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California Court of Appeal Remands Parole Board Decision for Further Action

California Court of Appeal Remands Parole Board Decision for Further Action

On March 5, 2014, the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Division Two of the First Appellate District granted the supplemental petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed in regard to the decision of the Board of Parole Hearings (Board) denying Roy T. Butler a parole date. Petitioner Butler challenged the Board’s finding that he was unsuitable for parole because he lacked sufficient insight into the role he played in the commission of a murder and that his parole plan was vague.

Butler was charged, along with Lanzester Hymes and Jane Woods, in the September 28, 1987 murder of Richard Davis, Woods’ physically abusive roommate. Hymes was the prime mover in the events as they unfolded, and Butler was a facilitator. The exact chronology of events was not clear, but on the day in question, Davis was first beaten with a club, received medical treatment, and then returned home with Woods, to find the other two defendants there with knives. Only Hymes stabbed Davis; Butler hid in the bathroom during the stabbing and then “snuck out” of the house. Hymes pleaded guilty to first degree murder; Woods and Butler to second degree murder. The California Department of Corrections, in a pre-sentence investigation report, was sympathetic to Butler and his background, and the trial court requested a “diagnostic study…assessing Butler’s potential for functioning successfully on probation.” Butler was sentenced to fifteen years to life. The Board declined to grant Butler a parole date five times prior to the instant contest.

In February of 2012, the Board denied Butler’s parole date based on Butler’s vague parole plan, citing a lack of detail in his parole plan and concluded Butler “would pose a current unreasonable risk of dangerousness to society if released from prison.” Butler appealed to the instant cause.

In its analysis, the Court of Appeals first reminded the Board that parole was instituted to be the rule rather than the exception and then looked to the psychological evaluation that the Board based its “dangerousness” decision on. Upon further study of the voluminous psychological evaluation, the court found that the assessment actually revealed the opposite of what the Board claimed; that Butler was substantially less likely, than the vast majority of prisoners, to be a violent threat to society. One report even showed him to be in the bottom three percent with respect to violent tendencies. The Court also found that the Board’s claim, that Butler lacked sufficient insight into the murder, was not supported by any evidence. In sum, this left only Butler’s parole plan as grounds for the Board to deny parole. The Court stated that this alone was an insufficient reason to deny parole.

The Court concluded that the Board’s decision revealed only one unsuitability factor in Butler’s plan, that all factors were not given due attention, and that the Board’s analysis of Butler’s parole plan was flawed and, if correctly undertaken, might have resulted in a parole date. The Court ordered the Board to vacate their previous decision and to reconsider, taking into account the points brought out herein.

There was one dissenting opinion that focused on the ‘some evidence’ parameter of a due process review. See: In Re Butler, A137273(Cal. Ct. App. 2014).

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Related legal case

In Re Butler