Parole

Stephen David Royds, a convicted drug dealer who kept his girlfriend's body preserved on dry ice in a swank Newport Beach hotel room for a year, has returned to his native New Zealand after being released from prison, federal officials said Thursday. Royds, 49, was paroled in May after serving more than a year and a half of a four-year sentence for felony drug charges. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him June 25, ICE officials said. Royds, who went by the nickname "Kiwi," was arrested in March 2008 by Newport Beach police officers.

Though his arraignment was delayed Tuesday, new details emerged about a Costa Mesa man accused of killing, decapitating and dismembering his neighbor and then shooting a friend of the victim to throw police off his tracks. Daniel Wozniak — who overnight went from a lead actor for a community playhouse planning to marry co-star Rachel Buffett to double-murder suspect — faces life without parole if convicted of killing neighbor Samuel Herr, 26, and Herr's friend Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23. He is scheduled to be arraigned June 25 in Santa Ana's Central Justice Center.

An Orange County attorney said he has ready-made arguments for the courts should his client, a former Costa Mesa dentist, be rejected for parole after serving more than 25 years for three murder convictions. Rich Pfeiffer, who represents Tony Protopappas, said that even if his client is granted parole at his July 21 hearing at Folsom State Prison, he fully expects Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to overturn the board’s decision, as he has in many other cases. Protopappas was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder in 1984 and sentenced to 15 years to life for giving fatal doses of a general anesthetic to three patients.

A former Costa Mesa dentist who killed three people in the 1980s must be freed from prison unless there’s new evidence that he is still dangerous, the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana ruled Tuesday. Writing for the three-judge panel, Associate Justice Raymond Ikola said that after serving more than 25 years of a 15-year to life sentence, Tony Protopappas, 63, should be granted parole. In late 1982 and early 1983, Protopappas killed Kim Andreassen, 23, Cathryn Jones, 31, and Patricia Craven, 13, by giving them fatal doses of a general anesthetic.

Billy Joe Johnson got what he wanted. Johnson, 46, chuckled and joked with his lawyer as the courtroom clerk Thursday morning read the jury’s recommended death sentence for the convicted killer. The recommendation all but assures that Johnson, already facing life in prison for an earlier murder, will end up on death row, which will afford him more time with other inmates out of his cell, as he wished. If he is sentenced to life without parole, Johnson would rarely leave his one-man cell.

George England, a convicted repeat child molester from Costa Mesa, has lost his bid for parole from Salinas Valley State Prison. The 65-year-old appeared Monday before the prison’s parole board, which ruled against granting him early release. England’s prison sentence tentatively is set to expire in March, said Susan Schroeder, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, which is trying to keep England locked up. Prosecutors will file a petition under the Sexually Violent Predator law to keep the inmate in a mental institution once his sentence is completed, officials said.

A repeat child molester from Costa Mesa is scheduled for a parole hearing Monday, but prosecutors want to do everything in their power to make sure he isn’t freed, officials from the Orange County district attorney’s office announced Friday. George Joseph England, 65, will be up for parole Monday in Soledad, where he’s housed in the Salinas Valley State Prison for molesting three girls in 1977. England was convicted on three counts of molesting the girls in his Costa Mesa mobile home.

Seven years in federal prison apparently wasn’t enough for one Newport Beach man to learn his lesson, as he was sentenced to an additional two for committing the same crime again days after his release. Harold Goldstein, 64, was sentenced to two years in prison Monday for impersonating a lawyer. In February 2003, Goldstein was convicted of falsely declaring under oath he was an attorney licensed in California, fraudulently sending out solicitation letters to inmates offering legal services and stealing the identify of a Northern California lawyer.

Last year Sacramento passed the largest one-time tax increase in the history of state government, an increase of more than $12 billion, yet more people are out of work and the budget problem is even worse. To compound matters, under a dangerous proposal by the governor to create a new category of parole called “summary parole,” our safety could be at risk. Felons convicted of serious crimes would no longer be supervised by law enforcement while they are out on parole.