Bill Would Release Death Sentenced Murders After 20 Years
By Michael Rushford, California Globe, April 11, 2023
The California Senate Public Safety Committee voted on a bill Tuesday to give the state’s worst murderers, who have been sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole (LWOP), the opportunity to have their sentences invalidated and make them eligible for parole.
Senate Bill 94, authored by Senator Dave Cortese (D-Santa Clara), specifies that criminals convicted of murder with special circumstances before June 5, 1990, and sentenced to death or LWOP would be provided with a public defender to petition for recall and resentencing. The bill would authorize the court to modify the murderer’s sentence to impose a lesser sentence and apply any changes in law that reduce sentences or provide for judicial discretion, or to vacate the murderer’s conviction and impose judgment on a lesser included offense.
Among the murderers who could apply for a sentence reduction and possible release is Tiequon Cox, who in 1984, went to the wrong Los Angeles home for a gang-revenge killing and murdered a mother, her daughter and two of her grandchildren. Cox was sentenced to death for these crimes. In 2004, while on death row, Cox stabbed another condemned murderer and, along with three other murderers, cut a hole in the San Quentin fence and nearly escaped.
Co-authors of SB94 include Democrat Senators Josh Becker (D-San Mateo), Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), and Assemblywoman Corrie Jackson (D-Riverside) and Assemblywoman Akilah Weber (D-San Diego).
The beneficiaries of this measure, if passed, will be criminals convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances. These are murderers who killed multiple victims or killed in concert with a rape, robbery, kidnapping or torture. While it would seem unthinkable for any legislator, let alone a group of them, to want their names on a bill that would allow murderers like these to go free, bear in mind that Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, Alameda County DA Pamela Price and California Attorney General Rob Bonta all support setting murderers free after 15-20 years in prison.
With the recent fatal shooting of a 5-year-old girl riding in the backseat of her parents car on a bay area freeway, last week’s fatal stabbing of revered tech executive Bob Lee on a San Francisco sidewalk, and the random murder of an innocent hostage and injury of two others at a Roseville Park, the slogan “no justice, no peace” seems quite appropriate for the Golden State.