stating that "[t]he Board must determine whether a prisoner is presently too dangerous to be deemed suitable for parole based on the ‘circumstances tending to show unsuitability’ and the 'circumstances tending to show suitability' ” and that "the denial of parole may be predicated on a prisoner’s commitment offense only where the Board can 'point to factors beyond the minimum elements of the crime for which the inmate was committed’ that demonstrate the inmate will, at the time of the suitability hearing, present a danger to society if released,” such as whether the offense was carried out in a dispassionate and calculated manner, the offense was carried out in a manner which demonstrates an exceptionally callous disregard for human suffering, and the motive for the crime is inexplicable or very trivial in relation to the offense
How later courts described this case
- stating that "[t]he Board must determine whether a prisoner is presently too dangerous to be deemed suitable for parole based on the ‘circumstances tending to show unsuitability’ and the 'circumstances tending to show suitability' ” and that "the denial of parole may be predicated on a prisoner’s commitment offense only where the Board can 'point to factors beyond the minimum elements of the crime for which the inmate was committed’ that demonstrate the inmate will, at the time of the suitability hearing, present a danger to society if released,” such as whether the offense was carried out in a dispassionate and calculated manner, the offense was carried out in a manner which demonstrates an exceptionally callous disregard for human suffering, and the motive for the crime is inexplicable or very trivial in relation to the offense
- "It deprives a whole class of cases of their normal value as governing authority for the circuit which has decided them."
- “California Penal Code section 3041 [ 7 ] vests [petitioner] and all other California prisoners whose sentences provide for the possibility of parole with a constitutionally protected liberty interest in the receipt of a parole release date, a liberty interest that is protected by the procedural safeguards of the Due Process Clause.” (footnote added)
- “California Penal Code section 3041[ 6 ] vests [petitioner] and all other California prisoners whose sentences provide for the possibility of parole with a constitutionally protected liberty interest in the receipt of a parole release date, a liberty interest that is protected by the procedural safeguards of the Due Process Clause.” (footnote added)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
I fully join in Judge Noonan’s sagacious concurrence. Would that it were the law of the land. I add only a couple of thoughts.
After affording federal courts the power to issue writs of habeas corpus in state cases, Congress tells us in AEDPA that we may not grant relief to citizens who are being held in prison in violation of their constitutional rights unless the constitutional error that led to their unlawful conviction or sentence is one that could not have been made by a reasonable jurist. Whether it was reasonable for a state court to misapprehend the dictates of the Constitution in a particular case hardly seems relevant to a citizen’s right not to be imprisoned in violation of the fundamental liberties he is granted by the document that governs our societal structure. Nor is authorizing jurists to determine that a citizen’s detention is unlawful, but that he must remain incarcerated because a magistrate’s error is understandable, consistent with our duty as jurists to enforce the laws and protect the rights of our citizens against arbitrary state action.
Having granted the courts the authority to review state convictions under our habe-as powers, it seems to me inconsistent with our fundamental obligations as judges to require us, except in unusual or exceptional circumstances, to rule for the state regardless of whether it violated the Constitution. Such a mandate appears to me to tell us how to decide a case. That, for the reasons Judge Noonan so well expresses, Congress simply may not do.