Prisoner Releases

Brian DeVries, the first violent sexual offender to graduate from a state treatment program, was granted unconditional release Monday after a judge ruled that surgical castration and seven years of intensive psychiatric treatment qualified the former predator to live free and unsupervised. DeVries, 45, wore a wide grin as a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge formally ended DeVries' regimen of mental health counseling, supervised living and tracking by global positioning satellite.

At least 300 people were freed early Wednesday from Bahrain's jails, but rather than calming the waters, the releases could very well intensify the nation's already charged atmosphere. With an angry public now calling for the ouster of King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa, some of those pardoned could find an audience far more receptive than when they were jailed by the island's security services. Some shouted "Death to Khalifa!" on Wednesday night as they listened to accounts of torture in Bahrain's jail.

Under pressure from federal judges, inmate advocacy groups and civil rights organizations, federal authorities are considering a sweeping cut in prison sentences that could bring early release for thousands of federal inmates. The proposal being weighed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission would shave an average of at least two years off the sentences of 19,500 federal prisoners, about 1 in 10 in the 200,000-inmate system.

An American woman who spent 410 days imprisoned in Iran praised its leaders Sunday for the "humanitarian gesture" of freeing her but expressed frustration at the continued detention of two companions, while Iran's president suggested the hikers could be bargaining chips in his tempestuous relationship with Washington. Sarah Shourd, 32, mixed political niceties with firm denials of guilt in her first extensive public comments since leaving Iran's Evin Prison on Sept. 14. She appeared alongside her mother, Nora, who held her daughter's hand as they walked into a conference room in a Manhattan hotel after flying to the United States.

The camera focuses on Chris Clarke, sitting on his bed in Patton State Hospital near San Bernardino, talking about killing his fiancee. "Something snapped," he says almost inaudibly. "I began thinking things that were not real. I began having paranoid thoughts and believing people were trying to get me." The interviewer doesn't say a word. Clarke begins to cry softly. "It was as if somebody else came into my body," Clarke says. "I can't use that excuse.

California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September. The order cited Gov.

Even before they were cut down by the bombs and bullets of special forces troops in the Japanese ambassador's residence, the small platoon of leftist rebels who held Peru hostage for more than four months were walking ghosts. The audacious takeover of the mansion by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, in December generated global attention that was far out of proportion to a guerrilla movement that had few fighters and minimal popular support.

Former anti-Vietnam War radical Katherine Ann Power, who spent 23 years underground, walked out of prison Saturday after serving time for taking part in an armed robbery in which a police officer was killed. The 50-year-old woman said nothing to reporters as she left prison in Framingham, where she had spent six years. Two unidentified women escorted her into a car and drove off. But in a statement issued by her lawyer, James M.

German authorities on Monday pardoned and released a former terrorist convicted of killing three people in a 1975 attack on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting. A Frankfurt court in 2001 convicted Hans-Joachim Klein of three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder and hostage-taking after a trial in which German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer -- a friend of Klein's from their student radical days 30 years ago -- appeared as a witness. Klein was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The adopted son of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was released from prison Friday for the first time since the December revolution that led to the overthrow of his father and the execution of both his parents. Valentin Ceausescu, unlike his playboy younger brother, Nicu, stayed away from politics and held no special rank during his father's oppressive 25-year rule. He still faces trial next month on a minor charge of failing to pay rent for state-owned housing.

Leftist Colombian rebels Sunday released the first of two military hostages they have promised to free, with the liberation of the other -- one of this nation's longest-held hostages -- expected Tuesday. Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, released Josue Daniel Calvo, 23, to a team that included representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a Brazilian helicopter crew and leftist Sen. Piedad Cordoba, a key intermediary in other FARC hostage releases over the last two years.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon said Friday that he should have been notified by L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's office that a case involving an intruder at his home had been dismissed and the suspect released from a state mental hospital. Alarcon spoke out one day after an intruder broke into his Panorama City home for a second time in six months. Lawrence Lydell Payton, 42, was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of burglary at Alarcon's Nordhoff Street home.

At least 200 inmates received early releases from the L.A. County Jail system this week amid a new round of cost-cutting that is expected to soon slash the time many other criminals serve behind bars. Sheriff Lee Baca said Thursday that budget cuts have prompted him to reduce the time nonviolent offenders spend in the jails. The sheriff's policy has been that male inmates must serve at least 80% of their jail time before release. Now, offenders incarcerated for crimes including check kiting, petty theft and drunk driving will serve only 50% of their time.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown waded into the controversy Tuesday over a new law that aims to reduce the state prison population by saying it applies to county jails but should not be read as requiring immediate, large-scale reductions of their populations. The bulletin to law enforcement agencies throughout the state came as the union representing Orange County sheriff's deputies became the second major policing organization to go to court to block use of the law, which appears to speed the process under which county jail inmates are released by changing the formula used to determine time off for good behavior.

State prison authorities Monday began reducing the number of parole violators sent back behind bars and offering inmates more opportunity to shorten their sentences, as part of a plan to decrease the prison population by 6,500 inmates over the next year. Low-risk offenders, including those convicted of nonviolent crimes, will not have regular supervision by a parole agent. And they will no longer be returned to prison for technical violations such as alcohol use, missed drug tests or failure to notify the state of an address change.

The Supreme Court today put off a decision on whether California must release more than 40,000 inmates to relieve overcrowding in its prisons. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had appealed a ruling of a three-judge panel last year that found prisoners were being denied adequate healthcare because of overcrowding. The judges then ordered the state to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 inmates. In his appeal, the governor said the judges had overstepped their authority under federal law. But before the high court acted on that appeal, the state had filed a plan to comply with the judge's order.

With both President Frederik W. de Klerk and African National Congress deputy president Nelson Mandela back in South Africa after trips abroad, the ANC and the government are separately considering a still-secret report by their joint "working group" outlining proposals for identifying and freeing an estimated 3,500 political prisoners.

Mamdouh Habib, an Australian held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned to his hometown of Sydney aboard a chartered jet, more than three years after his arrest in Pakistan. The U.S. suspected Habib, who was arrested three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, of aiding Al Qaeda but did not charge him. Australian officials said they would monitor his actions.

After nearly 30 years behind bars, the Turkish man who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II walked out of a prison a free man Monday and promptly predicted the end of the world. Now a gray-haired 52-year-old, Mehmet Ali Agca declared himself the "Christ eternal" and prophesied that humanity would be wiped out this century, in a statement passed out to a scrum of television cameras and waiting reporters in Ankara, the Turkish capital. Later, the hollow-cheeked Agca, who has spent more of his life in prison than out, was declared mentally disturbed by doctors who exempted him from mandatory military service, the Associated Press reported.

A British hostage held for 2 1/2 years by a militant Iraqi Shiite Muslim group was freed Wednesday in a move his family hailed as "the best Christmas present ever." Computer consultant Peter Moore was freed as the United States handed over to Iraqi authorities Qais Khazali, the leader of the group suspected of kidnapping him and four British security guards, and an undetermined number of Khazali's followers. The U.S. had blamed the group Asaib al Haq, or League of the Righteous, for the killings of five American soldiers.