Butte DA: Excusing prison sentences of aliens a bad idea
By GREG WELTER
Posted: 07/05/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT


OROVILLE — This week Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey added his signature to a letter asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to abandon a proposal to commute the sentences of aliens in state prisons.
The prisoners would be referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation, but Ramsey and the state's other 56 district attorneys say the plan is dangerous to public safety.

"Release would mean the prisoner's sentence is over," Ramsey said. He favors an alternative included in the letter from the California District Attorney's Association, which includes placing all released prisoners on summary parole for at least three years, making them subject to searches, seizures and restrictions imposed by a court.

"We can't just tell them they're free," he said.

Ramsey said the plan is also unfair to legal citizens who commit the same crimes.

The letter also takes issue with a state proposal to reduce so-called "wobbler" crimes from potential felonies to misdemeanors.

It points out that would "blur the lines between degrees of criminality."

Ramsey said the proposal could have a huge impact on high-dollar theft rings and financial crimes by placing perpetrators in the same category as petty thieves.

"If we were to follow the governor's proposal, a person such as Bernie Madoff would be sentenced to a misdemeanor," Ramsey said.

Whether the proposal is implemented or not, Ramsey said it won't have an impact on a revenue producing agreement

with the U.S. Marshals Service to temporarily house federal inmates, some awaiting deportation, at the Butte County Jail.

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