This story initially was revealed by Real Clear Wire.
By Ana Kasparian, RealClearInvestigations
Might 1, 2025
Smiley Martin ought to have been behind bars.
A profession legal with a long rap sheet involving firearms, he was given a 10-year sentence in 2018 for punching, dragging and severely beating his girlfriend with a belt. In jail, Martin was discovered responsible of beating another inmate and interesting in different legal exercise. Nonetheless, he was freed simply 4 years later, because of a plea deal that categorized him as a “nonviolent offender” and a California poll measure that sharply diminished sentences for “good habits.”
Simply two months after his launch, Martin and a number of other accomplices, together with his brother, have been arrested for finishing up the worst mass taking pictures in Sacramento’s historical past – leaving six useless and 12 others injured on April 3, 2022. Martin was charged with three counts of murder and unlawful possession of a firearm, together with a machine gun. He won’t stand trial on these costs, for the reason that 29-year-old died in jail of a drug overdose final September.
Martin’s life and dying have introduced consideration to the legal justice reform that helped put him again on the streets: Proposition 57. The poll measure was offered to the general public in 2016 as a method to relieve the state’s chronically overcrowded prisons by rewarding “nonviolent” offenders for good habits by shortening their sentences. It was imagined to be a humanitarian reply to what social justice activists described as an epidemic of “mass incarceration.” It has as an alternative put tens of 1000’s of violent offenders resembling Martin again on the streets.
A lot of them have been rearrested. The most recent Recidivism Report from the California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation reveals that just about two thirds (64.2%) of the 34,215 inmates granted early launch between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 had been rearrested as of April 2, 2025.
Breaking down the recidivism charge for prisoners inside three years of their launch, it reported that “22.1% of the discharge cohort (7,567 people) have been convicted of a felony offense, and 17.0% (5,828 people) have been convicted of a misdemeanor offense.” The Division of Corrections additionally reviews virtually half the inmates granted early launch had not earned any credit for good habits.
Prop 57 critics should not shocked. Within the run-up to the 2016 poll measure – which was permitted with the help of 65% of voters – the measure’s opponents warned that violent criminals like Martin would doubtless profit from the initiative.
However they have been denounced as scaremongers. When Sacramento County District Legal professional Anne Marie Schubert warned that Prop 57 would free perpetrators of home violence, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, who was the highest proponent for the poll measure, shot back; “That’s a whole crimson herring, and it’s very disingenuous of those extremely politicized prosecutors to make that declare.” Brown assured voters that every inmate’s crime and habits in jail can be thought-about earlier than launch was granted.
Whereas supporters of Prop 57 described it as a humane response to a court docket order, critics say its proponents misrepresented the invoice to safe its passage. At a time when President Trump is placing progressive criminal justice organizations in his crosshairs, the troubled historical past of Prop 57 highlights the challenges of rehabilitating inmates whereas additionally decreasing jail overcrowding with out constructing extra prisons.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s Position
The only most aggressive advocate for Prop 57 was former Democratic Gov. Brown, who needed to cope with the implications of a sentencing reform he had signed in 1976 throughout his first stretch as governor, when tough-on-crime measures have been enacted. Now a long time later, with Brown governor once more, California’s prisons have been housing practically double the capability of inmates they have been constructed for. Services have been so severely overcrowded that the U.S. Supreme Court docket discovered their circumstances violated inmates’ Eighth Modification Constitutional protections towards merciless and weird punishment. In Might 2011, months following Brown’s inauguration, the court docket dominated in a split decision that the state should treatment the problem.
In writing for the five-member majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that the state’s jail system was stretched so skinny that it failed to offer primary medical care, which, as he wrote, was “incompatible with the idea of human dignity and has no place in a civilized society.” Citing how one prisoner was dying each week resulting from poor medical care, Kennedy declared that the courts “should not shrink from their constitutional obligation to implement the rights of all individuals, together with prisoners.”
