California Fires Out of Control
HANNITY: Now more on the breaking news we brought you at the top of the hour. Convicted kidnapper and rapist Phil Garrido, accused in the 1991 abduction of Jaycee Dugard, now a possible suspect in the disappearance of two other young girls in the area. Phillips Garrido has been behind bars before, but he got out early. Now, strapped for cash, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes to cut the state's budget deficit by more than a billion dollars with an early parole program. If approved, the bill would reduce the state prison population by 27,000, a move opponents fear could flood California's streets with potentially dangerous criminals. Randi Kaye has the latest in tonight's "Crime & Punishment".</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): April 17, 1982, the last time Colleen Campbell hugged her only son.</s>COLLEEN CAMPBELL, MOTHER OF SCOTT: I gave him a hug, and that was the last time I ever saw him.</s>KAYE: Hours later, Scott Campbell was dead, killed by this man, Donald DeMacio (ph), who was out on parole. Campbell was mixed up in drugs with Laurence Cowell (ph), who hired DeMacio (ph), the parolee, to strangle Scott. Then, the unthinkable. They beat him bloody so the sharks would eat him, then tossed his body from an airplane into the Pacific Ocean. He was never found.</s>CAMPBELL: It's worth the death itself. Hunting for a person.</s>KAYE: DeMacio (ph) was sentenced to life with no chance of parole. He died in prison in 2007. Cowell (ph) is serving 25 to life.</s>CAMPBELL: My greatest fear is that other people will suffer the same losses that we have because prisoners were let out early.</s>KAYE: Because of her son's horrific murder, Colleen Campbell is speaking out against the possible release of as many as 27,000 California prison inmates. The governor says it could save the cash- strapped state more than $500 million. But supporters of the plan say Campbell's fear is unwarranted.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of the proposals involved non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders.</s>KAYE: But what about the case of Jaycee Dugard? Phillip Garrido, the sex offender out on parole, charged with kidnapping and raping her served only 11 years for an earlier rape. He'd been sentenced to half a century.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He would not be near one of the offenders that would be addressed in the governor's proposals.</s>KAYE (on camera): In fact, the Department of Corrections says Garrido may have been watched more closely since the plan is to provide better resources to more closely monitor dangerous parolees. Still, critics of the early release plan see it as a literal get- out-of-jail-free card and worry nonviolent offenders could turn violent. (voice-over) Take the case of Lilly Burke (ph), the 17-year-old killed in July in downtown Los Angeles, her throat slashed. Charles Samuel, a parolee, now charged with her murder, says he didn't do it. He had not been considered violent before. Seventy percent of prisoners released in California go on to commit other crimes.</s>CAMPBELL: If you're letting out 27,000 prisoners, and 70 percent of them are going to re-offend in California, that's scary.</s>KAYE: Regardless of money the state might save, Colleen Campbell knows the cost of a human life can never be repaid. Randi Kaye, CNN, Los Angeles.</s>COOPER: Ahead on 360, for the first time freed from North Korea, two American journalists share details about their violent arrest and how they were treated by the soldiers. That's coming up. And later, was the Lockerbie bomber released as part of a deal. Secret documents revealed tonight show that Libya threatened the U.K. over the Lockerbie bomber's release.