Over 10,000 sex offenders including convicted pedophiles and rapists are set to be released to the streets in the near future thanks to Governor Jerry Brown and the ruling of a Superior Court Judge in Sacramento who claim crimes such as “intimately touching an unlawfully restrained person” or “raping a drugged or unconscious victim” are not violent crimes.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sacramento Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner issued a preliminary order on Friday to California state prison officials which ordered them to rewrite their regulations stemming from Prop. 57.
The ruling means individuals convicted of offenses such as incest, pimping minors into prostitution and possession of child pornography will soon be free to walk among the public again.
In a bid to reduce overcrowding in state prisons, California voters in 2016 approved a ballot measure known as Proposition 57 which allows for the early parole release of supposedly “non-violent offenders“.
The measure passed, in part, based on a statement from Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown which promised that individuals convicted of non-violent sexual offenses would be excluded from consideration for early release.
The state argued that language within Prop. 57 gave officials “broad discretion” to include any class of offenders for consideration for early parole, but Judge Sumner disagreed and argued that voters want to see pedophiles and rapists released from prison early.
“If the voters had intended to exclude all registered sex offenders from early parole consideration under Proposition 57, they presumably would have said so,” Judge Sumner stated.
He stated further that the Corrections Department could only exclude violent sex offenders from early parole, and ordered the department to more accurately define what constituted a violent sexual offense. In Judge Sumner’s opinion, pimping a minor or restraining and sexually assaulting a victim are not violent enough to constitute a violent sexual offense.
On top of that, he also stated that sexual offenders who had already served time for their crimes — even violent ones — but were in prison on an unrelated non-violent offense “must be included in the early parole consideration process” and let out of prison early.
Conservative Tribune reports that the Judge’s ruling was praised by the president of the advocate group “California Reform Sex Offender Laws”, Janice Belluci, who estimated the change could allow for the release of roughly half of the state’s more than 20,000 sex offenders serving time in prison.
She argued that anyone convicted of a sex crime who was not included on the state’s narrow list of 23 violent offenses — things like murder, kidnapping and rape — must be considered released from prison early like other non-violent convicts.
“Until they figure something else out, they have to consider anybody convicted of a nonviolent offense even if it was a sex offense,” Bellucci told reporters outside the courtroom. “We believe we’ve won a battle, but the war continues.”
What is the California Reform Sex Offender Laws group fighting a war against? Justice?
It is worth noting that in addition to those convicted of incest, pimping a minor or possessing child pornography, the state of California will now be required to consider early release for those individuals convicted of offenses like indecent exposure, intimately touching an unlawfully restrained person or even raping a drugged or unconscious victim, which is now inconceivably no longer considered a violent crime by the liberal state.