LA Times Article on SB 300 ; California’s ‘special circumstances’ rule must change

BY ANABEL SOSA

JULY 29, 2022 5 AM PT

SACRAMENTO — Jamil Wilson was planning to celebrate his 20th birthday with friends, so he didn’t give it much thought when one of them, prior to the party, asked if they could pick up another pal at his home in Cerritos.

What Wilson didn’t know, he said later, is that his two friends were planning to commit a murder that night in 1994. By being at the scene of the crime, he would become an unwitting accomplice.

Wilson and his friends, Adrion McFarlin and Duane Gittens, were later arrested in connection with the murder of Gittens’ mother, Delphina Gittens, according to interviews and court documents. Duane Gittens said he took part in the killing because his mother had abused him for years.

Despite maintaining his innocence, Wilson was charged with felony murder in the first degree and with aiding and abetting a conspiracy, and was later convicted. Because of a tough crime law that California voters had recently approved, Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996, and ended up serving 25 years.

Wilson, whose sentence was commuted in 2019, is now a voice for reforming California’s criminal justice statutes through a bill being debated in the state Capitol.

SB 300, also called the Sentencing Reform Act, would rewrite part of Proposition 115, a 1990 ballot initiative that expanded the definition of first-degree murder to include murder committed during other serious crimes. Critics say that, over the last three decades, that change in state law has unjustly condemned large numbers of Californians to life without the possibility of parole sentences, many of them persons of color, such as Wilson, who were accomplices who did not kill anyone or act with intent to kill.

Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), author of SB 300, said that judges should have more discretion in sentencing accomplices who may have unwittingly gotten themselves mired in a horrible crime. “I don’t blame the voters. I don’t blame anyone necessarily for the outcomes that we’re getting today, but we’re getting them, nonetheless,” Cortese told The Times in discussing the 1990 ballot measure.

As for Wilson, he hopes to prevent unduly heavy sentences of young people who could face decades behind bars, if not their entire lives. In his case, the underlying felony was aiding and abetting a conspiracy to murder. Police alleged he intended to benefit from a life insurance policy.

“During my sentencing, the judge literally cried in the courtroom saying that he wished he could give me a lesser sentence,” said Wilson, who at the time of his arrest was still living with his parents. “After hearing the case he knew deep down in his heart that I did not deserve the life without parole sentence.”

Three years out of prison, Wilson — who went by the name Taewon Wilson when he was arrested — now works with previously incarcerated people at a nonprofit organization in the Bay Area. Upon his release, he reunited with his high school sweetheart, to whom he wrote letters for years while behind bars, and they soon married. She also works with previously incarcerated individuals. They plan to visit his family in his native South Korea in the next year.

****

Tammy Cooper, a California woman who was sex trafficked at 14, spent 28 years in prison for a murder committed by her abusive pimp. Cooper’s mistake was telling her abuser about a man who kept extra cash in his residence and would be easy to rob.

When the pimp killed the man, they both fled the scene, and Cooper — the driver — eventually turned herself in. She was charged with felony murder under special circumstances and ultimately was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Her abuser was sentenced under a lesser charge. Cooper, who was in her early thirties when the crime occurred, was charged under the special circumstance law because she was at the scene where the murder and burglary took place.

“I made a life for myself in prison,” Cooper told The Times. She said she made use of her time there by going to an abuse trauma group twice a week for ten years and helping start a group to help other victims of human trafficking. "[Those groups] helped me out a lot.”

A large majority of women who are incarcerated in the U.S. have been victims of domestic abuse and the number of incarcerated women is on the rise nationally, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Four years out, Cooper now works as a trauma counselor for previously incarcerated women who have been victims of sex trafficking, were abused, or killed their abusers and who are transitioning back into society. Cooper said the main pillar of her job is to place women in other parole programs. Not all women qualify to receive help from the program she works for, but “I always make sure they have a place to go.”

****

Want to help us amplify your support on social media for SB300? Check out our downloadable toolkit on Google Docs.

Full article from LA Times