The State - News from Jan. 27, 1985

Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn lower court decisions that would require annual parole hearings for hundreds of convicted murderers. The decisions would affect mass murderer Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and about 350 other prisoners, many of them convicted killers. The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura ruled last month that a state law allowing the parole board to wait two or three years between parole hearings, instead of holding them annually, could not be applied to prisoners who were sentenced before the law took effect in 1983. In appealing to the Supreme Court, Van de Kamp’s office said annual hearings for such prisoners would be an “idle act” because there is virtually no chance they would be found suitable for parole. The court has until Feb. 21 to decide whether to take the case.