He Confessed To A Killing At 21. Is It Time For California To Give Him A Second Chance?

By Joe Garcia, CalMatters

July 29, 2025

In summary

California made it easier for young people convicted of serious crimes to get a second chance, except for those sentenced to life without parole. New legislation could change that.

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Nathan Gould wakes up in a California state prison cell every morning at 6 a.m. He stirs a cup of instant coffee, prays with his Bible and reflects on the day in 1994 when he killed a man in Bakersfield.

Homeless and drifting from one drug score to the next, Gould and his wife holed up with another transient in an abandoned warehouse. Gould attacked him with a knife, beat and tied him up, and proceeded to rifle through his belongings for a wad of cash he’d flashed earlier. When the man began yelling, Gould stuffed a sock in his mouth.

“I hate having to relive this sometimes,” Gould said before describing how he heard the man’s muffled grunts and failed to realize he was suffocating. “I didn’t know I broke his nose.”

The wad of cash turned out to be $68 — a lone $20 bill wrapped around dozens of smaller bills.

Two weeks later, and racked by guilt and remorse, the 21-year-old Gould hightailed it back to his mom’s house in Kansas and confessed what he’d done. “She told me just to be honest and tell the truth, so I called the police and turned myself in.”

Today, he’s among more than 5,000 people in California prisons serving life without parole sentences that all but guarantee they’ll die incarcerated. And more than half — roughly 2,800, including Gould — committed their life crimes while they were under age 25, according to an advocacy group called The Sentencing Project.

Over the last two decades, California adopted laws that defined people who committed their crimes before they were 25 as “youth offenders” and softened parole criteria for them. Laws now require that youth offenders with so-called indeterminate sentences, meaning those that include a possibility of parole, be allowed to appear before the Board of Parole Hearings after 25 years of incarceration. That holds regardless of the sentence length — whether it’s 40 years to life, 80 years to life or beyond.

But for individuals like Gould whose original sentence mandates zero chance of parole, youth offender considerations still do not apply. Last year, the California Supreme Court ruled explicitly that life without parole sentences are excluded from youth offender parole reforms.

That could change. In April, state Sen. Susan Rubio of West Covina introduced a bill that could soon offer Gould and hundreds of others a chance at parole. She characterized her proposal as an “opportunity (for incarcerated people) to demonstrate their growth and rehabilitation.”

“This is not a guarantee of release — so let’s be clear about that. Not a guaranteed release,” she said in June just before the Senate passed the bill 24-11, with all of the chamber’s 10 Republicans and one Democrat, Sen. Melissa Hurtado, voting against it.

The bill won’t pass this year. Democratic lawmakers agreed to hold it in the Assembly until 2026, giving them time to refine the proposal.

Supporters hope the bill will help address what they see as disparities in who receives the most stringent sentences. Local prosecutors hold great discretion to pursue so-called special circumstance murder convictions. From county to county and courtroom to courtroom, any first degree murder allegation could be defined as special circumstance — and therefore lead to mandatory life without the possibility of parole.

That’s reflected in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation data that shows a wide range in how county prosecutors pursue life without parole. Lassen, Sacramento and Los Angeles counties sentence people to life without parole at some of the highest rates. Of currently incarcerated people, 7.2% sentenced in Lassen County are serving life without parole, compared to 5.6% statewide.

How parole works

For anyone serving a life sentence — even with the possibility of parole, there is never a guarantee of release. California’s parole board prides itself on setting arduous and stringent layers of review that prioritize public safety.

Every aspect of an offender’s criminal footprint is documented and scrutinized through the parole process — their childhood history and trauma, prior convictions, prison record, disciplinary infractions, social achievements, educational milestones, relapse prevention plans, vocational training and realistic career prospects.

In usually a two to three hour hearing, a person must discuss all fluidly and clearly with parole board commissioners trained to observe and root out inconsistencies. Specific insight into the crime and how the person’s outlook on criminality has changed over time must be fully articulated.

The slightest semblance of a red flag might result in a parole denial.

“Without reservation, in California we have the most thorough process with the most checks and balances than anyone, anywhere,” said Jennifer Schaffer, former executive officer of the Board of Parole Hearings for the last 13 years. She cited Canada as having, perhaps, the only system of parole more rigorous.

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Schaffer said the board’s deep reliance on quantifiable science in every parole decision includes comprehensive risk assessments by a specialized team of forensic psychologists and peer review of all reports to ensure accuracy and lack of bias.

“And for the last 10 years, they’ve looked at every single person who’s been released as a result of a grant,” she said. “Only two to 4% have gone on to commit any new crime, misdemeanor or felony — and less than 1% have gone on to commit any new felony involving harm to another human being.

“It’s like 99.5% go on to never harm another human being, within three years of release, which is extraordinary.”

Su Kim, senior policy manager for nonprofit justice reform organization UnCommon Law, has helped see over 300 clients — many of them youth offenders — successfully earn parole.

“I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has been granted parole through this process has done tremendous work to transform their lives to reflect deeply on their crimes and their past mistakes, and to demonstrate accountability and remorse,” said Kim. “The board doesn’t really take chances on people.”

