EXCLUSIVE: Child Rapist Benefits from California’s Criminal Justice ‘Reform’

On January 11, 2013, a Yuba County jury found Dwight Anthony Summers guilty of giving a teenage boy crack cocaine and then forcibly sodomizing him. Summers, who had a felony criminal record spanning multiple states and three decades, was sentenced by Judge Julia Scrogin on March 1, 2013, to 25 years in prison, the maximum allowed by law at the time. Last week, on September 25, 2023, Judge Scrogin resentenced Summers to 20 years in prison, shaving five years off because of so-called “reforms” to the California criminal justice system.

How did this happen? Let me tell you.

The punishment for each crime and enhancement is defined by the Legislature, typically giving judges discretion with a range of options, called a “triad.” The range of punishment for forcible sodomy of a teen was 7, 9, or 11 years. The triad for furnishing cocaine to a minor was 3, 6, or 9 years. Based on the heinousness of the crime and Summer’s decades of prior criminal history, Judge Scrogin exercised her discretion to impose the upper term for each of those crimes, 11 for sodomy and 9 for furnishing the cocaine.

The other five years came from enhancements. In 2013, California law added an extra year to a prison sentence for each of a defendant’s prior stints in California prison. Summers had two prior stints in California prison, for an additional two years on his sentence. He also received a three-year enhancement under this law because he was over four years older than his victim (Summers was 43 years old at the time of the offense). The three-year enhancement for the age-gap, and the two one-year enhancements for prior prison commitments, added to the 11-year upper term and the 9-year upper term for a total of 25 years.

Since 2012, criminal justice reform advocates have succeeded in getting many of their ideas passed into California law.

One of these ideas was to stop enhancing punishments for prior stints in prison. In 2019, California Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), introduced a bill that limited the enhancement for prison priors so that only prior prison commitments for sexually violent offenses counted. Calling the enhancements cruel, racially discriminatory, and ineffective, the ACLU of Northern California celebrated on October 9, 2019, when Governor Newsom signed the bill into law.

The bill in 2019, did not affect prior cases because it was not retroactive. The enhancements were simply no longer available to use for new sentences. However, in a two-step that has become all too familiar for bills of this type, the law was made retroactive in 2021 by SB 483.

California Senator Benjamin Allen (D-Redondo Beach), introduced SB 483 on February 7, 2021, and Governor Newsom signed SB 483 on October 8, 2021. The bill was simple, making the changes to enhancements for prison priors retroactive. This meant that every person in prison whose sentence included a one-year enhancement for a prior prison term was now legally entitled to have their prison prior enhancements stricken during a resentencing. This opened a flood of applications by inmates to local courts to have their sentences reduced.

You would think that these resentencings would be simple – strike the prison priors from the total and call it good. However, stuck into an omnibus bill (AB 200) that year was an additional “reform,” which required the judge to resentence the inmate from scratch. This meant that the inmate sentenced long ago would now get the benefit of every reform that had been recently passed. These reforms included changes to how judges exercise their discretion, limiting them to imposing no more than the middle term outside of certain circumstances, and requiring them to dismiss enhancements for a variety of reasons.

In the case of Dwight Summers, the judge had to start from scratch over a decade after the victim left the courtroom believing justice had been delivered. Judge Scrogin looked at Summer’s three decades of criminality and again chose to re-impose the upper term for the forcible sodomy and furnishing the cocaine. When it came to the enhancements however, her hands had been tied by the legislature.

The enhancements for Summer’s prior stints in prison had been eliminated in 2019; she could not by law reimpose them. She next considered whether she could impose the three-year enhancement for Summers being over four years older than his teenage victim.

The “reformed” law now instructs judges that they “shall dismiss an enhancement if it is in the furtherance of justice to do so.” It goes on to list certain factors that push the judge toward dismissal, including when the enhancement would “result in a discriminatory racial impact,” or when it “could result in a sentence of over 20 years.” Especially if the resulting sentence will be over 20 years, “the enhancement shall be dismissed.”

Having imposed 20 years already for the sodomy and cocaine furnishing, any enhancement would have made Summer’s sentence over 20 years. Judge Scrogin struck the enhancement, resentencing Summers to a total of 20 years, five years less than she did 10 years ago.

Same judge. Same crime. Same teen victim. Same criminal. Same criminal record. New law. New sentence. Less prison.

The hard truth is that Dwight Summers, a child rapist with three decades of criminal history, will be released earlier because of these reforms, and I think that’s disgusting.