Above, Smiley Martin, a profession legal launched as a “nonviolent offender” underneath California’s Proposition 57. He went on to reoffend – violently and in a giant approach, within the worst mass capturing within the state capital’s historical past.
By Ana Kasparian, RealClearInvestigations
Might 1, 2025
Smiley Martin ought to have been behind bars.
A profession legal with a lengthy rap sheet involving firearms, he was given a ten yr sentence in 2018 for punching, dragging and severely beating his girlfriend with a belt. In jail, Martin was discovered responsible of beating one other inmate and fascinating in different legal exercise. However, he was freed simply 4 years later, due to a plea deal that categorized him as a “nonviolent offender” and a California poll measure that sharply lowered sentences for “good conduct.”
Simply two months after his launch, Martin and several other accomplices, together with his brother, have been arrested for finishing up the worst mass capturing in Sacramento’s historical past – leaving six useless and 12 others injured on April 3, 2022. Martin was charged with three counts of homicide 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.
Jailbirds uncaged: from a Proposition 57 parole legal professional’s web site.
calparolelawyer.com
Martin’s life and loss of life have introduced consideration to the legal justice reform that helped put him again on the streets: Proposition 57. The poll measure was bought to the general public in 2016 as a strategy to relieve the state’s chronically overcrowded prisons by rewarding “nonviolent” offenders for good conduct by shortening their sentences. It was speculated to be a humanitarian reply to what social justice activists described as an epidemic of “mass incarceration.” It has as a substitute put tens of 1000’s of violent offenders similar to Martin again on the streets.
Lots of them have been rearrested. The most recent Recidivism Report from the California Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation exhibits 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 stories virtually half the inmates granted early launch had not earned any credit for good conduct.
Prop 57 critics usually are not shocked. Within the run-up to the 2016 poll measure – which was authorized with the assist 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 again; “That’s an entire purple herring, and it’s very disingenuous of those extremely politicized prosecutors to make that declare.” Brown assured voters that every inmate’s crime and conduct in jail could be thought of earlier than launch was granted.
Whereas supporters of Prop 57 described it as a humane response to a courtroom order, critics say its proponents misrepresented the invoice to safe its passage. At a time when President Trump is placing progressive legal justice organizations in his crosshairs, the troubled historical past of Prop 57 highlights the challenges of rehabilitating inmates whereas additionally lowering jail overcrowding with out constructing extra prisons.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s Function
Prop 57’s foremost proponent in 2016 was Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, above, who confronted the implications of his first stretch as governor a long time earlier: a jail inhabitants that had almost doubled.
AP
The only most aggressive advocate for Prop 57 was former Democratic Gov. Brown, who needed to deal 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 almost double the capability of inmates they have been constructed for. Services have been so severely overcrowded that the U.S. Supreme Courtroom discovered their situations violated inmates’ Eighth Modification Constitutional protections in opposition to merciless and weird punishment. In Might 2011, months following Brown’s inauguration, the courtroom dominated in a break up choice that the state should treatment the difficulty.
Justice Anthony Kennedy: California’s jail system is “incompatible with the idea of human dignity.”
AP
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 fundamental 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 because of 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 prepared to allocate the funding essential to construct more room to deal with inmates. So, the courtroom ordered them to scale back the jail inhabitants by 30,000 inmates in an effort to restrict overcrowding to 137% capability. Whereas there isn’t any particular constitutional stage for overcrowding, the bulk opted to provide California somewhat extra wiggle room than the 130% capability really helpful by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Brown, desperate 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 deal with an inflow of inmates. With assets stretched skinny, counties started releasing criminals years earlier than they served their sentences.
By 2014, a Los Angeles Instances 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 exhibits that some counties fully halted incarceration of these convicted of crimes like home violence and youngster 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 impression AB109 had on public security, Brown later campaigned for Prop 47, a 2014 poll measure that was marketed to Californians as merely reducing penalties for nonviolent crimes like petty theft and drug possession. However the public was left at the hours of darkness about how the measure would additionally decrease penalties for automobile thieves, drug traffickers and open-air drug markets.
However, Brown started selling extra reforms aimed toward reducing 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 discovered 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 poll measure’s language that solely folks “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 yr 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 regulation 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 particular crimes – similar to homicide, rape, arson and carjacking – have been thought of offenses that might disqualify prisoners from the measure’s advantages. Many crimes the general public would contemplate violent, together with Smiley Martin severely beating his girlfriend, usually are not included on that record.