Illustration by Gabriel Hongsdusit, CalMatters

Is Nathan Gould a different person today?

After his first 15 years immersed in a prison culture fueled by bootleg alcohol and narcotics, Gould said he began to embrace sobriety.

“My cellie and I had been high for a good few days straight. We looked around at our shelf. We got nothing. All we were living for was getting high each day. But I had this dusty old Bible.”

While elements of his story are documented in court records and prison files, CalMatters was unable to independently verify every detail.

Gould took to the scripture, renewed his faith and found fellowship within the Christian community. “I started going to church and hanging around with people who had a positive vibe,” he said. “You can feel all alone in here doing your time, so I saw the camaraderie and felt wanted by guys who were choosing to live right.”

At the time, his only rehabilitative options outside the church were through mail correspondence. But eventually, he transferred to a prison with more opportunities in 2015. He discovered Celebrate Recovery, a Christian-based 12-step program, and he started to join self-help groups and take college courses.

“I was in special education as a kid and ended up graduating from high school while I was in juvenile detention,” he said. “I never really felt I was good enough for college even though I saw others doing it here.”

Tackling one class at a time, Gould methodically plodded through his coursework, earned his first “A” and began to look at himself a bit differently. He completed two separate associate of arts programs, and is one course away from completing a third — all with nearly a 4.0 grade point average.

He also learned to seek help to battle the depression that overwhelms him at times. “I see a mental health specialist once a month — by choice,” he said. “I don’t have to, but I do.”

Gould spoke about completing self-help groups that focus on anger management, alternatives to violence, conflict resolution and positive psychology. His current group discusses Greek philosophy, self-mastery and learning to accept external circumstances beyond one’s control.

“The only groups I take are the ones that I feel I’m gonna get something out of,” he said. “I know they’re good for me and they help me to dive into myself and understand the root causes of why I acted the way I did.”

According to Gould, the self-help groups and rehabilitative programs helped him address the childhood trauma and shame of having an abusive alcoholic father. His first stint in juvenile detention came at age 14, after he broke his father’s leg with a baseball bat to stop him from beating his mother.

“I got locked up for aggravated assault. Nothing happened to him.” When Gould returned home after serving 14 months, he said his father chased him out of the house with a shotgun and shot him in the back as he ran away.

“Police asked if I wanted to file charges, but I couldn’t. He told me if I ever got him locked up, he’d kill me as soon as he got out.”

But Gould said he doesn’t blame his father for anything. Instead, he looks at his father’s behavior through the same lens he views his own. “He was a Korean War vet. He ran off to join the military when he was 15, so I’m sure something bad was going on at home for him to want to leave.”

Giving life without parole a second look

Schaffer, the former parole board executive officer, supports Rubio’s bill. While cognizant of the trauma that parole hearings bear upon victims of crime, her years of experience in the criminal justice landscape inform her opinion.

“Human beings who have no opportunity for review, it’s really hard to maintain hope,” she said. “I think hope can be really powerful — and the absence of hope can be very dangerous. So even for staff and volunteers and people who work in the prisons, I think people having a meaningful opportunity for review and having hope for that can actually make our prisons safer. I truly believe that.

“I also think that giving people an opportunity to show that they’ve truly transformed is a very meaningful thing. I just think it’s something important for humanity in general.”

Through her position at UnCommon Law, Kim has seen the real-life impact of youth offender parole opportunities.

“We now have a decade of evidence showing that youth parole works,” said Kim. “It promotes public safety and fiscal responsibility, and offers a fair second chance to those who’ve grown and changed. Recidivism rates for people released after life sentences have dropped since youth parole was implemented.”

Sen. Kelly Seyarto is not convinced. He spoke in opposition to Rubio’s bill on the Senate floor before the vote in June.

“Let’s let the system work the way it’s been working,” said Seyarto, a Republican from Murrieta. “Now ultimately everybody has the option to have the governor commute their sentence and they can be freed and they can be rehabilitated. Once they’re rehabilitated, they can get back out there in society.”

Governors hold executive power to absolve or alter a person’s sentence, but it’s generally considered a rare act of mercy — a mercurial process without clear layers of objective review. In the last 30 years, fewer than 200 offenders serving life without parole sentences have been offered clemency or commutation.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown commuted no sentences from 2011 to 2015, then 282 from 2016 to 2018 — about half which were life without parole sentences. Gov. Gavin Newsom has commuted the sentences of 141 people since the beginning of his term in 2019, including 49 serving life without parole. Of those, 33 committed their crimes when they were 25 or younger, according to an analysis of executive clemency reports.

Rubio’s bill would offer a more equitable mechanism for second chance opportunities.

Gould knows legislation is out there that could radically change his life overnight. “It’s definitely giving me a light,” he said. “There’s hope. I’d have a purpose now. I’d have a goal. There’s an ending.”

But for now he said he remains pessimistically optimistic. “I always kinda think, ‘Here we go again,’ because they wiggled carrots in front of my face so many times, and then they just kick your feet out from underneath you.

“I try to wake up with a good attitude and focus on positivity — just let the day come to me.”

Calmatters data reporter Erica Yee contributed to this story.

Joe Garcia is a California Local News fellow.

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