By Michelle Morgante, The Associated Press
San Diego (AP) -- Adam Riojas spent 13 years waiting for freedom.
Convicted in 1991 of a murder he insists he didn’t commit, the former real estate agent maintained his innocence despite offers of a plea deal and urgings to express remorse. Then in 2002, relatives told the state parole board they’d heard Riojas’ estranged father, a drug dealer and smuggler, confess to the killing shortly before his own death. The board, without any objection from the prosecutors who sent Riojas to prison, granted him parole.
Their recommendation then was sent to Gov. Gray Davis who, having publicly vowed to keep convicted murderers in prison for life, rejected it.
But a year later, after an unexpected change in state leadership, Riojas is free, one of the 31 convicted murderers and kidnappers paroled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first seven months in office.
That’s nearly four times the eight life-term inmates who were granted parole during Davis’ 4 1/2 years as governor.
For Riojas, the difference that led to his freedom was simply politics.
He and his lawyer, Justin Brooks of the California Innocence Project, contend fears of a Willie Horton-type imbroglio -- the case of a murderer who committed rape while on furlough and helped doomed Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’ 1988 bid for the White House -- led the Democratic governor to reject parole for convicted murders with little regard to the merits of their cases.
Schwarzenegger, in contrast, “is a big man and he’s strong,” Riojas says. “He doesn’t have to portray a real tough-guy image because people already see him as tough.”
Brooks says the details of Riojas’ case were identical in each of his two parole bids, “and it was just a completely different result. Politically, I think Davis was unwilling to give the appearance that he was soft on crime.”
Schwarzenegger’s legal secretary, Peter Siggins, credits the change to a difference in philosophy. “He is a governor who believes people can reform and be reformed.”
Until the final year of Davis’ term, only three murderers were given parole, all women who killed men they claimed had abused them for years. One inmate, Robert Rosenkrantz, sued Davis claiming the governor denied him due process by adopting a blanket no-parole policy. A trial court agreed, but the ruling was reversed on appeal with the judges pointing to the releases of the battered women.
Davis’ former spokesman, Steve Maviglio, insists each parole-recommendation sent to the governor received individual consideration.
“Politics didn’t play into his review. He would take each case on a one-by-one basis,” Maviglio said.
Davis, with the counsel of his legal secretary, reviewed each case fairly, Maviglio said, “but he tended to come down on the side of the victims and the prosecutors more often than someone who’s been in prison.”
Make that much more often: Davis rejected release for 286 life-term inmates who received parole recommendations from the state Board of Prison Terms. Of the 89 recommendations sent to Schwarzenegger so far, he has reversed 55 and sent three back for further review.
Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit firm protecting the rights of prisoners, says Schwarzenegger is giving more hope to inmates but still is not going far enough.
“He’s still reversing more than 50 percent of cases that the board is granting parole on. I don’t think that’s appropriate,” he said.
Very few of the life-term inmates who seek parole each year -- about 150 out of more than 4,000 -- win recommendations from the nine-member board, which currently includes several former law enforcement professionals.
In addition to statements from prosecutors and victims or their families, the board considers an inmate’s criminal history, behavior in prison, psychological profile, feelings toward the crime, and likelihood of returning to criminal behavior.
Siggins said a staff lawyer goes over each case before submitting it to Schwarzenegger, who reviews it carefully with Siggins. Questions about public safety far outweigh any political concerns, he said.
“These are always hard decisions,” he said. “I sometimes walk out of this building at night hoping that we’ve done the right thing either way, either to let someone out or not let someone out.”
Harriet Salarno, whose 18-year-old daughter was murdered by an estranged boyfriend in 1979, is worried by Schwarzenegger’s record. As president of the advocacy group Crime Victims United of California, she said the state owes more to crime victims and the general public than to violent criminals, “very few” of whom can be reformed.
“We supported Gov. Davis because he was concerned with public safety and that was a high priority,” she said. Schwarzenegger may have the power to free convicted murderers, but “let’s just pray to God that they don’t become repeat offenders.”
Riojas, who finished 11 vocational programs during his incarceration, said the new administration is helping encourage inmates to truly turn their lives around. Under Davis, he said, there was no reason to hope.
“I’ve seen a lot of inmates giving up,” Riojas said. “they would go ahead and fight and start using drugs or alcohol ... because they said ‘Hey, I’m never getting out because no matter what I do these guys are not letting me out.”’
“You would not believe the tension that the Davis years created,” he said. “If our state doesn’t do this, rehabilitate our people who are incarcerated, I believe that the prisons are ready to blow up.”