By Michele Hanisee
This past Sunday [Oct. 9], a rapist who was released from prison decades early because of 2018 legislation was arrested for murdering a 60-year-old man who worked at a Sacramento board and care facility. Michael Xavier Bell, who is now 36 years old, had been out of custody for just 73 days.
We wrote about Bell in 2018. Back then, he was serving a state prison sentence for breaking into a woman’s home and, once inside, raping her at gunpoint in front of her 8-year-old son. Bell and an accomplice took turns committing sexual assaults, at times pointing a gun at the victim’s head and at times pointing the gun at the victim’s 8-year-old son, forcing him to watch.
When the crime occurred in December of 2000, Bell was just nine days shy of his 15th birthday. He was tried and convicted as an adult in 2002, and sentenced to 53 years to life in prison. He was so dangerous and unrepentant that the sentencing judge stated: “It is this court’s intention this defendant never, never get out of prison. This defendant is incapable of being rehabilitated. This defendant is not someone who should ever be allowed into society.”
But Bell was allowed back into society thanks to SB 1391, which prohibited prosecutors from charging 14- or 15-year-olds as adults unless they first held a hearing at which a judge concurred that the minor should be treated as an adult.
Governor Brown and the state legislature, including current appointed Attorney General, Rob Bonta, ignored impassioned pleas about how dangerous this legislation was to public safety. In fact, there were no safeguards created within this legislation to protect the public from the most dangerous juvenile offenders such as Bell. Nor was there any mechanism for addressing the retroactive effect on convicted juveniles, like Bell, who had since become adults and who therefore could not be returned to the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system. This is why Bell was released from custody without any form of supervision, or services and apparently without having received any type of sex offender treatment or rehabilitation.
Nor was Bell a model prisoner. According to records filed with the court, he was twice convicted of new felony battery cases while in prison and had numerous disciplinary write-ups wherever he was housed. In his last years of incarceration, he was charged and convicted of felony vandalism of government property for smashing the windows of the visiting area. He was even written up for the rape of another inmate.
Twenty years ago, a Los Angeles County Judge presciently determined that Michael Bell “is not someone who should ever be allowed into society.” Sadly, our state legislature and Governor Brown opened a back door to let him, and others like him, out of custody without services, supervision, or the hint of rehabilitation. The outcome was tragically predictable: another senseless murder of an innocent victim.
Yvonne Melton says
My sister was the victim in 2000 – We spoke at his resentencing last year – ge should have Never been released – because we knew he would kill!
Common Citizen says
wellll….
CDCR is an acronym for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. two thing are evident. The system is to correct and to rehabilitate.
The continued appeals by LADA to advocating more incarceration works in tandem with a prison system, dominated by private prisons here in California, that is not reducing recidivism, and is failing at half of its its basic purpose: rehabilitation.
California (and various other federal agencies) pay GEO inc, a Florida company and CoreCivic, a Tennessee company to meter out whatever their policies and processes are, and willingly go to court with the State of California to maintain their revenues from both State and Federal sources.
In that way, Florida and Tennessee interests can confound California regulations and laws by their intentional nonconformance, then through long drawn out legal battles, all the while causing further degradation of the rehabilitation of the men and women in the system.
Many of them will recommit crimes, like the single example that the author decided to portray as representative in her diatribe, even if it not representative, and may be a one in a thousand, or one in ten thousand example.
Either way, the Correction and Rehabilitation has failed. We should blame those companies when they fail at their charters.
The Innocence Project tracks the rehabilitation of criminals nationwide, “works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone”.
Should you or someone you love be wrongfully convicted, I am almost certain you’d want more innocence project and less LADA.
You can find information about recidivism in California at the California Innocence Project here:
https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/recidivism-rates/
Concerned About Victims Not Murderers says
Some people cannot be rehabilitated, as the judge clearly saw in this case. And yes, sad as it is, 14-year-olds can be unrepentant, sociopathic criminals. This is not a case for any “innocence project”. Move on.
East Lancaster says
We see this example of people not rehabilitated every day in Lancaster. Our mayor and vice mayor have seedy pasts, dealing for years. Now they bully, give no bid contracts, lie, use taxpayer money for pet projects for their friends, and more. Time to vote them out and get some fresh blood. Maybe some people from East Lancaster would help. We haven’t had anyone from East Lancaster for decades on our council. Only hand picked Rex puppets.
Tim Scott says
I agree that some people cannot be rehabilitated. The question is, how do we identify those people, and who do we trust to make that determination? Maybe the judge was right in this case, but was that insight, or was he a judge that said that about hundreds of people and was wrong a hundred times for every time he was right? Judges are frequently elected by the votes of people who mark that part of the ballot randomly after voting for the candidates at the top, does that make them the person to trust on who can or can’t be rehabilitated?
I’m not claiming to have any answers here, just acknowledging the questions exist.
I think the real question in this case should be asked of the prosecutors. Why didn’t they get a judge to concur with charging the kid as an adult? If he was so obviously irredeemable that the trial judge saw it, why not make that case to a judge and have them agree that charging as an adult is warranted? Prosecutors seem like they are the LEAST inclined to have judges make judgements. They want to go unchallenged on ‘their turf,’ but who gave them that turf, and are they really qualified?
Friendly advice says
TO be fair, the Common Citizen makes a good point about rhetoric that is used to misrepresent a single case as broadly applicable.
If you cannot see the potential for misuse and abuse in a system where the only plea is for more police, more conviction, even in the face of injustice, you will get the system you deserve by your mindless neglect for the final words in our pledge of allegiance:
“With liberty and justice for all”
So, maybe revisit your Americanism first, rather than tell someone else to ‘move on’.
Karla K says
That psychopathic monster should be taken out asap. Even as a juvenile the judge knew that monster could never be rehabilitated, not should be allowed to be released.
That depraved, sadistic, evil, subhuman, deviant, predatorial monster is way past redemption. Why oh why are those worthless, depraved, twisted creatures who commit heinous crimes, allowed to live. Why aren’t they ever preyed upon, victimized, brutalized, given back the same terrorizing torture that they wreaked upon their victims?!
What a shame that this monster is not only still alive, but that he was freed in the first place to prey upon more unsuspecting prey.
Sad day says
Our state legislature and Governor Brown never think of protecting the innocent people, there only train of thought is what they need to do to get them more votes or make them and their party look more popular. They don’t worry about what these criminals are going to do because they are protected with all the security that we the public pay for them. Its not their wife’s, daughters or mothers being raped, its not their family members getting assaulted or murdered, so why should they care?
Karla K says
Why is my comment “waiting moderation before publishing”??
I did not swear, confront anyone, nor interact, bash, threaten, or heaven forbid make disparaging or anti color full remarks that might be taken wrong or upset the fragile type peeps. All I did was remark on some monster that was freed whom even the Judges we’re dead set against…
Tim Scott says
There are a lot of surprising words loaded into the screening algorithm.
Mike says
Tim, I’m surprised you’re not gagging at the opportunity to defend your beloved Bonta and Newsom? How about that?
Tim Scott says
How about go fall in your pool and drown.
Cracker joe says
Mad cause Mike has a Pool eh.
And I bet you want to clean it.
Tim Scott says
Of all the things about Mike that disgust me, his being a pool owner isn’t one of them. It should be obvious that I have nothing against people owning pools.