Report pans parole oversight of sex offender but questions if killing could have been stopped

Report pans parole oversight of Calif sex offender

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Parole officers should have done a better job watching a paroled California sex offender, but closer scrutiny may not have stopped the murder of one teenage girl and the assault of another woman, a draft report released Thursday said.

Even if suspect John Albert Gardner III had been sent back to prison for one of his repeated parole violations, he was unlikely to have qualified as a sexually violent predator, members of the California Sex Offender Management Board said.

The board softened language in the draft report that contradicted previous statements from mental health officials who said Gardner would have been strongly considered for commitment to a mental health hospital.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the 17-member board of law enforcement officials, victims and treatment providers to investigate why Gardner was classified as low-risk and not punished for the seven parole violations.

The board began discussing the report Thursday. Its final report to the governor is due by the end of the month.

Gardner, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murdering 17-year-old Chelsea King of Poway, whose body was found in a park last month, and to the attempted rape of another woman in December.

He is being investigated but has not been charged in the death of 14-year-old Amber Dubois of Escondido, who disappeared in February 2009.

The report pointed out that those crimes occurred after Gardner has been released from parole and was under no formal supervision.

Even while Gardner was on parole, “it is unlikely that a revocation would have changed anything with respect to the crimes that Gardner is now charged with committing,” the report said.

However, it acknowledged that parole agents had failed to review whether Gardner should have been reclassified as a high-risk offender after he was found living too close to a school and daycare center while on parole.

They also should have immediately required him to move farther away instead of letting him live nearby for nearly two years, the report said.

His location could have been enough to send Gardner back to prison, but the parole board decided to keep him on parole for the remainder of his three-year term, which ended in 2008.

Authorities also could have sought parole revocation after Gardner was cited for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana in 2008, the report said.

“There was an opportunity to potentially violate his parole,” said board member Pamela King of the San Bernardino County Public Defender’s Office. “They had that opportunity for an extended amount of time and they chose not to violate.”

The report was prepared by Deputy Attorney General Janet Neeley and Robert Ambroselli, director of the state Division of Adult Parole Operations, which supervised Gardner for three years after his release from prison in 2005. Gardner spent five years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old neighbor girl in 2000.

Most of Gardner’s parole violations were considered technical, including four for letting the battery on his ankle bracelet run low and one for missing a meeting with his parole officer.

Other violations surfaced later, including his use of a social networking Web site.

The report called on the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to devise new policies for deciding which offenders should be banned from the Internet and better ways to track violations.

The 19-page draft report said Gardner would not likely have been classified as a sexually violent predator and been sent to a state mental hospital because he did not have a diagnosed mental disorder and the molestation he committed in 2000 involved a victim he knew, not a stranger.

Still, the report said California should provide treatment to sex offenders in prison and after their release, and follow the model of other states by requiring sex offenders to periodically undergo polygraph tests.

In addition, there should be more money for local law enforcement to help supervise offenders, and better communication with local agencies to catch potential violations, several of which were missed in the Gardner case, the report said.

It also questions whether tracking Gardner’s movements with an electronic device after he was released from parole supervision would have made a difference. It cites research that GPS tracking can help solve crimes but rarely prevents them.

“There is no crystal ball and you cannot prevent every crime from occurring,” King said.

(This version CORRECTS UPDATES that board softening language from draft report. corrects to say board has 17 members sted 18.)