SAN FRANCISCO, ANTIOCH, CALIF., AND ORINDA, CALIF. — As details continued to emerge about Jaycee Lee Dugard's alleged kidnapper, questions intensified Monday over how Phillip Garrido could have served only 11 years in prison after a 1976 rape and kidnapping for which he had been given a 50-year federal sentence as well as a life term in Nevada.
Garrido was convicted of kidnapping in federal court for abducting Katherine Callaway in South Lake Tahoe on a November night nearly 33 years ago and driving her -- handcuffed and hogtied -- to Reno. He then pleaded guilty to a Nevada state rape charge for assaulting her in a storage unit.
Former Assistant U.S. Atty. Leland Lutfy, who prosecuted the kidnapping case, said Monday that he was "amazed" because, at the time, he believed that defendants convicted of federal crimes were required to serve two-thirds of their sentences -- in this case, 33 years. That would have kept him safely away from Dugard, who was snatched from her quiet street in 1991.
"It makes no sense to me," he said in an interview.
Michael Malloy, who prosecuted the rape case in Washoe County, Nev., said the system "let everyone down, especially Jaycee Dugard. It doesn't seem an adequate sentence for the violent crime he committed in 1976."
Callaway, who has since married Jim Hall and goes by her married name, thought that Garrido wouldn't be paroled until at least 2006, she said during an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live." But a little more than a decade after she was assaulted, she was approached at a Lake Tahoe casino by a man who resembled Garrido. She called prison officials and learned that he had been paroled to California.
"In many ways, the capture of Phillip Garrido has closed a chapter in my life," she wrote on the show's blog. "I don't have to hide anymore. I don't have to live every day of my life wondering if he is looking for me. I am finally free from the fear I have lived with since the day I learned he was paroled."
A spokesman for the U.S. Parole Commission did not return a call for comment about why Garrido was set free in 1988.
Loyola Law professor Laurie Levenson said that barring an extraordinary situation, "there is no way on a 50-year sentence he should have been out."
Garrido, 58, and his second wife, Nancy, 54, were charged last week with 29 counts of rape and kidnapping in Dugard's nearly two-decade disappearance. The couple allegedly abducted Dugard when she was an 11-year-old and held her in the backyard of their Antioch-area home, where she gave birth to Garrido's two girls. They called her Allissa.
