Rick Stevens Is Not Going Home. Yet.

Donald Stevenson, otherwise known as Rick Stevens, formerly of Tower of Power, has sung at many concerts while imprisoned. Here he is in the late 1980s, at the site of another show (Courtesy: Georgina Stevenson)

I was looking all over the Web for news, and it has come. This was addressed in the Comments section of one of the articles about Rick, and it came from Georgina Stevenson, ex-wife of the singer we know as Rick Stevens, who reported the following:

I’m extremely disappointed to report that the parole board gave Rick a 3-year denial at yesterday’s hearing. That means his next parole hearing will be in 2012, but Rick is not waiting, he is going to file an appeal in the courts as soon as possible. The parole office has 90 days to send Rick a transcript of the hearing, and when he has that document, plus enough money rounded up, Rick and his attorney Peter Boldin will file.

The board has hit a new low in their flimsy excuses for denying parole – Rick said they were finding him “not suitable” for two reasons, (1) that he had not researched his post-incarceration rehab program thoroughly enough, and (2) that he had not done enough to reach out to the families of the victims. As “proof” of their finding regarding his lack of research about the rehab program, the board members cited the fact that when they asked Rick how long he would be in the program, he replied that he did not know. When Rick told me that I said, “How could you possibly be expected to know how long you would be in the program?! That’s up to the people running the program, to determine when you are ready to be discharged!”

As for reaching out to the families, early on at the beginning of his incarceration Rick wrote letters to the families, apologizing for what he had done and expressing his great remorse and sorrow. I don’t know what else the parole board thinks Rick could have done.

Whoa, whoa. Has he kept in touch with these families over the years? Have they responded in kind to him? Is this documented? Just asking.

We are all shocked that they gave Rick a 3-year denial, as at recent past hearings they have been giving him 1-year denials. At the last couple of hearings, they’ve said “you’re doing great, we just want you to do this one more thing, come back in a year and we see no reason why you shouldn’t get a parole date”, things like “get more counseling” , or “get more education programming”. At last year’s hearing it was “get accepted into a post-incarceration rehab program”, which he did, and he had letters from not just one, but two programs.

Rick has gone above and beyond to meet all the parole board’s conditions, yet they continue to issue denials based on thin excuses – and in spite of the fact that the representative from the D.A.’s office once again said that they do not oppose parole for Rick.

This was a big blow, but Rick is not giving up – he said, “I’m not going to let them get me down!” We’ve been down this road before, so we’ll keep on going, and prepare for the next step in this struggle.

Rick asked me to express his gratitude and thanks for the support he has received, it means a lot, and helps him find the strength to keep going.

They didn’t release a terminally-ill Susan Atkins on compassionate grounds because she was one of the Manson Family killers. Atkins died, still incarcerated, of brain cancer. While I can well understand the continuing anger of the survivors, that horrible murder occurred over 40 years ago. These people are not the same brain-washed, bloodthirsty, crazy freaks they were in their twenties. Manson helped to make them that way; Atkins renounced Manson several years into her incarceration. She became the longest serving woman inmate in the California prison system.

Atkins had to be wheeled into, and slept during, the hearing earlier this year. She too had expressed remorse for what she had done.

I was hoping that California would be more humane when it came to Donald Stevenson. I don’t see a 70-year-old guy getting into trouble, but this might stir up Reichwing and dittohead anger against the prison authorities and Schwarzenegger. They are afraid for their jobs, as well as they might be.

I would hope that such senseless murders would never touch me or my family members. I wouldn’t know how I would react if my mother or my nieces or grand-nieces and nephews were killed or maimed. It would severely overtax the capacity of any human being. But Sister Prejean had a point. I know that I am going to get static for this, but survivors have to let go of the need for revenge, and to see perpetrators suffer, otherwise they won’t be healed.

Don’t give up, Rick.

Georgina Stevenson’s page on the Tower of Power website.

Rick Stevens’ Official Webpage.

~ by blksista on October 22, 2009.