California’s youth-sentencing laws start from a basic assumption: that teenagers think differently than adults and should thus be treated differently by the justice system.
Frank Heard and United Levao are two people whose lives were reshaped by that idea.
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As teens, both were prosecuted in adult court for murder. Both received sentences so long that they assumed they would die in prison. Both are now free.
Their cases are part of the legal backdrop for a high-profile resentencing fight involving Charles Andrew “Andy” Williams, who was a freshman at Santana High School in Santee in March 2001 when he opened fire on campus, killing two classmates and wounding 13 others. He was sentenced to 60 years to life in prison.
Last month, a San Diego judge ruled that Williams’ sentence is the functional equivalent of life without parole and ordered his case sent back to juvenile court for resentencing.
Had the attack happened today, Williams, 40, would be tried as a juvenile and generally could not be held in custody beyond age 25.
Despite the wholesale change in how California sentences juvenile offenders, outrage over the crime has not faded. The ruling has angered victims’ families and reignited a public debate over whether someone who commits a crime as serious as murder as a teenager should ever be eligible for release.
But in a small number of cases, judges have already confronted that question.
‘I’m only here to die’
Frank Heard was among the first.
Heard was a baby when his father was shot and killed. Heard was shot at 14. Stabbed at 15. At 16, he was facing two separate criminal cases that would lead to convictions in adult court for attempted premeditated murder and voluntary manslaughter, stemming from incidents prosecutors said were gang-related. Heard maintains that he is innocent.
A judge sentenced him to 103 years to life, including 80 to life for the attempted premeditated murder — a shooting that happened when Heard was 15.
He started in juvenile hall and was moved to county jail three days before his 18th birthday. The following week, he was sent to R.J. Donovan prison.
“Going into prison was me walking into a gas chamber for years, knowing that I’m only here to die,” Heard said in a recent interview. “This is my life. It’s over.”
He spent the next 18 years in California prisons, much of it in maximum-security housing.
“I have seen more corruption, more murders, more violence in prison than I have ever seen on the streets,” Heard said.
Heard, now 36, had been locked up for nearly a decade when a much older cellmate told him he was smart and didn’t belong in prison. Heard began reading books, then legal opinions.
“My fun time was actually reading case law and actually understanding it,” he said.
Without an attorney, Heard began filing appeals.
“I was basically asking the court to give me some light at the end of the tunnel, because I had 103 years to life,” he said. “But I was denied, denied, denied, denied.”
Then Heard noticed a provision in a California law created in 2012 that allows juveniles sentenced to life without parole to petition for resentencing. The law’s authors pointed to research showing that the teenage brain is vastly different from an adult’s. Teens are more prone to act on emotion, more susceptible to peer pressure and often less able to consider long-term consequences. Research also shows young people have a greater capacity for change.
Because of this, supporters of the reforms say, the justice system should treat them differently.
Heard hadn’t been sentenced to life without parole, meaning the law didn’t apply to him. But, he argued, his 103-year-to-life term was, in practice, the same thing.
San Diego attorney Pat Ford said Heard mailed him a packet of handwritten materials and cold-called him.
“I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, this is a legitimate petition,’” Ford recalled.
A trial judge rejected the argument, but Heard appealed.
In 2022, the state Fourth District Court of Appeal sided with Heard, ruling that denying resentencing to people with de facto life-without-parole sentences — while allowing it for people sentenced to formal life without parole — violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The decision, People v. Heard, became precedent.
“They call them ‘Heard petitions’ now, and everybody is filing them,” Ford said.
Heard’s case was sent back for resentencing, and he was eventually released.
Since the decision, the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office has responded to 29 petitions requesting resentencing. Of those, judges have granted 12 requests. Eight petitions didn’t meet the narrow criteria for resentencing — in four cases, for example, the petitioner’s sentence was not considered to be equivalent to life without parole — and nine petitions are pending.
One of the 12 was Williams, the Santana High shooter. Another was United Levao.
Growing up in prison
Like Heard, Levao grew up amid instability and violence. By elementary school, he was already being suspended for gang-related behavior. At 15, he killed a rival gang member in Oceanside.
He said gangs offered him the sense of acceptance he didn’t get at home.
“All these gang-world beliefs were instilled in me at the time,” Levao said. “All this fake love, this sense of family. That was easy for me to fall into.”
He has said the shooting was motivated by the belief that committing murder would bring status and respect.
“I knew right away, at a young age, if I kill somebody, I’m going to be a top dog,” he said.
