When it comes to a criminal justice system that attempts to attenuate emotion from the process of meting out justice, these are the decisions that can nag most heavily.

In California, 12 state-appointed commissioners take turns running a panel charged with deciding whether to give someone a second - or sometimes third - chance at freedom. While their decisions aren't gospel -months of legal review and, ultimately, the governor's decision loom - the state Board of Parole's independent rulings are rarely reversed.

With the current backdrop of overcrowded prisons and possible federal intervention, however, the parole board's decisions may be gaining more scrutiny.

When Amador County District Attorney Todd Riebe protested last month's decision to grant a parole date to Gina Sargent, a 49-year-old former Pioneer resident who spent the last 25 years in women's prison for killing her 5-year-old stepdaughter, Riebe spoke of an overall atmosphere that could inform future parole matters.

"The atmosphere right now is you're going to have a steep row to hoe if you don't grant many parole dates," Riebe told the Ledger Dispatch. "Whether this is a product of that, I don't know."

State corrections and parole board officials deny the current prison crisis is causing current commissioners to be more forgiving in their decisions, saying the actual number of parole dates don't bear that out.

Historically, the parole board has been rather conservative in granting parole dates, according to Bill Sessa, a deputy press secretary with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Of the hundreds of cases they consider every year, commissioners issue parole dates for approximately two to three percent, he said.

As for the impact of the prison overcrowding crisis?

"There's no connection there at all," Sessa said.

But there is a mounting backlog. Sessa said between 500 to 700 California inmates become eligible for parole every year. Some of those, like Sargent, are given time-specific denials that mean they will appear before commissioners again in a year or two, adding to the overall caseload. Preparing for the hearings themselves is both labor and time intensive, Sessa added.

"It's quite an assembly line of work to be done before a case even gets to the parole board," he said.

Add in the inevitable hitches of an imperfect bureaucracy - psychological evaluations that aren't current, notices to victims' relatives or other stakeholders that weren't sent out in a timely matter, prison riots that postpone parole hearings - and what results is a backlog that is only swelling.

"It's been a perpetual problem for the board," Sessa admitted, and one they're trying to crack. Under pressure from court orders and the California Legislature, the parole board and department of corrections are working on procedural changes that could speed up the hearing process, Sessa said. "The goal is to eliminate the backlog no matter how many cases there are."

Riebe sees the state racing against time. In 2018, the first wave of three-strikes offenders become eligible for parole, which could flood the system even further.

"Certainly, there are more releases being granted now than there have been in past decades," he said. Those numbers could increase in 10 years with the three strikes offenders, he speculated. "Undoubtedly, there is pressure (to relieve the system)."

One person who is no stranger to that pressure is Mike Prizmich, the former county sheriff who is now a state parole board commissioner.

"Without a doubt, there are groups with differing opinions, and some of these same groups have some form of oversight into our work," he said via e-mail, "but I have never … heard of anyone or any one group engaging in any direct effort to influence or change any decision made."

Prizmich was a lieutenant with the sheriff's office when Sargent was first arrested, in November 1980. As one of the investigators, he followed a case that unraveled from claims of no wrong doing to admissions of months of escalating physical abuse, leading to the night when Sargent said she pushed her stepdaughter, Elana, down a flight of stairs, ultimately causing her death. Prizmich has written letters opposing Sargent's parole in the past, which would make him ineligible to weigh the panel's decision if the governor decides to send it back for the full board's review.

The governor can also let the decision stand or reverse it himself, which he can only do with murder cases. In any event, a final decision isn't likely until mid-June, which may have been why Deputy Commissioner John Weaver gave Sargent some advice at the end of last month's hearing:

"So I would suggest, even though this is a positive step, that when you get back to the yard that you don't become too elated and flash that decision sheet around until all these things occur," he told her.

Sargent received her favorable decision because the panel was impressed with her plans for release, her involvement in a number of rehabilitation programs, her model prison behavior and her accepting full responsibility for Elana's murder. Riebe contends the original crime itself should outweigh those considerations.

"While I cannot dispute the characterization of Ms. Sargent as a model inmate, our office is opposing her release based upon the circumstances, severity and callousness of the life offense, the vulnerability of the victim, the 18-year delay in accepting any responsibility for physically abusing and murdering Elana, and her continuing failure to state what she really did to cause Elana's death," he said.

Regarding the latter, Riebe said medical experts have testified the head injury that led to Elana's death wasn't the result of a slap or fall down the stairs.

It's a complex process, Sessa acknowledged. "It's the only decision in the judicial or justice system where you're making a prediction on what someone will do rather than on what they have done."