AUSTIN, Texas - Deanna Luprete said her son’s incarceration led her to prison ministry.
- Bill would give juvenile offenders chance at earlier parole
- Currently they must wait 40 years
- Bill would cut that down to 20
Since then, Luprete said she’s become a surrogate mom to dozens of young men serving life sentences for crimes they committed as kids.
“His name is Chon Dimas and he was 17 and [was] given a 75 year sentence,” she said.
Luprete says Dimas was emotionally and physically abused by his stepmother. Luprete said one day he snapped.
“His dad’s shotgun was there against the shed, and he used it, and he snapped. And he was a child,” she said.
A bill seeking to reform the parole system could give Dimas a chance at earlier parole. It would let juvenile inmates who have been sentenced to life plead their cases in front of a parole board 20 years after being convicted; right now they must wait 40 years.
The measure is getting some serious push-back.
“On the left is my nephew Jared. He was killed in the Santa Fe school shooting,” John Conard said.
Conard said the tragedy at Santa Fe High School last year is still a nightmare for him and his family. A total of 10 people were killed and 13 were injured after a 17-year-old gunman opened fire.
“I don’t feel that it’s fair to the hundreds of people in Santa Fe and all across the state that have lost somebody to a vicious crime, to have to have the perpetrator of that crime released after twenty years, when they’ve been imposed a lifetime of grief,” Conard said.
While the legislation would not guarantee such inmates would be granted parole that early, victims' families say even the possibility of the accused shooter being let out early worries them.
The bill's author Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, said that's not its intent.
“That shooter, and those like him, aren’t going to get parole under this bill. That’s not what it does,” Moody said.
Moody says the goal is to evaluate successful rehabilitation behind bars, but not at the expense of public safety.
Of the roughly 4,500 juveniles in the custody of the Texas Department of Juvenile Justice, about 1,500 have been given sentences of 40 years or longer.