He was with two other gang members, both 18, when he shot 17-year-old Jesse Watson. One of his accomplices accidentally shot Levao, the bullet slicing through his arm into his chest.
Levao was charged as an adult, found guilty after a jury trial and sentenced to 50 years to life.
Inside prison, he initially embraced gang culture, which he said felt like the only way to survive.
A chaplain he had met in juvenile hall continued visiting him and sending books. One of them was a self-help book called “Getting Out of Your Own Way,” which Levao read while in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison.
He said the book changed how he thought about himself, the trauma he’d experienced and how it shaped his behavior. He stopped getting into trouble and was eventually transferred from maximum security to Ironwood State Prison, where programming was available.
He said he eventually realized that many of the beliefs guiding his behavior, he’d learned from others.
“It came to me, I literally can empty all these beliefs and replace it with my own empathy, compassion, love,” he said. “It had never dawned on me until then.”
Levao learned about Heard’s case and started filling out paperwork to challenge his sentence. Not long afterward, attorneys from the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office reached out to him about filing a petition.
In 2024, a judge ruled that Levao’s sentence was, like Heard’s, the functional equivalent of life without parole and sent his case to juvenile court.
Prosecutors argued Levao already qualified for parole under a state law that took effect in 2014 and pointed to data showing many lifers are eventually found suitable for release.
They also cited portions of his prison disciplinary record to argue he remained violent, though Levao said his last violent incident in custody occurred many years earlier.
He read a statement in court addressed to the family of the man he killed, describing his accountability and his understanding of the harm he caused.
Although the court told him he could go straight home, Levao chose to enter transitional housing to help adjust after decades in prison. Because his case had been sent back to juvenile court, he was released under juvenile probation — initially set for two years — but was discharged after one year.
Today, Levao, 36, works as a case manager and project director overseeing the same reentry housing program he’d entered nearly two years ago. He’s married with a 1-year-old daughter. He has an associate degree and plans to pursue further education.
“I took so much,” Levao said. “I hurt so many people. The only way I can say sorry is by how I live.”
Opportunity to make amends
After Heard, appellate courts around California issued conflicting rulings on whether de facto life-without-parole sentences qualify for resentencing. The California Supreme Court has agreed to take up the issue but has not yet ruled.
In the Williams case, the District Attorney’s Office is appealing the order from Superior Court Judge Lisa Rodriguez that the case be sent back to juvenile court. Last week, the appeals court said it would put the matter on its priority calendar.
If Williams’ case remains in juvenile court, a judge could order his release and place him on juvenile probation — but with conditions appropriate for an adult, like placement in a transitional facility.
Such a setting would include close supervision and “pretty extensive programming,” said law professor Christopher Hawthorne, director of Loyola Law School’s Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic. Offerings can include anger management classes, generalized group therapy and job training, he said.
Williams’ lawyer has said he plans to live in Northern California as soon as he is released.
Williams has said he carried out the 2001 shooting after months of being bullied. He was new to Santana High School, struggling to fit in and using drugs and alcohol. Court records indicate he had been dealing with depression and anger and had initially planned to provoke police to kill him.
Williams has expressed remorse, calling his actions “violent and inexcusable” and acknowledging the harm he caused.
Advocates say that kind of change is precisely what California’s youth-sentencing laws are meant to recognize.
“I know that there are people who think that you should incapacitate a person who’s capable of killing somebody for the rest of his life, but that’s not my experience with teenagers who commit serious crimes,” Hawthorne said. “They change, nearly every one of them.”
Heard is now a father and works in construction, joining a carpenters union. He said he knows many people probably don’t think he deserves a second chance. He said he is careful to stay on the straight and narrow, and not just for himself.
“I didn’t ask for this, but in some sense, I am the poster child for people in my situation,” he said. “Society, I feel, can’t wait until I let them down where they can say ‘I knew it. See? Look.’ I live my life like that.”
When he wants to reflect, he finds himself walking along the water. It’s where a recurring dream took him while in prison.
“To have a second chance, it’s beautiful,” Heard said. “It means everything to me.”
Heard pointed to the tragedy for everyone in the Santana High case, from the victims and their families to Williams himself, and “the trauma that I guarantee he went through from the time he did this to the time he spent in prison, because it wasn’t good for him. I don’t know him, but I know that it wasn’t.”
“Maybe this is an opportunity for (Williams) to make amends,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t make amends to the victims, but you can make amends to yourself and society. You can give back in multiple ways and do better in multiple ways.”
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