San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has ordered an immediate review of the circumstances in which her office supported the parole of murderer Royce Miller – days before Governor Gavin Newsom must decide whether to overturn a parole board decision to free him.
Miller was convicted of the 2004 murder of Lincoln High School senior Maxina Danner. He beat, tasered and strangled-to-death the 17-year-old girl before dumping her body on a roadside in a city park.
The state parole board ordered his release at a hearing on October 12 2023. At that hearing an attorney from the San Francisco district attorney’s office backed Miller’s release – an occurrence described as “very unique” by a persuaded presiding parole commissioner.
“The parole hearing was not handled how we expect such matters to be handled,” Jenkins’ spokesman said this evening after it emerged that the victim’s family only learned that the district attorney’s office was supporting the release of the killer at the parole hearing itself.
“It is expected that the family of victims are communicated with leading up to and through these hearings. The attorney that handled this hearing has been removed from handling these types of hearings and is no longer employed by the district attorney’s office. Since then, new protocols have been put in place to ensure that management has reviewed and approved parole hearing recommendations on behalf of the office and that victims have been contacted.”
“The District Attorney’s office strives to ensure that each case up for parole review is thoroughly reviewed to ensure that the requestor has been rehabilitated and the victim or their surviving family members are consulted before taking any position. That did not happen in this case.”
“At the request [of Maxina’s family] we are conducting another review of this case and have notified the Governor’s office of this additional review and that we will be remitting the findings of our review expeditiously.”
The spokesman confirmed the district attorney would meet with the family at their request.
The attorney who argued for Miller’s release was a former public defender who joined the prosecutor’s office during the term of now-ousted district attorney Chesa Boudin.
Governor Newsom has two weeks remaining in which to decide whether to reverse the parole decision. Maxina’s family had made a last-ditch plea to him to act. In 2023 he intervened on eight occasions to stop the release of convicted murderers granted parole.
Newsom was mayor of San Francisco at the time of Maxina’s death and visited her school to console her classmates.
UPDATE: San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has now written to Governor Newsom asking him to prevent Miller’s release.
“A review of Inmate Miller’s 2023 BPH Comprehensive Risk Assessment establishes that Inmate Miller currently poses an unreasonable risk of danger to society if released from prison – contrary to the representations made at the October 2023 hearing,” she wrote.
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