The proponents of Proposition 57 assured Californians that its early release was only for "nonviolent offenders." Is arson a nonviolent offense? People die in arson fires, both people caught in the flames and firefighters who respond to them.
Dale Yurong reports for ABC30:
A Madera County arsonist convicted of a string of fires in Yosemite Lakes Park could be eligible for parole and that has many people concerned.
Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to 30 years in prison back in 2014. But now he is being considered for early parole and that worries those who watched their neighborhood burn.
Residents of Yosemite Lakes Park will never forget that two month period in 2013 when 30 fires broke out in their community.
Babs Stern recalled, "Oh it was horrible because we couldn't figure out why. It was just very terrorizing."
Kenneth Jackson and his wife Alice Waterman were convicted and then sentenced for setting 21 fires.
Waterman has served her sentence but under Prop 57, Jackson is up for his third Nonviolent Offender Parole Review Process.
It's now become an annual battle.
As you presumably know Arson is a violent felony in California if it causes great bodily injury or if it involves an inhabited structure or property. This definition existed before Proposition 57 was passed and since "we presume the electorate is “ ‘aware of existing laws and judicial construction thereof’ ” Briggs v. Brown (2017) 3 Cal.5th 808, 862 (Liu, concurring) the answer to your question is no, it is not a violent offense and the electorate was aware of this at the time the proposition was passed.
Subdivision (c) of California Penal Code section 667.5 contains a definition of "violent felony" "[f]or the purpose of this section." The purpose is imposing sentence enhancements on repeat felons, and the list is less than comprehensive. There is no statute defining "violent felony" in general. The sloppily drafted Proposition 57 does not adopt this definition (as some statutes do), nor does it state its own.
So voters could not possibly have known that the only definition of violent crime in the penal code would be used to define that term in a new penal code section but clearly know that the mandatory language of a time limit in Prop 66 would just be a suggestion based on prior caselaw. OK.
You are evidently incapable of having a discussion without mischaracterizing what the other person is saying, and I am very tired of it.
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