Posted on 06/04/2012 8:45:39 AM PDT by KingofZion
A convicted murderer who was granted "compassionate release" by state courts, so he could spend his final days with his family, died in prison last week as he was about to receive an order setting him free, his lawyer said.
Carl Wade, 66, was serving a sentence of 32 years to life for the fatal shooting of a fellow woodcutter, John Karns, in Lake County in June 1986. The two men shared a trailer home and had a drunken argument and fistfight before the shooting.
Wade was classified as disabled in 2007 with severe heart and lung diseases that left him unable to breathe without continuous infusions of oxygen. Prison doctors diagnosed him as terminally ill last summer, and prison officials and the parole board recommended him for release under a state law for inmates whose death is imminent and who pose no danger to the public.
In November, however, Lake County Superior Court Judge Andrew Blum blocked Wade's release, questioned the doctors' findings and said the inmate, though confined to a wheelchair, might be mobile enough to commit crimes.
The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco overruled Blum on May 17 and called his ruling a "manifest miscarriage of justice." ***
Wade's lawyer, L. Richard Braucher, said the ruling became final Tuesday, and a Lake County judge was scheduled to issue a release order Wednesday. That order may have been issued, but it never reached Wade, who died at 3:20 a.m. Thursday at the state prison in Vacaville, Braucher said.
"I last spoke to him on Monday and he was very happy about coming home. He wanted to help others" in the same situation, Braucher said.
"He should have been released in November. The system did not deliver justice to him."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Yet justice was delivered.
Run that by me again.
I fail to understand this whole mindset. His victim is still dead. He was sentenced to "Life" in prison; so if you are sick your sentence is reduced? How is that fair to the other "healthy" murderers? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
Yeah, well his murder victim would've been happy to come home, too.
The kind of crime he committed - stupid drunken fight with a peer - is the kind of crime that is easily repented. If he found God as well, and sought forgiveness, maybe it’s, “Saint Peter, incoming.”
Good
Sounds to me that this guy needed a lot of expensive medical treatment and the prison system was trying to remove him from their budget and foist him off on a different state or federal medical gimme system. Now they have to pay for his burial too.
AND
we had a judge expose the nature of his character.
We have to think about what kind of judge would be so obtuse as the appeals court indicated. Just another reason for judges to NOT deserve respect.
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