DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: California sued over policy that could free serial killers as Laci Peterson’s friend sounds alarm.

Schubert singled out some high-profile prisoners serving life without parole:

Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his pregnant wife Laci and their unborn son after she vanished on Christmas Eve in 2002. Gang member David Hill fatally shot San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza in 2004 and wounded his partner. Darryl Lamar Collins was 24 when he killed two people in 1995 but was granted early release in 2017 thanks to changes in California’s youthful offender parole law — only to kill his girlfriend Fatima Johnson less than a year later. They are among thousands who could potentially benefit from the new regulations, Schubert said.

According to Schubert, the board exceeded its statutory authority by using the bureaucratic rulemaking process to create a resentencing and clemency review system for prisoners sentenced to life without parole, a plan that California’s Office of Administrative Law approved on July 9.

Exit quote: “The main primary arguments deal with the fact that one, they don’t have the legal authority to do this, that this is an administrative bureaucratic agency that’s trying to rewrite the legislature, that they’re trying to rewrite sentencing laws that came out of ballot initiative.”

But Muh Democracy™ or whatever.