Parole

The man who shot John Lennon 32 years ago on a New York City sidewalk could have his seventh parole hearing as early as Tuesday. Mark David Chapman, 57, is scheduled to be interviewed by the New York Department of Corrections parole board next week, officials told the Associated Press. The board could reach a decision Thursday or Friday. Chapman shot the Beatles musician on Dec. 8, 1980, as Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to their Manhattan apartment building after an evening recording session.

WASHINGTON - Jose Vasquez remembers the night police officers came to his house and said his sister Tayde was dead. He remembers too the mornings escorting his mother to the trial in Long Beach, and their relief when the young killer was given life in prison with no parole. Now, after 20 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that juvenile murderers with mandatory life sentences should have a chance at parole, a decision that has led many states to debate comparable legislation. On Thursday, the California Assembly passed a measure that someday could set free youthful offenders like Elizabeth Lozano, who was 16 when 13-year-old Tayde Vasquez was shot in the head.

At age 69, Betty Smithey learned that sometimes you really do get a second chance. On Monday, the nation's longest-serving female inmate used a cane to walk carefully out the front gates of an Arizona state prison, where she had spent 49 years for the 1963 murder of a child. The reason: A parole board decided that after nearly half a century behind bars, she wasn't the same troubled person who had strangled a 15-month-old baby. And for the first time in several tries, a sitting governor agreed.

VACAVILLE, Calif. - Convicted murderer John Paul Madrona, profiled in a Times' series chronicling life inside a state prison hospice here, took a significant step toward freedom Wednesday when a two-person panel from the parole board pronounced him ready to leave life behind bars. Madrona, a former Carson-area gang member who brazenly murdered a bystander in 1993, no longer poses "a danger to society or a threat to public safety if released from prison," said Board of Parole Hearings Commissioner Jack Garner.

About 700 officers from federal, state and local agencies hammered on the doors of about 400 parolees across Los Angeles County early Wednesday morning in what officials called the largest surprise parole sweep ever. Authorities made at least 70 arrests, confiscated dozens of weapons and seized 30 grams of cocaine and 156 grams of marijuana. Officers also discovered 20 full-grown marijuana plants, impounded five pit bulls that may have been used for dogfighting, and took a child into protective custody after her father was arrested.

A Los Angeles jury on Friday spared the life of a man convicted of killing a 2-year-old boy, his mother and his nanny, finding that the man should instead receive life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 2003 murders. The panel deliberated less than a day before deciding against the death penalty for Robin Kyu Cho, 53, who was convicted last week of three counts of murder for fatally shooting the three people in the family's Miracle Mile-area apartment. The gruesomeness of the murders, in which a toddler was shot and the 30-year-old mother was bound and gagged with packaging tape, shocked Los Angeles' large Korean community.

Charles Anthony Edwards III has spent his adult life cycling through prisons and state psychiatric hospitals. Calm and witty when well, the San Francisco native also was known to lash out: beating his mother and threatening to kill family members and strangers. When paroled in November 2010, he was diverted to Atascadero State Hospital. California prison officials had determined that the nature of Edwards' schizophrenia made him too dangerous for release. His return to society needed to be regimented and supervised.

Ruling on two cases involving 14-year-old murderers, the Supreme Court on Monday rightly struck down laws in 28 states that require some minors convicted of murder to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Unfortunately, the justices stopped short of prohibiting all such sentences, thereby muddying the legal waters and making it likely that they will have to consider future cases from states, such as California, where that penalty is permissible but not required. Monday's 5-4 decision involved two crimes.

WASHINGTON - It is cruel and unusual punishment to send a young murderer to die in prison if a judge has not weighed whether his youth and the nature of his crime merited a shorter prison term, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 5-4 decision struck down laws in 28 states that mandated life terms for juvenile murderers with no hope for parole. The justices ruled in the cases of two 14-year-old boys, one from Alabama and one from Arkansas, who were given life terms for their roles in homicides.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday limited the use of life terms in prison for murderers under 18, ruling that judges must consider the defendant's youth and the nature of the crime before putting him behind bars with no hope for parole. In a 5-4 decision, the high court struck down as cruel and unusual punishment the laws in about 28 states that mandated a life term for murderers, including those under age 18. The justices ruled in the cases of two 14-year-olds who were given life terms for their role in a homicide, but their decision goes further.