- Paul Carl Tomasini was sent to prison for murdering Mary Shojai in 2012 in her San Diego home.
- Now sick with prostate cancer, he was released last year under California’s newest compassionate release law.
- Shojai’s daughter is fighting California’s progressive criminal justice reforms.
At a hearing in the summer, San Diego County Superior Court Judge John Thompson wrestled with the decision before him.
“There are very few things that I find now after sitting on the bench for 36 years that are difficult. This is one of them,” he said, according to a June 26 court transcript. “Every fiber of my being tells me I should deny this request.”
At question was the fate of Paul Carl Tomasini, who was convicted of brutally murdering Mary Shojai in 2012. According to prosecutors, Tomasini bludgeoned 66-year-old Shojai, a disability rights advocate, at least 17 times with a mallet in her San Diego home after she broke off their romantic relationship that developed at church.
Twelve years later, Tomasini was eligible for early release under California’s newest compassionate release law because of a prostate cancer diagnosis. According to court documents, 78-year-old Tomasini’s cancer had metastasized, and he is facing “an end-of-life trajectory.” He now resides in a healthcare facility that offers palliative care, paid for by taxpayers.
Tomasini is among the first to benefit from a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that went into effect in 2023, designed to allow more people who are seriously ill to live out their final days outside a prison cell as long as they are not deemed a threat to the public.
Gavin Newsom could save the state $1 billion annually by closing five more prisons, analysts say. The governor finds himself in a precarious political spot.
The legislation is an example of California’s progressive criminal justice reform laws meant to end mass incarceration and give offenders a chance at redemption, a hallmark of the Democratic-led state that has recently been called into question. Voters in November repealed part of a decade-old law that softened some criminal penalties and ousted two progressive district attorneys who championed such reforms.
For people such as Mina Moynehan, it has little to do with politics. She grew up in a family of “deep blue” Democrats and believes in mercy for some prisoners, but is forever shaped by the shocking loss of Shojai — her mother.
Moynehan said she can still see in her mind the crime scene at her mother’s home: spots of blood and flecks of brain matter strewn on carpet and furniture even after the police had cleaned up.
Advocates for compassionate release point to research that shows older people with advanced illness are unlikely to commit acts of violence, and releasing them is one way to cut down on California’s costly prison bills. But Shojai’s case shows how complicated those decisions can be, and how profoundly they affect the families left behind.
Although the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recommended Tomasini for early release, describing a frail man living in pain, at times dependent on a walker, that’s not enough for Moynehan, who was shaking as she begged the judge to not release him that day in court. She said that she and her family are afraid of him, and that caregivers who will be in charge of him should be too.
In a parole hearing, Tomasini said that he was “remorseful beyond words” for killing Shojai and that if released, he would commit the rest of his presumably short life to “the service of others” as repayment.
Both Thompson, a veteran judge who called Shojai’s death a “horrific” crime, and the San Diego County district attorney’s office questioned prison officials’ assessment of Tomasini’s public safety risk. They wondered whether he could still harm someone with a weapon despite his worsening illness and peppered his attorney with questions about just how capable he is. Can he shower on his own? Can he catch a bus?
It didn’t matter. California law requires a presumption in the prisoner’s favor when it comes to those deemed at the end of their life, and gives anyone outside the state prison system and their medical providers little discretion over the matter.
Despite his apparent trepidation, Thompson said Tomasini was unlikely to commit a “super strike” felony such as homicide or sexually violent crimes if released — the key test he has to pass to be released early.
“The Legislature has made it clear: good, bad or indifferent, that the court must consider this petition,” the judge said at the hearing in the summer.
He ultimately signed off on Tomasini’s freedom, ending his years at Amador County’s Mule Creek State Prison and sending him to a nursing home.
A daughter’s grief transforms
Although Tomasini initially pleaded not guilty to the crime, he later admitted to murdering Shojai.
In a 2022 parole hearing where Shojai’s family was present, he said that he remembers some of that day — including bludgeoning her multiple times with a mallet after she was “critical” of him — but other moments are blurry.
“I take full responsibility for all of it. I just don’t remember it,” Tomasini said, according to a transcript obtained from the California Board of Parole Hearings.
He said that at the time of her murder, he was struggling financially and mentally, battling an extreme bout of depression. When Shojai declined his marriage proposal, and tried to be just friends instead of romantic partners, it pushed him to do something “totally out of character” — an act that police officials later described as one of the most heinous murders they had ever seen.
According to a police report, the handle of the mallet broke during the attack, which led Tomasini to switch his weapon to a candlestick. That broke too. Shojai’s blood was found across three rooms, and her skull was shattered.
Tomasini stabbed himself before he called the police to report “a struggle,” but he has denied in parole hearings that it was an attempt to make it appear that an intruder was to blame for Shojai’s death.
“It was a building level of anxiety,” he told parole board officials. “I resented Mary for rejecting me. I guess that built up over time.”
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Shojai was the director of student disability services at San Diego State University, helping hundreds of young people with special needs get the support they need.
When she died in 2012, friends and co-workers described her as an elegant leader with “a gentle strength” — a hugger who never forgot a name and a beacon of her community.
She was an organist at her church on the brink of retirement and looking forward to a new kind of life, full of family time and relaxation after decades of working as a single mother. She never got to meet some of her grandchildren — Moynehan was pregnant at the time of her murder.
Since her death, Moynehan’s grief has oscillated among sorrow, fear and anger.
Over the summer, that grief transformed into something new when Tomasini was released from prison: activism.
