California prison hunger strike leader granted parole after 40 years

STOCKTON — A longtime California prisoner — who led a statewide hunger strike and joined a successful class action suit protesting solitary confinement — has been granted medical parole, 40 years after he was incarcerated, public records show.

Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, who’s listed in state records by his birth name, Ronnie Dewberry, was approved for medical parole on Friday, according to prison records. In his 40 years of incarceration, Jamaa has either been denied parole or had his hearing postponed on 17 occasions.

It remains unclear when — or where — Jamaa will be released. The state prison system’s guidelines on medical parole say inmates must prove they have a “significant and permanent” medical condition to qualify, and if medical parole is granted, they are placed in a “licensed health care facility in the community.”

Jamaa, 61, was hospitalized with an unknown medical malady last November, while housed at Salinas Valley State Prison, leading to false rumors that he had died. He is currently at the California Healthcare Facility in Stockton, a prison that provides “housing and treatment” for roughly 3,000 people, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Jamaa was once housed on the solitary confinement module — known as a “secure housing unit,” or SHU — in Pelican Bay State Prison, widely accepted as the most restrictive environment of any California prison. In the early 2000s, he was one of several SHU prisoners who teamed up to start a statewide prison hunger strike throughout the states jail and prison systems.

The strikers protested California’s use of indeterminate solitary terms, which back then could be based solely on alleged gang affiliation, as opposed to more serious rule violations. Jamaa also joined a class action lawsuit — led by another longtime prisoner, Todd Ashker, that sought to rid the state of solitary confinement.

In 2015, the state settled the suit, agreeing to end indefinite solitary confinement, and made other concessions.

Jamaa was placed in the SHU because CDCR determined he was a high-ranking member of the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang. The class action suit countered that Jamaa had no major discipline since 1995 and that the alleged gang affiliations were, “based merely on his associations and his political, cultural, and historical writings,” like Jamaa being overheard speaking Swahili.

Jamaa was serving a life sentence for a conviction related to a 1980 homicide in Alameda County, according to published reports.