YEREVAN, MAY 27, ARMENPRESS. Governor of the US State of California Gavin Newsom has rejected the Board of Parole’s December decision on paroling Hampig Sassounian, Asbarez reports.

Newsom said that while he acknowledged the steps Sassounian had taken over decades to rehabilitate himself, he did not believe Sassounian to be fit for release.

“I commend Mr. Sassounian for his rehabilitative efforts in prison, but I find they are outweighed by negative factors that show he remains unsuitable for parole at this time,” said Newsom in his letter obtained by Asbarez on Tuesday.

“I believe that Mr. Sassounian has not yet demonstrated that he has developed and sustained the necessary insight and skills for a sufficiently long period. In particular, I am concerned that Mr. Sassounian has continued to underestimate the vigilance that is required of him, now and in the future, to consistently conduct himself in a manner that promotes the rule of law and avoids fomenting violence, even inadvertently,” added Newsom.

“After reviewing and considering the evidence in the record, I believe that Mr. Sassounian must do additional work before he can be safely released. Accordingly, I find that he still poses an unreasonable danger to society if released and I reverse the Board’s decision to parole Mr. Sassounian,” Newsom concluded in his letter.

Sassounian has now served 38 years in prison.

He was given a parole hearing for the first time in 2006, but subsequently he was denied.  His next hearing was scheduled for 2010, and again he was denied.

Sassounian's attorney, Mark Geragos, had said he didn't view the first hearing decision as a setback, arguing that it is rare for parole to be granted on the first try, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"The parole commissioners were very complimentary of his chances next time around," Geragos said in a telephone interview with Los Angeles Times.

Six years later after the second denial, in 2016, the California Board of Parole Hearings eventually recommended Sassounian’s release from prison. 

The board said Sassounian, traumatized by horrific warfare in his native Lebanon as a child, had accepted responsibility for his crime, shown remorse, and participated in numerous treatment and job-training programs in prison.

But Sassounian’s parole was vetoed by California governor Jerry Brown in 2017. The decision was unexpected for many, for Brown has affirmed almost 82 percent of the parole board decisions.

Surprisingly, Jerry Brown announced his decision a day before President Trump’s meeting at the White House with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sassounian’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, called the then-governor’s action “alarming.”

“This was a young kid, clearly swayed by emotion at the time” of the killing, who is now “being used repeatedly as a political football,” Geragos said. “I don’t understand why the State Department is involved,” he said, and “I didn’t realize that the governor was trying to curry favor with the brutal dictator Erdogan.”

Sassounian has been serving a life sentence when he was convicted in 1984 for the 1982 murder of Turkish Consul General to Los Angeles Kemal Arikan.

In 2002 a federal appeals court overturned a special circumstances finding in his sentence, making Sassounian eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 25 years. Sassounian has now served 38 years. Sassounian will be eligible for parole again in 18 months.