Above, San Quentin State Jail in 2016. Regardless of assurances that violent criminals wouldn’t qualify for early launch underneath Prop 57, earlier crime reclassification efforts meant that solely 23 particular offenses have been disqualifying. Many crimes the general public would contemplate violent, together with Smiley Martin severely beating his girlfriend, weren’t included.
AP
“Dozens of great crimes could be thought of non-violent for parole functions,” warned CalMatters columnist Dan Walters, together with “assault with a lethal weapon, soliciting homicide, intimidating or harming against the law sufferer or witness, resisting arrest that injures a police officer, violent elder or youngster abuse, arson with harm, human trafficking and several 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.
California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye: Sided with those that argued that the governor had falsely portrayed Proposition 57’s attain.
supreme.courts.ca.gov
Brown additionally assured voters that felons who had been convicted of varied sexual crimes wouldn’t be thought of for early launch. Nevertheless, rape of an unconscious particular person, intercourse trafficking and even the trafficking of kids for intercourse usually are not thought of violent felonies in accordance with California’s Penal Code. In confirming the misleading legal classifications within the state, Legal professional Normal Rob Bonta advised CalMatters that these crimes “needs 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 of 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 positive.
In 2021, California’s Supreme Courtroom 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 choice, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye acknowledged that “there are parts of (Prop 57’s) opponents’ argument that the (Corrections) Division should concede have been appropriate, together with the characterization that people convicted of and at present serving sentences for offenses … like assault with a lethal weapon could 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 supplies no indication that the voters supposed 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 Courtroom 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, supposed to exclude inmates from nonviolent offender parole consideration primarily based on prior or present intercourse offense convictions,” the Chief Justice wrote, “it might have been a easy matter to say so explicitly.”
The courtroom’s ruling made little distinction, as a result of mere weeks earlier than its choice, 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 particular person 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 in opposition to.
Prop 20’s timing could 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 desirous about public security and extra open to legal justice reforms because of issues 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 quick with out enrolling in rehabilitation applications or incomes good conduct credit. Nevertheless, the newest CDCR report discloses that of the 34,215 inmates who have been launched early in fiscal yr 2019, 13,833 didn’t earn any enhanced conduct credit to justify a discount of their jail sentence. Some 44% of those that didn’t earn any credit could be convicted of a brand new crime following their launch.
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Cites the monetary burden of holding criminals accountable in one of many highest taxed states within the nation.
AP
Much more damning is that the CDCR’s report concedes that the state launched “excessive danger” inmates who usually tend to reoffend. Primarily based on the California Static Threat 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 yr 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 many who did earn rehabilitative credit in jail (35.8%).
Of the 39.1% of parolees in fiscal yr 2019 who have been convicted of different crimes inside 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 proportion of people returned for crimes in opposition to individuals elevated by 2.9 proportion factors, the most important improve of any return sort.”
Whereas overcrowding was the very problem that led to measures like Prop 57, state officers have shuttered a number of state prisons lately. 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.
Jim McConnell, LA police chief: “You continue to have a jail system that’s lowering in measurement repeatedly.”
LA Police Depafrtment/Wikimedia
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 courtroom order that caps the system’s capability.” In accordance with the Legislative Analyst’s Workplace, the state might save as much as $1 billion a yr by doing so. The 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 authorized 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 together with his tough-on-crime challenger Nathan Hochman. Lastly, almost 70% of voters authorized 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 in opposition to 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 may “set this state again,” in accordance with Newsom. In any case, if drug traffickers and repeat smash-and-grab thieves are met with harsher punishments like jail time, the highlight could be on Newsom for preemptively closing the very services essential to serve their sentences.
In a latest 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 area out there. “Whereas the (District Legal professional) will file instances that are actually out there to us by Prop 36, you continue to have a jail system that’s lowering in measurement repeatedly,” McDonnell acknowledged. “Once I was Sheriff, there have been 18,000 beds out there (in Los Angeles County). It’s now all the way 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 supplied the cash, Californians would nonetheless have a mountain to climb with all the varied methods the state has chipped away at public security, together with Prop 57, crime reclassifications and jail closures.
