Watching amputees who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan on a televised July 4 celebration as Josh Groban sang, "Smile … though your heart is breaking," made me think of how my husband, who was an amputee himself, would have been moved.

But his chair was empty, as it has been for 18 months since he died from a stroke. This sensation has come to me hundreds of times – thinking of what he would be saying during our running commentary on the news, how he would have laughed at a certain quip, how we would have gone to Bodega Bay for our recent wedding anniversary.

These thoughts bore on me as I was contacted by a woman who lost her husband to a heinous crime committed by two teenagers. She was concerned about Senate Bill 9, which would allow a prisoner sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for a crime he committed when he was under 18 years old to seek a reduced sentence. A vote in the state Assembly is expected soon.

My husband succumbed to natural causes, but I thought how much more painful the memories would be if he had been beaten by a metal pipe and left to die, as this woman's husband had been.

"This bill is all about giving youngsters a second chance," state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, the bill's author, said last month at a hearing on the bill before the Assembly Committee on Public Safety. About 290 inmates are serving life-without-parole sentences in California for crimes they committed as teenagers.

At first glance, this appears to be a reasonable proposition. Don't we as a society want to give a juvenile who committed a crime another chance? But this legislation as written opens up a tangle of issues that makes its potential impact disturbing.

First, a justice system that changes the rules in the middle of the game is not just.

Prosecutors and judges already have discretion in seeking and imposing life-without-parole sentences and have reserved it for the "worst of the worst." Most teen criminals in California are tried in the juvenile court system and must be released at age 25. Of those tried in adult court, only first-degree murder with special circumstances can result in life without parole, and only for 16- and 17-year-olds. All states allow juveniles to be tried as adults in criminal court under certain circumstances, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

At the committee hearing, Heide Steiner, her voice cracking as she spoke, her 7-year-old son by her side, held up a photo of her husband, California Highway Patrol Officer Thomas Steiner, who was murdered by a 16-year-old with a semi-automatic weapon, a "hit" as a gang initiation.

Teen killers convicted in Sacramento County include Jimmy Siackasorn, who was 16 when he shot Sheriff's Deputy Vu Nguyen in the neck during a routine check in a gang neighborhood; Frank Abella, who was 17 when he and a friend kicked a disabled man in Rancho Cordova in the head and then shot him with a BB gun, 13 times in the torso and seven times in the face; and two 16-year-olds who beat a 90-year-old Sacramento grandmother to death.

In all these cases, trials have been conducted, witnesses and victims' families have testified, everyone has played by the rules.

SB 9, however, is retroactive – raising serious constitutional and due-process questions. It does a legislative end run around the intent of the voters who in 2008 passed Marsy's Law, which strengthened victims' rights and due process. Among its provisions, Marsy's Law gives victims the right to "a speedy trial and a prompt and final conclusion of the case and any related post-judgment proceedings." SB 9 violates this provision by taking a final conclusion of a case and reopening it, victims say, retroactively introducing parole reviews for early release after a life-without-parole sentence had been imposed.

Because murder victims' families believed their case was over, they often did not retain the records and contacts they would need to be prepared for new parole hearings – an unfair violation of due process, they say.

Importantly, appeals and clemency are already available for sentences deemed too harsh. Last January, for example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger granted clemency to Sara Kruzan, who had been sentenced to life without parole for killing her 37-year-old pimp.

Instead of this legislation, a "simple review of sentences by a panel of experienced jurists for potential miscarriages of justice" could better accomplish the goals of those who "in good conscience support the principles that underlie SB 9," suggests Daniel Horowitz, a California defense attorney and the husband of Pamela Vitale, who was bludgeoned to death by a 16-year-old. In appropriate cases such a panel could recommend a pardon by the governor, he says.

The costs of this approach would be relatively minor, he says, and would spare the families of victims "the endless torture of hearing after hearing" where the death of their loved one is relived.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Margaret A. Bengs is a state employee and former political speechwriter who lives in Carmichael. Reach her at peggybengs@hotmail.com.

• Read more articles by Margaret A. Bengs