Moynehan has attended Tomasini’s court and parole hearings and railed against legislation such as Assembly Bill 960, which led to his compassionate release. She’s also questioning other policies that make up California’s approach to criminal justice.
Along with family members of other crime victims, Moynehan, a healthcare expert from San Diego, is suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over Proposition 57, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2016 that allowed more prisoners a chance at parole.
The lawsuit questions the legality of the ballot measure, which allows prisoners to earn early release through good behavior credits, and alleges that it has given prison officials “unchecked power” to shorten sentences for even violent felons against the intentions of voters who approved it nearly a decade ago.
Moynehan, 47, believes that it helped Tomasini, who already had a college degree before he entered prison, to work toward early release by taking academic courses behind bars — something that does not prove his remorse or reform, she said.
She wants to see a ballot measure to overhaul Proposition 57, just as a measure was overwhelmingly approved by voters last year repealing some of Proposition 47, which had lessened criminal penalties for some nonviolent crimes.
Moynehan’s plight comes at a time when Californians are grappling with the state’s history of sentencing reform. She’s second- guessing some of the policies crafted by Democratic lawmakers in the state where she has lived most of her life.
“The person who murdered my mother has been released. That tells me something is very, very wrong in California,” she said. “I don’t think someone who is nonviolent or made a bad choice when they were younger or is now clearly off of the drugs they once were on should be punished forever and ever. But I think the people we need to be more careful with are people like Tomasini.”
His release, she said, has returned her family to a “state of hellish angst.”
Moynehan’s grandfather, Shojai’s father, lived until 105. She wonders whether that could have been Shojai, too, if not for Tomasini.
“Nothing can bring my mother back,” she said. “But the state needs to do its job.”
Tomasini’s attorney did not return a request for comment for this article. A message left at the healthcare facility where he resides also was not returned.
The case for compassionate release
California’s compassionate release laws can lead to uneven and unexpected enforcement, as prison officials consider several factors for each case. Parole officials use a formula to determine who should be released, based on physical abilities and threat to public safety.
People charged with far less serious crimes than murder, some sicker than Tomasini or wheelchair-bound, remain in prison, struggling to navigate compassionate release eligibility.
Even though Judge Thompson said the state forced his hand in the Tomasini case, others have been denied compassionate release. In 2023, 89 people were recommended for compassionate release under AB 960, and of those, 15 were denied, according to a 2024 report by the Judicial Council of California.
For every case such as Tomasini’s, there are several more in which people who advocates believe pose no threat to the public are unwell and kept behind bars, said Su Kim, senior policy manager for Uncommon Law, an organization that supports prisoners and sponsored AB 960.
In 2021, 306 people were referred for compassionate release, but 95 died before the process could be completed, according to state data.
The bill that benefited Tomasini was meant to streamline a compassionate release process that was failing to do what it was meant to, Kim said, and prisons aren’t designed to provide end-of-life care.
“Obviously there was something that was not working,” Kim said.
Federal data show that as few as 3.5% of people who are awarded compassionate release later commit crimes.
“From all the work that we do with our clients, we feel that committing harm to people is the last thing on their minds at that point,” Kim said. “They want to go back to their families. They want to make amends. They want to have some sense of meaning in the remainder of their life.”
Gavin Newsom has granted 123 commutations, or reductions of sentences, as governor. But as of January, a third of those people remained behind bars.
Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) took the lead on AB 960 after Rob Bonta, who originally authored the bill, left the Legislature to become California’s attorney general.
During bill hearings in 2021, Ting said the legislation was needed to “expand the criteria” of medical parole not just for those at the end of their lives but also those in debilitating pain. He pushed a “more thoughtful” approach to compassionate release eligibility, which he called “a very difficult process to get through,” and said it could also save the state a lot of money.
“They’re some of our most expensive inmates to care for,” Ting said. He declined to comment about how the law was used in Tomasini’s case.
Whereas lawmakers including Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) voted against the measure, questioning whether the expanded criteria was too “vague,” a long list of people spoke in support of the bill, including the late Dr. Ron Lewis, a former physician in California prisons and member of the state medical board.
“It is not serving incarcerated people in the way that this body intended,” Lewis told lawmakers in 2021. “The process is ineffective. It takes far too long and involves multiple steps.”
In a reflection of how divisive the issue is, critics of the bill, such as the California District Attorneys Assn., made a polar opposite argument to lawmakers. State laws are already “generous” to dying prisoners, the group said.
“Any expansion of existing law hurts public safety, undermines the criminal justice system and destroys truth in sentencing,” the association said in a statement. “Enough is enough.”
In its final hurdle in the Legislature after a years-long process, the bill passed the Assembly with 46 “yes” votes, five more than the minimum needed, over the objections of a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Newsom signed it in September 2022. Tomasini was one of the first to benefit when it went into effect the next year.
Tomasini, a handyman who worked odd jobs in construction, was described by neighbors as a quiet, unassuming man, according to court documents.
For Shojai’s family, his ability to murder someone in his already “diminutive” state gives them pause about making cancer the reason he can leave prison. They point out that he has survived his cancer since 2017.
“He was capable years ago, and I still think capable here today,” Melissa Diaz, a San Diego County deputy district attorney, argued in court in the summer. “I don’t know, and I don’t think this court knows, that he’s at end of life for this particular condition.”
In court, both sides went around and around about whether Tomasini deserves freedom. But because of his medical condition, Tomasini’s attorney reminded prosecutors and the judge of the law.
The new law, San Diego County Public Defender Katie Belisle said, “really limits the court’s discretion in compassionate release.”
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