Parole Board Revocation Hearing

A couple of months ago I was asked by the pastor-wife of a parolee who had been violated by his parole officer to take a look at the case.

The facts were that the parole officer claimed he had seen pornography on the parolee’s laptop during an unannounced home visit, a violation of the terms of his parole. The parole officer did not show any pornographic images on the laptop to the parolee when he violated him and cuffed him. He just said he had seen them.

Later, the parole officer remembered that what he had first characterized as mere pornography had in fact been child pornography. Even later the same parole officer remembered that there also had been images of penetration of children!

Of course you would assume his memory could be checked by a look at a copy of the computer’s hard drive, but parole hearings do not provide much in the way of due process. As the parole officer was only too happy to inform me in one of our first conversations, all that would matter at the revocation hearing would be his testimony as to what he saw.

No physical evidence would be needed. Whatever he remembered seeing would be the only “evidence” needed to send my client back to prison.

My only recourse was to go to a Superior Court and petition for a writ of mandate (mandamus), ordering the parole board and the D.A. to allow the defense access to the physical evidence.

This is not an easy thing to do. It requires extraordinary circumstances, well pled, and many more petitions for such writs are turned down than are accepted. So I of course I am unusually pleased to post to this blog that today I received the Superior Court’s signed order, which reads, in part,

“Respondent (Board of Parole Hearings of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) is commanded immediately upon receipt of this writ . . . to provide Petitioner’s Attorney with access to the evidence to be used [against his client].”

It is so great when justice works!