this means is that Smith, who later pleaded no contest on the lightbulb charge, is back to being a lifer. He’s entitled to a parole hearing by December, and it could happen much sooner. But he might also be transferred from County Jail back to state prison and could conceivably be denied parole each time he comes up for review.

“He’s so sick,” Smith’s nerve-rattled mother told me in the living room of her Sun Valley home. “I don’t know how long he’s going to last in there.”

Don Specter of the Prison Law Office called the lightbulb case Mickey Mouse but typical. He said “tens of thousands” of parole revocations are issued each year because of minor crimes, calling that “a major source of overcrowding” in prisons, along with countless cases of nonviolent third-strike violations.

The question for California legislators, and a governor who claims it’s time to get serious about overcrowding, is whether people like Mark Smith ought to be locked up indefinitely.

Then again, it was a high-definition lightbulb worth nearly $10.

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steve.lopez@latimes.com