Parole

John Lennon's killer was denied parole for a fifth time by a board that said he remained a threat to the public. Mark David Chapman will remain in Attica Correctional Facility for at least two more years for gunning down the former Beatle on a Manhattan sidewalk in 1980. Chapman, 53, has been in prison for 27 years since pleading guilty to the murder, which he has said he committed to gain attention. He became eligible for parole in 2000 after serving 20 years of a maximum life sentence.

Carlos DeLuna was, in all likelihood, murdered by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989. It's hard to come to any other conclusion after reading an exhaustive analysis of his case published online by a Columbia law school professor and his students. And he may not be the only innocent death row inmate executed by that notably bloodthirsty state. Cameron Todd Willingham, a man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters was based on spectacularly shoddy forensics work, was injected with a death cocktail on Feb. 17, 2004.

Cinnamon Brown, whose sensational 1985 murder of her stepmother at her father's urging was the subject of two books and a television miniseries, is free after serving seven years in a California Youth Authority facility. Brown, 21, was quietly paroled last week after a 2-1 vote in her favor by a Youth Authority review board. Authorities said she is living in Orange County and preparing to take a clerical job.

California is set for a major debate on the death penalty following qualification Monday of a November ballot measure that would replace capital punishment with a life term without possibility of parole. If passed, the measure would make California the 18th state in the nation without a death penalty. During the last five years, four states have replaced the death penalty and Connecticut is soon to follow. Growing numbers of conservatives in California have joined the effort to repeal the state's capital punishment law, expressing frustration with its price tag and the rarity of executions.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Computer errors prompted California prison officials to mistakenly release an estimated 450 inmates with "a high risk for violence" as unsupervised parolees in a program meant to ease overcrowding, according to the state's inspector general. More than 1,000 additional prisoners presenting a high risk of committing drug crimes, property crimes and other offenses were also let out, officials said. No attempt was made to return any of the offenders to state lockups or place them on supervised parole, said inspector general spokeswoman Renee Hansen.

David Rothenberg has dreaded this day since kindergarten. The father who doused him with kerosene and set him afire seven years ago is getting out of prison Wednesday. And although Charles Rothenberg has vowed never again to hurt his son, David doesn't buy it. He has practiced self-defense and all the best ways to flee his Orange County home. He knows the fastest routes on his bicycle from his junior high school.

Cult leader Charles Manson was denied parole Wednesday, the 11th time since 1978 that he was ordered to continue serving life sentences for a murderous rampage in Los Angeles County in 1969. Manson, 72, did not attend or send a representative to the proceeding before the Board of Parole Hearings at Corcoran State Prison. He previously told a prison counselor that he refuses to participate because he considers himself a "prisoner of the political system," said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist.

The tragic case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, abducted at the age of 11 and allegedly held captive for 18 years in a backyard complex of tents and outbuildings at an Antioch home, has raised a newly relevant question: How could the alleged kidnappers and their victims have hidden in plain sight for so long? And does the apparent failure of parole agents to detect the ongoing crimes show that reforms to the state's parole system are a bad idea? Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, who have been charged with 29 counts of kidnapping and rape, were well known to law enforcement officials.

When the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that executing juveniles amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, the author of the majority opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, made two convincing arguments: that juveniles are less capable of appreciating the consequences of their actions than are adults (something every parent knows) and that putting them to death violated "evolving standards of decency." On Monday the court, again in an opinion by Kennedy, rightly concluded that the same considerations make it unconstitutional to sentence minors to life in prison without the possibility of parole for offenses other than murder.

In Culver City last month, Zackariah Lehnen was charged with the murder of a young woman and an elderly man who were stabbed and beaten to death. In Los Angeles last July, Javier Rueda shot and injured two Los Angeles Police Department officers before he was fatally shot. What's the connection between these violent incidents? Both Lehnen and Rueda were on the streets after being released from state prison — without any parole supervision or parole restrictions — under the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's "non-revocable parole" program.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - In a landmark ruling, a North Carolina judge on Friday vacated the death penalty of a black man convicted of murder, saying prosecutors across the state had engaged in deliberate and systematic racial discrimination when striking black potential jurors in death penalty cases. The ruling was the first under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, passed in 2009, which allows judges to reduce death sentences to life in prison without parole when defendants can prove racial bias in jury selection.

