An Oakland killer will stay behind bars after the intervention of Governor Gavin Newsom – who told the parole board he harbored doubts about the risk that would be posed by the felon’s release and asked them to look again at the decision.
That move prompted commissioners last month to cancel the parole of Jason Hall. Hall was convicted of second-degree murder after shooting a rival to death on an East Oakland street in 2013.
No prosecutor attended the hearing in October last year at which Hall was first granted parole, which was held in the dying embers of since-ousted District Attorney Pamela Price’s term of office.
Her failure to dispatch an assistant district attorney to address the parole panel, which heard only from a defense attorney, led to the Governor feeling compelled to express misgivings about a parole decision on behalf of Alameda residents because no one from the county prosecutor’s office did it themselves.
Jason Hall shot 22-year-old Marcus Evans six times in April 2013 after a simmering dispute between the pair boiled over in the parking lot of an East Oakland liquor store. Evans died the next day.
A court was told that Evans left behind a five-year-old daughter.
Hall pleaded no contest to second degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
“[G]iven the relative recency of Mr Hall’s progress in rehabilitation,” wrote Newsom, “I ask the Board to determine whether he has sufficiently mitigated his risk factors and developed prosocial management tools he will need to maintain healthy relationships in the community.”
“I find that this case warrants the consideration of the full Board of Parole Hearings to determine whether Mr Hall can be safely released at this time.”
At a specially organized ‘rescission hearing’ held on July 17, parole commissioners – likely frustrated given that a prosecutor’s presence at the initial hearing could have illuminated these issues for the panel and forestalled the need for the Governor’s intervention – voted to rescind the grant of parole.
Hall remains incarcerated at Solana State Prison.
Price’s term of office was marked by her staunch advocacy on behalf of many of Alameda’s most depraved killers. Her cadre of ex-public defenders worked to have condemned and ‘life without parole’ murderers resentenced to lower terms and then to be freed at parole hearings.
In other instances, as in Hall’s case, she would simply not send anyone at all to hearings – leaving the parole panel to hear only from the inmate and his attorney as they tried to determine whether to grant parole.
Price’s replacement Ursula Jones Dickson has reestablished the practice of sending prosecutors to parole hearings to cast a skepitcal eye over inmates’ claims of rehabilitation.
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