Talking to James Houston today, it's difficult to imagine the troubled young man he was back in 1996, when he shot and killed a neighbor during an argument.
He spent 17 years behind bars at San Quentin State Prison, where he earned a college degree, became an addiction counselor and even pitched a tech startup to some Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
But before 2009, even a model inmate like Houston had little chance of ever leaving prison. The parole board was reluctant to let "lifers" out, and when it did, the governor would often overturn its decision. In 2000, for example, 13 lifers were released as Gov. Pete Wilson reversed 92 percent of the parole board’s findings that year.
But that began to change when a key California Supreme Court ruling limited the reasons that lifers may be denied parole. The board and the governor can no longer consider the severity of the crime alone, and they now have to ask how dangerous the person is today.