On April 7, 2021, the Board of Parole Hearings granted parole to 41-year-old David Cree of West Sacramento. Cree is currently an inmate at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, CA. The hearing took place virtually due to the COVID pandemic. This was Cree’s fifth lifer hearing. He was denied parole in 2014, 2017 and 2019. He was granted parole in 2016 but Governor Jerry Brown reversed the Parole Board’s decision.
On October 8, 2000, Cree and his crime partner, who was a minor, were driving along Capitol Avenue in West Sacramento after a night of drinking. Cree and his crime partner modified a firearm into a sawed-off shotgun. Cree drove by the victims, Jimmie Richardson and Gregory Rowan. Cree pulled the car over and said to Rowan “where are the girls.” The minor then pulled out the sawed-off shotgun and fired a number of rounds at Richardson and Rowan. Richardson died that day and Rowan survived with serious injuries. Cree claims they were looking for someone who had stabbed him 10 months earlier. A jury convicted Cree and he was given a life sentence.
Chief Deputy District Jonathan Raven represented the District Attorney’s Office at the hearing. Mr. Richardson’s twin daughters also attended the hearing virtually.
Commissioners Troy Taira and Nancy Wong determined that Cree no longer posed an unreasonable risk to public safety should he be released from prison. Although there was concern that Cree, for the first time, mentioned that he had found the shotgun and secreted it at his uncle’s house, and that he also had been involved in domestic violence before the murder, the commissioners felt that he was rehabilitated and had earned a parole date. This was the second time that Cree had killed an individual. In 1996, Cree shot and killed a 46-year-old man who had acted sexually aggressively towards him. For this crime he spent nearly three years at the California Youth Authority.
After an internal review by the Board of Parole Hearings and the Governor, the parole decision will become final.
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