Stanislaus County killers were supposed to be rehabilitated. Instead they were released
Two men, each convicted of murdering Stanislaus County residents they didn’t know, were supposed to undergo two years of rehabilitation before being released from prison. But because no facility will take them, both were released from custody this month.
Turlock Diaz, 25, shot and killed Chaz Bettencourt in 2010 during a botched carjacking at an AM/PM in Riverbank. Diaz was 14 years old at the time.
In 2004, Jesus Rodriguez, 33, was the driver in a drive-by shooting at Oregon Park in Modesto’s Airport neighborhood. The shooting killed Ernestina “Tina” DeJesus Tizoc, 17, who was attending a Police Athletic League program at the park. Rodriguez was 15 years old at the time.
Senate Bill 1391, passed by the legislature in 2018 and upheld by the California Supreme Court earlier this year after a legal battle over its constitutionality, bars the prosecution of minors under the age of 16 as adults.
While the law wasn’t passed until years after Diaz and Rodriguez were convicted in adult court and sentenced to more than 50 years in prison, they found themselves in the position of benefiting from its narrow retroactivity because their cases were not final on appeal.
Sue Burrell, a policy director for the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, which was a co-sponsor of SB 1391, said the retroactivity rule applies to any changes in the law that reduce punishment for crimes.
After the state Supreme Court decision, Diaz’s and Rodriguez’s cases were remanded to juvenile court, where judges are much more limited on the dispositions (the juvenile court word for sentences) they can impose.
Juvenile offenders sent to prison terms go to the state’s Division of Juvenile Justice. It only houses offenders up to the age of 25 or, if the former minor is over the age of 25 at the time of disposition, for a two-year period of confinement.
After multiple days of hearings in both cases, Stanislaus Juvenile Court Judge Rubén Villalobos decided both men had the need and the potential for rehabilitation.
He ordered both of them to be committed for two years at DJJ, where he hoped they’d benefit from the services designed to rehabilitate youthful offenders and prepare them to transition back into society. It was what the proponents of SB 1391 say the bill was designed to do because children of this age have diminished culpability and a higher capacity for reform when given the proper counseling and services.
Too old for rehabilitation
But the Division of Juvenile Justice did not accept Diaz or Rodriguez, saying their programs at the DJJ are not geared toward the treatment of offenders over the age of 24.
The Supreme Court’s decision on SB 1391 said the Legislature considered that “[t]he juvenile system is very different from the adult system. The juvenile system provides age-appropriate treatment, services, counseling, and education, and a youth’s participation in these programs is mandatory. The adult system has no age-appropriate services, participation in rehabilitation programs is voluntary, and in many prisons, programs are oversubscribed with long waiting lists.”
Diaz and Rodriguez spent most of their time behind bars in adult facilities and never had the benefit of the DJJ services but SB 1391 still applied to them.
Villalobos considered other possibilities like having them serve their time in the local juvenile hall, which eventually will be responsible for housing and rehabilitating all juvenile offenders when DJJ closes in 2023.
Officials there had the same argument as DJJ about the appropriateness of their programming for people over 24, as well as concerns about how they would house people of that age who’ve already been in the adult system.
During Rodriguez’s hearing on Sept. 3, an official from the Stanislaus County Probation Department, which oversees Juvenile Hall, said there would be a 21-year age gap between him and the youngest people in the facility. She said she didn’t want to “introduce a more sophisticated criminal mind” to those younger offenders.
Villalobos ruled that while Diaz and Rodriguez both had unresolved rehabilitative needs, committing them to Juvenile Hall would in essence, “be warehousing (them) in a facility that does not have evidence-based programming” for people of their age and in their situation. He said that would be inconsistent with the law so his only option was to release them.
He said his rulings were “a matter of first impressions in the state of California” and gave the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office time to appeal but Deputy District Attorney Jon Appleby said his office would not pursue an appeal.
Victim’s mom: ‘there is nothing else that I can say’
The decisions were made during their individual court hearings, Rodriguez last Friday and Diaz on Tuesday.
After the hearings, Baker declined to comment on behalf of his client and Rodriguez’s attorney Robert Winston did not respond to requests for comment.
Before Diaz’s hearing concluded, Villalobos told him he hopes he’ll avail himself of the educational and counseling opportunities Baker indicated he’d planned to upon his release.
“You have a debt to repay and I hope you spend your life repaying that debt,” Villalobos said. “I wish you the best.”
The family of Chaz Bettencourt did not attend Diaz’s hearing but Bettencourt’s uncle said during his disposition hearing in June he’s certain Diaz will kill again.
Bettencourt’s mother, Michelle, told The Bee she rejects an apology Diaz directed at her during that hearing.
“Some murderers are not capable nor are they material to be rehabilitated,” she said, pointing to Diaz’s offenses while incarcerated, including manufacturing weapons and possessing and possibly selling drugs.
Michelle Bettencourt said she didn’t attend Diaz’s hearing on Tuesday because she didn’t want to watch her son’s killer be set free.
Tizoc’s mother did attend Rodriguez’s hearing but she, too, was defeated.
“Whatever I say here won’t make a difference because even if I say I don’t want him to be released, he will be released,” Manuela Ramirez said in Spanish through an interpreter before Villalobos made his ruling.
“He’s not just a danger to me but he is a danger to the whole community, to all of the people, because whoever runs around in a gang .... ,” she said before trailing off and crying. “Well there is nothing else that I can say, you have the final word.”
Villalobos told her doesn’t have the final word but he had to make a decision consistent with the law and could not illegally detain Rodriguez.
“I don’t know if there’s such a thing as finality for victims, but I know that this isn’t it,” he said to Ramirez.
Villalobos said to Bettencourt’s family at a previous hearing, “I am certain (you) didn’t get a call from the governor or a legislator or the writers of propositions to say they were sorry.”
No supervision after release
The former senators who wrote the SB 1391, Ricardo Lara, who is now the State’s Insurance Commissioner and Holly Mitchell, who is now a Los Angeles County Supervisor, did not respond to requests from The Bee for comment.
Burrell, the policy director for the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, pointed out that part of the delay in the cases occurred “because the prosecutors around the state refused to accept the enactment of SB 1391 as constitutional.”
Diaz, at least, would have met the age requirements DJJ cited had his case gone to disposition when the law went into effect in 2019.
“To me, the saddest part of this is that 14- and 15-year-olds were subjected to adult court treatment and state prison in the first place,” Burrell said in an email. “Had they gone directly to DJJ instead of being transferred, they would have had 10 or 11 years of rehabilitative services before the end of jurisdiction – including full educational services, victim programs, vocational training, behavioral health, and other programs.”
With the juvenile court jurisdiction terminated, neither Diaz nor Rodriguez will be supervised by the Probation Department.
“That is absolutely wrong,” said Harriet Salarno, founder of Crime Victims United, whose daughter was murdered at the University of the Pacific in Stockton in 1979.
She said anyone released from prison should be supervised upon their release to ensure they can assimilate, hold down jobs, “live in places like you and me.”
“How do we know if they were rehabilitated or have revenge (in mind)? Nobody is monitoring them,” Salarno said. “The poor families of those victims, their loved ones were taken away and now they are going to live in fear.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