In a few months, the Los Angeles County Housing Authority will begin allowing rent subsidies to be granted to homeless ex-convicts on parole or probation. The move is controversial, with some critics complaining that it rewards criminals, giving them special treatment and moving them to the front of the line for the limited and much-sought-after subsidies. But that's shortsighted. Homeless ex-convicts, including many who committed only minor, nonviolent crimes, don't go away if they don't get housing aid. Although there are risks associated with the new rule, they're risks worth taking.

An ex-convict who was free on probation has been arrested after police discovered tens of thousands of dollars' worth of items they say he may have stolen from cars parked near movie studios. Police believe Sean C. Ray, 35, of Los Angeles rented a Mercedes-Benz convertible to avoid calling attention to himself while driving the streets and scouting cars to burglarize. Ray was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of receiving stolen property, LAPD Det. Jim Hays said at a news conference in front of the Hollywood Community Police Station.

Seven years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that offenders younger than 18 couldn't be sentenced to death, arguing that juveniles are generally less culpable than adults because they are less mature, more impulsive and more susceptible to peer pressure. By the same unassailable logic, the court should hold that sentencing young murderers to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson were both 14 when they committed their crimes. Miller and a 16-year-old friend beat a neighbor and set fire to his house in Alabama, leading to the neighbor's death by smoke inhalation.

The machinery of death is ripping itself to chunks in North Carolina. Would that this would happen in more places - like, say, California. Conservatives and prosecutors in the Tarheel State are up in arms over a 2009 law that allows death row inmates to reduce their sentences to life without parole if they can prove racial bias in sentencing or jury selection - even if the bias wasn't directed at them but at others. In other words, if convicts can show a statistical pattern of racial bias statewide, they can use it as evidence that their own trial may have been skewed.

She starting leaving home at 13, and soon she was gone for good. The streets drew her, the Barrio Pobre gang took her in. She does not deny that at 16 she was there in Long Beach the night her boyfriend killed a younger girl in a gang dispute over a piece of jewelry. Now she is 37, and though two decades have passed, Elizabeth Lozano still looks young — short, thin, with long black hair and expressive eyes. Even in her prison blues, she radiates youth, and she has won acclaim for reaching out to help teenagers in prison and others who are at risk of ending up there.

Phillip Garrido, the man accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting Jaycee Lee Dugard, was paroled by the federal government two decades ago after a 35-minute jailhouse interview in which he spoke of his crime, his prison experience and future plans, the U.S. Parole Commission said Friday. Garrido, charged with abducting Dugard 18 years ago, was released from federal custody after serving only 10 1/2 years of his 50-year sentence for a 1976 kidnapping. Cranston Mitchell, vice chairman of the U.S. Parole Commission, said two commission examiners met with Garrido in Lompoc, Calif.

Back in the bad old days of English jurisprudence, women who faced hanging for theft or other then-capital crimes could "plead their bellies": If they could prove they were pregnant, they could get their sentences commuted or reduced. As evidence of how far we've come in the intervening centuries, a similar system is about to be put into practice in California. As early as next week, the state prison system is slated to begin releasing mothers convicted of non-serious, non-sexual crimes who have two years or less left in their terms.

A parolee suspected of shooting and seriously wounding a parole officer was arrested Wednesday evening after an hours-long manhunt that forced authorities to shut down a section of the busy 210 Freeway and lock down two schools in Lake View Terrace. The shooting, which occurred about 1:30 p.m., forced the authorities to close the 210 Freeway between the 118 Freeway and Sunland Boulevard, creating a traffic nightmare for thousands of commuters traversing the east-west corridor in the San Fernando Valley.

Juan Corona, convicted of killing 25 migrant workers in California some four decades ago, was again denied parole Monday. The California Board of Parole Hearings turned down the seventh parole request of Corona, now 77 and diagnosed with dementia. He is not eligible for another parole hearing for five years, authorities said. Corona is serving 25 concurrent terms of 25 years to life at Corcoran State Prison. First convicted in 1973, he won a new trial in 1978 and was re-convicted on all charges in 1982.