By Andy Furillo
afurillo@sacbee.com
A Sacramento judge today denied a request by the Sacramento County deputies union to bar the Sheriff's Department from awarding increased good-behavior time credits to jail inmates.
The decision by Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster means that inmates will be getting out of jail months earlier than under the old system in which the offenders only got a third of the time off their sentences. An inmate sentenced to a year in county jail who had been serving eight months, for example, will now serve only six months if he or she earns maximum credits for good behavior.
Nearly 300 inmates already have been released under the 50-percent time-credit system that was put into place by a state law passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. The law went into effect Jan. 25.
The Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs Association filed suit to stop the Sheriff's Department from giving the inmates half-time credits. The union said the "one-for-one" credit system amounted to an early release for the inmates who benefited.
Although McMaster refused to grant the temporary restraining order sought by the union, he did issue an order to show cause on why he shouldn't enjoin the sheriff from granting the enhanced time credits.
A hearing on the preliminary injunction has tentatively been scheduled for March 3.
Today's decision was McMaster's fourth ruling in case. He had earlier issued a temporary restraining order to stop granting any time credits to county jail inmates. Then he modified the order to allow for time credits that inmates earned prior to the new law going into effect on Jan. 25.
Earlier this week, McMaster lifted his previous order entirely.
A lengthy hearing on the case today featured strident exchanges between David Mastagni, the attorney who is representing the deputies' union, and Sacramento County Assistant District Attorney Albert Locher over whether the provisions of Marsy's Law, the so-called "victims' bill of rights" California voters passed in November 2008, apply to the case.
The DA's office filed a friend-of-the-court brief Thursday opposing the union's effort to get the temporary restraining order reinstated.
Mastagni argued that extending the time credits on the jail inmates violates Marsy's Law, and he chided the DA's Office for taking the same side in the case as the Public Defender's Office. Both, Mastagni said, are acting "contrary to the will of the people."
Marsy's Law, Mastagini argued, mandates that victims be notified before inmates are released from custody earlier than proscribed by their sentences. He said Marsy's Law bars early releases brought on by budget considerations or as efforts to relieve prison overcrowding.
"Victims have rights, they deserve to be heard, and they deserve to be involved in the process of early release," Mastagni told the court.
Locher fired back that his office strongly supports Marsy's Law. "I couldn't disagree more strongly" with Mastagni, Locher said, about the plaintiff lawyer's characterization of the DA's position on the voter-approved initiative. Locher's boss, District Attorney Jan Scully, campaigned for the measure in 2008.
Locher said that Marsy's Law "has nothing to do with this case" and that its provisions make specific exceptions for statutorily-authorized time credits that inmates can earn as a result of their in-custody behavior.
He said in his court papers that victims have a right to be heard at any point in a criminal proceeding "upon request," but that "conduct credits are considered in law to be part of the term the prisoner served."
In his brief, Locher said that county jails have applied time credits to inmates since 1976 and that last year's Senate Bill 3X18 increased them to one-half from one-third of their sentences. He said that an assortment of code sections give county jail inmates the same time-credit privileges as state prisoners.
Chief Assistant Public Defender Karen Flynn argued that "it's not a mystery" and that "there's no hidden agenda" that inmates get out of jail before they serve the full sentence spelled out in their terms. Time credits, she said, are taken into consideration as part of the plea-bargain process that covers a huge percentage of court dispositions.
Flynn said she found herself "shaking in my boots" today because she was arguing in court on the same side of the table as the district attorney and the state attorney general, and "that has never happened."
She said "the reality is" that taking away good behavior credits from inmates would make it "much more dangerous" in the jails for the sheriff's deputies who work amid the 4,200 inmates locked up in the county's two mail detention facilities.
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