California Considers Releasing 27,000 Inmates
HARRIS: The attorney for the woman charged along with her husband in the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard says media coverage may hurt his client's ability to get a fair trial. Nancy Garrido and her husband Phillip have pled not guilty. Mrs. Garrido's attorney says he is still formulating her defense and working to get his client to confide in him. Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped when she was 11 years old. She gave birth to two daughters with Phillip Garrido during her 18 years in captivity, growing up in a backyard compound. California is considering an early release for thousands of prisoners. It is a cost-cutting measure for a desperate, cash- strapped state. As CNN's Randi Kaye reports, among those possible releases, sexual offenders like Phillip Garrido.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): April 17, 1982, the last time Collene Campbell hugged her only son.</s>COLLENE CAMPBELL, MOTHER OF SCOTT: I gave him a hug, and that was the last time I ever saw him.</s>KAYE: Hours later, Scott Campbell was dead, killed by this man, Donald Dimasio, who was out on parole. Campbell was mixed up in drugs with Laurence Cowell (ph), who hired Dimasio, the parolee, to strangle Scott. Then, the unthinkable. They beat him bloody so the sharks would eat him, then tossed his body from an airplane into the Pacific Ocean. He was never found.</s>CAMPBELL: It's worth death itself, hunting for a person.</s>KAYE: Dimasio was sentenced to life with no chance of parole. He died in prison in 2007. Cowell (ph) is serving 25 to life.</s>CAMPBELL: My greatest fear is that other people will suffer the same losses that we have because prisoners were let out early.</s>KAYE: Because of her son's horrific murder, Collene Campbell is speaking out against the possible release of as many as 27,000 California prison inmates. The governor says it could save the cash- strapped state more than $500 million. But supporters of the plan say Campbell's fear is unwarranted.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of the proposals involved non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders.</s>KAYE: But what about the case of Jaycee Dugard? Phillip Garrido, the sex offender out on parole, charged with kidnapping and raping her served only 11 years for an earlier rape. He'd been sentenced to half a century.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He would not be near one of the offenders that would be addressed in the governor's proposals.</s>KAYE (on camera): In fact, the Department of Corrections says Garrido may have been watched more closely since the plan is to provide better resources to more closely monitor dangerous parolees. Still, critics of the early release plan see it as a literal get- out-of-jail-free card and worry nonviolent offenders could turn violent. (voice-over): Take the case of Lilly Burke (ph), the 17-year-old killed in July in downtown Los Angeles, her throat slashed. Charles Samuel, a parolee, now charged with her murder, says he didn't do it. He had not been considered violent before. Seventy percent of prisoners released in California go on to commit other crimes.</s>CAMPBELL: If you're letting out 27,000 prisoners, and 70 percent of them are going to re-offend in California, that's scary.</s>KAYE: Regardless of money the state might save, Colleen Campbell knows the cost of a human life can never be repaid. Randi Kaye, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>HARRIS: If President Obama wants health care reform to pass, is it try for him to try something different? We will get the latest on what the administration is at least considering.