On the jail inhabitants’s peak in 2006, greater than 165,000 inmates have been locked up in a system meant to deal with 85,000. However budgetary pressures meant that the state legislature wasn’t keen to allocate the funding obligatory to construct more room to accommodate inmates. So, the court docket ordered them to scale back the jail inhabitants by 30,000 inmates with the intention to restrict overcrowding to 137% capability. Whereas there isn’t any particular constitutional stage for overcrowding, the bulk opted to offer California somewhat extra wiggle room than the 130% capability really useful by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Brown, wanting to get federal oversight off his again, joined the state legislature and sprung into motion with the passage of AB109, which transferred inmates from crowded state detention services into county jails. However some county jails have been riddled with the identical issues and lacked the capability to accommodate an inflow of inmates. With assets stretched skinny, counties started releasing criminals years earlier than they served their sentences.
By 2014, a Los Angeles Times investigation discovered greater than 13,500 inmates have been being launched early from county jails every month throughout the state. Though the general public was assured that solely those that posed little hazard have been let go, knowledge reveals that some counties utterly halted incarceration of these convicted of crimes like home violence and little one abuse.
The early launch of convicted intercourse offender Sidney DeAvila was one significantly grotesque instance of the unintended penalties of AB109. After DeAvila was let loose early from San Joaquin County Jail in February 2013, he went on to rape, kill and dismember his 76-year-old grandmother.
Undeterred by the influence AB109 had on public security, Brown later campaigned for Prop 47, a 2014 poll measure that was marketed to Californians as merely decreasing penalties for nonviolent crimes like petty theft and drug possession. However the public was left in the dead of night about how the measure would additionally decrease penalties for automotive thieves, drug traffickers and open-air drug markets.
Nonetheless, Brown started selling extra reforms aimed toward decreasing California’s jail inhabitants.
Formally referred to as the Public Security and Rehabilitation Act of 2016, Prop 57 would, in accordance with Brown, handle the state’s jail overcrowding drawback whereas holding communities secure. Brown pitched the measure as an enlightened step that “orients the jail towards rehabilitation” whereas appreciating the human capability for change. “All of us study. I’ve realized in 40 years,” Brown stated on the time. “I believe prisoners can study.”
However Brown additionally assured voters there have been limits to his progressive imaginative and prescient. He repeatedly famous the ballot measure’s language that solely individuals “convicted of a nonviolent felony offense and sentenced to state jail shall be eligible for parole consideration after finishing the complete time period for his or her main offense.” Brown advised the Mercury Information newspaper in 2016 that“we had deliberate to supply parole to violent offenders, however we took that out.”
Brown estimated that solely about 1,100 prisoners per year would qualify for this system. Prosecutors who opposed the measure within the run-up to the vote additionally underestimated the variety of beneficiaries after they pegged it at 16,000.
Critics, together with some legislation enforcement teams, district attorneys, and victims’ advocates, argue that Brown’s miscalculation was a part of an effort to mislead voters about Prop 57’s attain. Regardless of repeated assurances that violent criminals wouldn’t qualify for early launch underneath the measure, the legislature’s earlier crime reclassification efforts meant that solely 23 specific crimes – resembling homicide, rape, arson and carjacking – have been thought-about offenses that may disqualify prisoners from the measure’s advantages. Many crimes the general public would take into account violent, together with Smiley Martin severely beating his girlfriend, should not included on that record.
“Dozens of great crimes can be thought-about non-violent for parole functions,” warned CalMatters columnist Dan Walters, together with “assault with a lethal weapon, soliciting homicide, intimidating or harming a criminal offense sufferer or witness, resisting arrest that injures a police officer, violent elder or little one abuse, arson with harm, human trafficking and a number of other types of manslaughter.”
Plea bargains additionally make some violent criminals eligible for early launch. Martin, for instance, was initially charged with kidnapping, which is recognized as a violent offense within the penal code. However that cost was withdrawn in his deal.
