Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to pretend he is willing to be tough on crime, but California under his leadership is effectively eliminating life without parole as a criminal punishment, facilitating the release of despicable violent criminals as soon as they turn 50 years old.
Roy Charles Waller, known as the NorCal rapist, is on the path to being free under California’s new soft-on-crime sentencing laws. Waller went on a 15-year raping spree throughout Northern California, breaking into women’s homes across six different counties. In 2020, he was sentenced to 897 years to life, meaning he would be eligible for parole in the year 2917, when he would be 957 years old.
Gee, I wonder which @CAgovernor plans to brag about public safety today after signing the law that made the NorCal Rapist eligible for early parole.#CASOTShttps://t.co/1ojImp74NSpic.twitter.com/o6vLMLkr98
— George Andrews (@georgeandrews) January 8, 2026
But California Democrats believe that people should spend as little time behind bars as possible, no matter how heinous their crimes, and so Waller is eligible for “elder parole.” The requirements for elder parole state that you can be released, even if your sentence was for life without parole, so long as you have served 20 years of that sentence and are over the age of 50. Waller was arrested at age 58 with a backpack full of equipment to perpetrate another home invasion rape. As the man who prosecuted Orr said, “There’s some irony in the fact that if you’re a victim of elder abuse, you have to be age 65. But if you’re somebody who commits nine different rapes over 15 years, you only have to be age 50 to be considered elderly.”…