Court order forces state to release ‘repulsive’ inmate
Paige St. John in Sacramento (Los Angeles Times) | November 16, 2012
On orders of a San Diego appeals court, California prison officials have agreed to release a bedridden inmate court officials themselves describe as “an angry, repulsive person.”
The quadriplegic inmate, Steven Martinez, was the first in 2011 to apply and then be denied release under California’s then-new medical parole law allowing the release of inmates who require 24-hour nursing care. The program was designed to save the state money by moving California’s costliest prisoners into community hospitals and nursing centers where the federal government will foot half the bill for their care.
Martinez was sentenced to 157 years or more in prison after a 1998 attack in which he ran over a woman with his car, beat, abducted and then raped her. Three years into his sentence, another inmate stabbed him in the neck, slicing his spinal cord and paralyzing him.
Read more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/11/ordered-by-court-state-to-release-repulsive-inmate.html
Photo credit: Associated Press /Norma Martinez