Brown additionally assured voters that felons who had been convicted of varied sexual crimes wouldn’t be thought-about for early launch. Nevertheless, rape of an unconscious individual, intercourse trafficking and even the trafficking of kids for intercourse should not thought-about violent felonies in accordance with California’s Penal Code. In confirming the misleading legal classifications within the state, Legal professional Common Rob Bonta told CalMatters that these crimes “ought to be mentioned and doubtlessly modified underneath no matter the suitable means is for Prop 57.”
The state legislature agreed with Bonta on the prosecution of kid intercourse predators. Soliciting minors underneath the age of 16 for intercourse was thought-about a misdemeanor in California up till September 2024, when Gov. Gavin Newsom lastly signed laws reclassifying it as a felony with harder penalties. Beforehand, soliciting a minor for intercourse, or paying for it, was merely a misdemeanor punishable by two days in jail and a $10,000 effective.
In 2021, California’s Supreme Court docket weighed in on Prop 57 and unanimously sided with those that had argued that Brown falsely portrayed the measure’s attain. In writing the unanimous decision, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said that “there are parts of [Prop 57’s] opponents’ argument that the [Corrections] Division should concede have been right, together with the characterization that people convicted of and presently serving sentences for offenses … like assault with a lethal weapon can be eligible for nonviolent offender parole consideration, or that a person with a previous violent felony conviction for homicide wouldn’t be excluded from nonviolent offender parole consideration.”
The Chief Justice addressed how perpetrators of great intercourse crimes have been additionally qualifying for early launch underneath the measure. She wrote that “the initiative’s language gives no indication that the voters meant to permit the [Corrections] Division to create a wholesale exclusion from parole consideration primarily based on an inmate’s intercourse offense convictions when the inmate was convicted of a nonviolent felony.”
Whereas the Court docket didn’t point out Gov. Brown by identify, his promotion of the poll measure was subtly cited by the Chief Justice. “Had the drafters of Proposition 57, and by extension the voters, meant to exclude inmates from nonviolent offender parole consideration primarily based on prior or present intercourse offense convictions,” the Chief Justice wrote, “it will have been a easy matter to say so explicitly.”
The court’s ruling made little distinction, as a result of mere weeks earlier than its determination, voters overwhelmingly rejected one other poorly written poll measure that was supposed to shut the violent crime loophole in Prop 57. The measure, referred to as Proposition 20, sought to change Prop 57 by denying early launch to perpetrators of violent crimes that had not been listed within the California Penal Code.
Nevertheless, the measure was misleadingly described as limiting “entry to parole applications established for nonviolent offenders.” In different phrases, there was a elementary drawback with utilizing the phrase “nonviolent” to explain the gaps in Prop 57 that the measure sought to treatment. Most voters have been unaware that the state penal code listed violent crimes just like the rape of a unconscious individual as nonviolent offenses. So, they have been underneath the impression that Prop 20 sought to impose harsh punishments for petty crimes, which many in liberal California are towards.
Prop 20’s timing might have additionally led to its demise. Voters selected the measure within the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 homicide whereas within the custody of Minneapolis police and the nation was amid what many known as a “racial reckoning.” The nation, and particularly liberal states like California, have been much less fascinated about public security and extra open to legal justice reforms resulting from considerations over mass incarceration and what they noticed as racist policing.
Credit score The place Credit score Wasn’t Due
Even when voters had been conscious that these discovered responsible of trafficking kids or strangling their wives would nonetheless be eligible for early launch underneath Prop 57, nobody was underneath the impression that felons would have their sentences lower brief with out enrolling in rehabilitation applications or incomes good habits credit. Nevertheless, the most recent CDCR report discloses that of the 34,215 inmates who have been launched early in fiscal 12 months 2019, 13,833 didn’t earn any enhanced habits credit to justify a discount of their jail sentence. Some 44% of those that didn’t earn any credit can be convicted of a brand new crime following their launch.
