AP\/October 27, 2013 <\/p>\n
LOS ANGELES (AP) California Gov. Jerry Brown has decided to allow freedom to a woman who received a life sentence when she was a teenager for killing her former pimp. <\/p>\n
Brown decided late Friday not to take action on a state parole boards decision to grant parole to Sara Kruzan, thereby allowing the decision to go into effect, his spokesman Evan Westrup said Saturday. <\/p>\n
Kruzan was 17 when she was sentenced to die in prison for the 1994 shooting death of George Gilbert Howard in a Riverside motel room. She contended that he sexually abused her and had groomed her since she was 11 to work for him as a child prostitute. <\/p>\n
Her case became a high-profile example used by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who sought to soften harsh life sentences for juveniles. <\/p>\n
It is justice long overdue, Yee told the Los Angeles Times. He called Kruzans case the perfect example of adults who failed her, of society failing her. You had a predator who stalked her, raped her, forced her into prostitution, and there was no one around. <\/p>\n
Kruzans case garnered widespread publicity in 2010 after Human Rights Watch posted a six-minute interview with her on YouTube. <\/p>\n
The year culminated with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuting her sentence to 25-years-to-life with the possibility of parole on his last full day in office. Schwarzenegger said he still considered her guilty of first-degree murder, but he sympathized with her defense that the man she killed had sexually abused her and served as her pimp for years. <\/p>\n
Given Ms. Kruzans age at the time of the murder, and considering the significant abuse she suffered at his hands, I believe Ms. Kruzans sentence is excessive, the governor wrote in his commutation message, it is apparent that Ms. Kruzan suffered significant abuse starting at a vulnerable age. <\/p>\n
This January, a Riverside judge further reduced her first-degree murder conviction to second degree, making her immediately eligible for release. <\/p>\n
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