CA Changes Senior Parole Rules After Sex Offenders Eligible – CalMatters

from Joe GarciaCalMatters

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State lawmakers are taking aim at California’s parole system after two high-profile sex offenders were given the chance to be released from prison last year.

David Alan Funston and Gregory Lee Vogelsang each had been convicted of multiple sexual assaults against young children in the Sacramento area, but both were deemed eligible for parole in 2025 by the California Parole Board.

Under elder parole laws, many convicted felons with life sentences are eligible for their first parole hearing if they are at least 50 years old and have served at least 20 years.

Funston is 67 and Vogelsang is 57, and politicians dispute the idea that 50 is old enough for sex offenders to age out of criminal behavior.

Lawmakers have proposed several bills that would limit parole for sex offenders, a change they say reflects the severity of the crimes as well as doubts about sex offenders’ potential to safely return to society.

Some civil rights and prisoner advocacy groups have expressed concern about the proposals, saying they could parole laws are weakened which have proven their effectiveness in reducing the state’s incarcerated population.

One of the major bills was authored by the Democratic Assembly Stephanie Nguyen from Elk Grove, which represents the region where Funston and Vogelsang committed their crimes. Her account would raising the earliest parole age for sex offenders with life sentences of up to 65.

“I think rehabilitation is a thing — people can rehabilitate themselves,” said Nguyen, who emphasized that she’s not trying to completely abolish parole for the elderly. “But when you’ve done things like abuse little boys aged 5 to 11, I just don’t know if you can change from that.

“It doesn’t matter 20 years. I don’t know if you can necessarily change from wanting or stopping to molest little kids. And as a mother of two young girls, that scares me.”

Funston was paroled at age 67 after serving 27 years. He was originally sentenced to three consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison plus an additional term of 20 years.

Vogelsang was granted parole at age 57, also after serving 27 years. He was originally sentenced to 355 years to life in prison.

The legislation proposed by Nguyen would also require the parole board and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to refer sex offenders with life sentences for psychological evaluation through the Department of State Hospitals, which can choose to commit a person indefinitely to treatment if it deems them a “sexually violent predator.”

Currently, state hospital screening only applies to sex offenders who are not serving life sentences and will be released without a parole board recommendation.

At an April 7 meeting of the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, Nguyen’s colleagues quickly expressed bipartisan support for the bill and asked to be named co-sponsors. it passed by an 8-0 vote.

“The way the law currently stands is a travesty of justice,” Assemblyman Tom Lackey, a Republican who is a retired California Highway Patrol officer, told CalMatters. “It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd and it’s extreme. I think society is finally over this stuff.”

Funston and Vogelsang remain in custody

Elderly parole dates back to 2014 as part of the court’s effort to reduce the state’s prison population. Act of 2020 lowered the parole age to 50.

This spring, Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed concern about the possibility of Funston and Vogelsang being released. He used his authority to ask the board to conduct additional reviews of each of the men’s parole hearings.

Funston’s parole was upheld and finalized in in a bench decision on Feb. 18 — where the entire parole board scrutinized the decision of the two commissioners who initially determined that Funston was not an unreasonable threat to public safety.

“It was a solid, solid decision — legally sound,” said attorney Maya Emig, who represented Funston at a Sept. 24, 2025, parole hearing where he was deemed eligible. “He had a candor. He had a deep understanding, just that kind of deep programming. He really did the work to win his freedom.”

But on Feb. 26, the day of his release, Placer County filed new criminal charges against Funston from an old investigation without prosecution. Prison officials turned him over directly to local law enforcement.

Funston remains in jail in Roseville, potentially awaiting a new trial.

Vogelsang’s finding of parole eligibility went to in a bench review last month and the parole board decided to schedule another hearing to determine if his parole should be revoked. He remains in state custody and will either be released or resume his life sentence.

Parole system in question

Because of Funston and Vogelsang’s potential chances at freedom, more public attention has been focused on the Parole Hearing Board and its decision-making process. Republican lawmakers in March held a press conference outside of a board meeting to draw attention to Vogelsang’s potential release.

“Every member of the parole board that voted to release these predators — I think they should be removed immediately,” Lackey said. “When you release a child abuser back into the community, you put more children at risk.”

People released from prison through the parole board have extremely low recidivism rates, with less than 3% of them committing new crimes. Less than 1% of them return to prison for crimes involving violence against another person.

A 2008 California Supreme Court case known as the Lawrence decision turned against the parole board repeated denials of a prisoner’s parole. Judges argue that the facts of a crime are “static” or “immutable” because they cannot be changed.

The court further stated that a “particularly serious” crime or the static facts thereof cannot alone support a denial of parole if there is no evidence that the offender poses a danger after lengthy rehabilitation.

“By law, the board must release someone if they no longer pose an ongoing, unreasonable risk to the public,” said Jennifer Shaffer, former executive director of the Board of Parole Hearings. “The board takes its responsibility very seriously. It employs approximately 70 experienced forensic psychologists who assess each person’s risk prior to a parole hearing.

“The risk assessments they make are based on decades of well-established research on what drives people to commit crimes.”

Nguyen, Lackey and others do not see how this process can be applied to Funston or Vogelsang.

“He says he still has impulses, and the way he controls those impulses is by splashing water on his face,” said Lackey, who said he read selected excerpts from the transcripts of Funston’s parole hearing. “That’s what the parole board accepted as rehabilitation. Who believes that?”

While in prison, Funston hired his own therapist to provide him with personal treatment. He revised The road to freedomone of the few established self-regulatory programs for sex offenders. Over time, he continued to facilitate this curriculum and help other men like him.

“In order to be found relevant, people have to unravel their understanding of themselves — why they did what they did, how they became that individual to commit that crime,” Emig said. “It’s a really difficult process. I believe in the work that I did with my client and I believe in the hard work that he did independently of me.

“There is something lost in blaming the commissioners for doing their job and following the law.”

Elderly parole and rehabilitation

Nguyen’s measure has momentum, but a handful of advocates have come out against it.

Keith Whatley founded the non-profit organization UnCommon Law to represent and help counsel lifers incarcerated through their parole counseling and re-entry journeys. Since 2006, Uncommon Law has seen 350 clients gain parole and successfully reenter society.

“Old age parole is one of them mechanisms we have that are proven to work” Whatley said. “The fact that there’s never been a single person who had a sex offense who was released on parole at an older age and committed another sex offense after release — that’s pretty good evidence that the process is working in terms of public safety.

“The harm caused by these types of crimes is particularly disturbing to most people. So I understand the anger, even the outrage, but what’s missing is that the outrage is not related to the person’s current risk.”

During her 13 years leading the parole board, Shaffer saw many changes in policy, legislation and policy agendas. Her primary focus was to create a structured decision-making process through which offenders could legitimately earn a second chance.

She raised an important point that points the way to release the prisoners even if Nguyen’s bill becomes law.

“History shows that when the board denies people parole for political reasons, even though they no longer pose an ongoing, unreasonable risk to society, the courts will step in,” Shaffer said.

“And the retroactive law change — stripping an inmate of his right to parole after he’s committed his crime — is likely to be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional after many years of costly litigation.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.