A California judge who dealt with some of the state’s worst criminals — murderers, child abusers and serial rapists — has blasted Gov. Gavin Newsom for signing laws that she says have allowed dangerous felons to roam free and even serve on juries.
Maryann Gilliard, who was a Superior Court judge in the Sacramento area for close to 27 years before retiring in August, said that laws allowing early release of “elder” felons and mental-health diversion laws have put the public at risk in one of her first interviews since leaving the bench.
“At this point in time, California needs to be placed into a conservatorship because the person in charge, Gavin Newsom, is a danger to others,” Gilliard told The Post in an interview.
Gilliard said she hadn’t planned to speak out about Newsom’s crime policies — but her breaking point came when David Allen Funston, a notorious 64-year-old child molester who was originally sentenced to three life terms for kidnapping and sexually assaulting several children ages 3-7 in the 1990s, was released this month under the state’s elder parole program,
That program, first established under Gov. Jerry Brown in response to a court order on prison overcrowding and expanded under Newsom, allows felons — including violent criminals — to petition for early release if they’ve served 20 years and are at least 50 years old thanks to AB 3234, which Newsom signed in 2021.
“As a 50 year old serial child molester, you are eligible to elderly parole but still too young for the senior Grand Slam at Denny’s,” Gilliard said. “Criminals who were ordered to serve life terms are being paroled because Gavin Newsom and his reckless Board of Parole have given the green light without regard to public safety.”
Funston was hit with new charges just hours after his release on Feb. 26.
Gilliard cited a number of bills that she said have “put all of us risk” during Newsom’s tenure — including one allowing murderers to stay on parole for as little as one year, another weakening gang laws, and another letting felons who aren’t on probation or parole to serve on juries.
Newsom also signed SB 1223 in 2023, which lets criminal defendants cite virtually any diagnosis to help stay out of jail.
Under that law, if a criminal defendant has a diagnosis — ranging from ADHD to substance use disorder — it is presumed that the disorder led to the criminal act, allowing even serious offenders enter a lax and poorly-enforced mental health program in lieu of jail, according to Gilliard.
“If you pistol whip an 80 year old lady but you’re a pothead, also known as ‘cannabis use disorder,’ all you have to be is in the DSM-5 and it’s presumed that was the cause of the conduct,” she said.
A bipartisan group of state lawmakers, led by state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield, has called for stricter limits on mental health diversion.
“However well-intended this program was and might have been, in reality it did not come with enough guardrails and has become a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Grove said in a statement last week.
“The governor owns this failure, he needs to do the right thing and call a special session of the legislature and fix what he broke,” Gilliard said.
“The biggest crime scene in Sacrameto is at the state capital, and someone ought to tape it off.”
Newsom’s office pointed to falling crime statistics in California cities as evidence that the governor’s criminal justice policies are working, and disputed claims that programs like elder parole and mental health diversion are endangering the public.
Regarding elderly parole, Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said recidivism sharply drops with age and less than 2% of elder parolees are convicted of a crime again within five years of their release.
The parole process is “stringent,” she said, and decisions are made based upon the “best risk assessment tools to ensure that people released after incarceration pose no unreasonable risk to public safety.” Governors can only reverse parole board decisions in murder cases, she added.
Half of US states allow jury eligibility for convicted felons and that judges retain discretion in mental health diversion, she said.
“Mental health diversion exists because untreated mental illness drives repeat low-level offenses — and treatment reduces recidivism more effectively than cycling individuals through jail without care. It is not a ‘get out of jail free card,’” Crofts-Pelayo said.
Gilliard said that by the end of her career overseeing murder and other serious cases, she would inform victims’ families that it was “highly likely” perpetrators will be released on parole during their lifetimes.
“During sentencing, I would tell the victims and their family members, ‘the governor and the legislature are never here on Fridays, during sentencing, to see the agony and pain you’re going through because of their ‘reforms,’” she said.
“There are real live human beings who have been horrifically victimized,” added Anne Marie Schubert, a former Sacramento District Attorney and critic of elder parole and other policies.
“Nobody thinks that 50 is elderly. It’s a joke,” she said. “And when we ignore victims’ rights, it is devastating for families and victims who have to relive trauma” when offenders are eligible for parole.