Much more damning is that the CDCR’s report concedes that the state launched “excessive threat” inmates who usually tend to reoffend. Primarily based on the California Static Danger Evaluation (CSRA), a instrument used to calculate the danger of a parolee committing a brand new crime, “excessive, reasonable, and low-risk people recidivate at about 60 %, 40 %, and 20 %, respectively.” But in fiscal 12 months 2019, “roughly 41.2 % of people within the launch cohort have a high-risk rating in accordance with the CSRA.”
Certainly, lots of the inmates who have been launched underneath Prop 57 in 2019 went on to reoffend and get convicted of latest crimes (44.0%). Nevertheless, there have been fewer convictions for individuals who did earn rehabilitative credit in jail (35.8%).
Of the 39.1% of parolees in fiscal 12 months 2019 who have been convicted of different crimes throughout the first three years of their launch, 22.1% have been for felonies and 17% for misdemeanors. However solely 17.4% of the convicted felons returned to jail. Even so, in accordance with the report, “the share of people returned for crimes towards individuals elevated by 2.9 share factors, the biggest improve of any return kind.”
Whereas overcrowding was the very problem that led to measures like Prop 57, state officers have shuttered a number of state prisons in recent times. 4 have been closed in 2021 alone, and it seems that state officers are deliberately avoiding jail time for convicts as a result of their goal is to shut extra for fiscal and ideological causes.
An area Los Angeles publication reported final spring that “due to the declining inmate headcount, California can shut as much as 5 extra of its 33 prisons and eight yards inside working prisons whereas nonetheless complying with a federal court docket order that caps the system’s capability.” In accordance with the Legislative Analyst’s Workplace, the state may save as much as $1 billion a 12 months by doing so. The associated fee to the general public’s security when there’s nowhere to detain perpetrators of violent crimes was not factored into its evaluation.
By November 2024, many Californians have been fed up. Greater than 65% of Alameda County voters approved the recall of Oakland’s progressive District Legal professional Pamela Worth. Equally, Los Angeles denied a second time period to D.A. George Gascon, one other legal justice reformer. Gascon was changed along with his tough-on-crime challenger Nathan Hochman. Lastly, practically 70% of voters permitted Proposition 36, which might reverse an earlier poll measure that weakened punishments for sure offenses like shoplifting and drug crimes, together with trafficking.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was, and nonetheless is, vehemently against Prop 36, citing the monetary burden of holding criminals accountable in one of many highest taxed states within the nation. Nonetheless, Prop 36 is “an unfunded mandate” that can “set this state again,” in accordance with Newsom. In spite of everything, if drug traffickers and repeat smash-and-grab thieves are met with harsher punishments like jail time, the highlight can be on Newsom for preemptively closing the very services essential to serve their sentences.
In a recent interview, Los Angeles Police Division Chief Jim McDonnell expressed frustration over serving the general public security calls for of the group with much less jail house obtainable. “Whereas the [District Attorney] will file circumstances that at the moment are obtainable to us by means of Prop 36, you continue to have a jail system that’s reducing in measurement repeatedly,” McDonnell said. “After I was Sheriff, there have been 18,000 beds obtainable [in Los Angeles County]. It’s now right down to 12,400,” he continued. Chief McDonnell argues that the dearth of beds is the explanation many offenders are again on the streets “with out the assets or rehabilitation that we might have preferred to have seen.”
Whereas Gov. Newsom has claimed that he “completely will implement the desire of the voters,” following the passage of Prop 36, the state legislature has refused to allocate the funding essential to implement it. The reality is, even when the state’s lawmakers offered the cash, Californians would nonetheless have a mountain to climb with all the assorted methods the state has chipped away at public security, together with Prop 57, crime reclassifications and jail closures.
This text was initially revealed by RealClearInvestigations and made obtainable by way of RealClearWire.
