Rosemary Dyer had Mayor London Breed and state Treasurer Fiona Ma over the other day to see how renovation work was going on her new Treasure Island home. And while there’s still a lot of work to be done, it was a big improvement over the state prison cells where she spent the past 34 years.
“If I wasn’t here, I’d be sleeping in a cardboard box somewhere,” Dyer told the reporters gathered the other day in the yard outside the former Navy apartment building.
Dyer, 67, was one of about 100 abused women serving life or life without parole for killing their abusive husbands or partners.
In 1985, Dyer shot her husband to death with the same gun he had used to threaten her. When she testified about the abuse, prosecutors used her words as evidence that she had a motive for the killing.
Dyer might still be in prison, but as luck would have it, a few years back a filmmaker showed then-Assemblywoman Ma a documentary about the abused women serving life sentences in California.
“These women were doubly abused, first by their husbands and then by the system,” Ma said.
Ma was chair of the Assembly committee that dealt with domestic violence. She began working on bills that resulted in the passage of two pieces of legislation to allow abused women serving life without parole to have their cases reviewed by the state Board of Parole Hearings or a judge.
“They were my last two bills in state Assembly,” Ma said. Gov. Jerry Brown signed them into law in 2012.
Fast-forward to this year, when after a review by the parole board, Gov, Gavin Newsom commuted Dyer’s sentence. She was released in April.
Ma drove six hours to the California Women’s Institution in Chino (San Bernardino County) to pick Dyer up herself.
“She couldn’t fly,” Ma said. “She uses a wheelchair and doesn’t have any ID.”
Plus, after more than three decades in prison, Dyer’s family and friends weren’t around, and she had no place to go.
“The state never set up programs for what to do when women who had been serving life without parole got out,” Ma said. “Their only option for a place to stay was to enroll in a drug or alcohol program, and she doesn’t have a drug or alcohol problem.”
Enter Five Keys, a nonprofit that works in two of San Francisco’s homeless Navigation Centers, and teaches classes in the county jail.
With the help of the city and state and private donors, Five Keys has set up a program called Home Free, with the goal of providing a home for up to 11 formerly incarcerated abused women in former Navy housing on Treasure Island.
Nothing fancy. Two women to an apartment, each with their own room.
“That’s all they want,” Ma said. “They are happy to share a living room and kitchen, but after so many years in a cell, they don’t want to have a ‘bunkie,’ which is what they call a roommate in prison. All they really want is a room of their own.”
Sunny Schwartz, who founded the first Five Keys Charter School in the county jail, said one of the most amazing aspects of the program is the women themselves.
“These women survived horrific violence and were wrongly imprisoned for decades,” Schwartz said. “The amazing paradox is they are not embittered, as they only want to heal, work, rebuild their lives and bring voice to other women who have been painfully forgotten.”
For now, Dyer is staying at a hotel leased by the city until her new home is ready.
“People ask what’s it like getting out of prison only to move into this health pandemic,” Dyer said. “It’s wonderful. That’s what I say to myself every day. It’s wonderful.”
Land ho: The man responsible for creating the San Francisco Port Commission 52 years ago is about to become its newest member.
John Burton, whose public career has included stints in the Assembly and state Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, has been tagged by Mayor London Breed to replace Commissioner Victor Makras.
Makras did not seek reappointment when his term expired in July.
“I was on the wharf having the best sand dabs you can find,” Burton said. “I look around and I see all of these businesses are going down the drain because of the virus. I think about what Robert Kennedy said. It was something like, ‘Some people ask why? I say why not?’”
So at 87, he volunteered and the mayor took him up on it.
“John Burton knows the waterfront as well as anyone, and his long history of public service is unparalleled in San Francisco today,” mayoral spokesman Jeff Cretan said. “More importantly, he wrote the Burton Act, which gave the city local control over our waterfront. It would be hard to find someone more qualified to serve on the Port Commission.”
It was back in 1968 when then-Assemblyman Burton overheard then-Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh mention something about just coming back from lunch with then-Mayor Joe Alioto, an old-guard rival of the Burton hometown progressive political machine.
Burton asked what Alioto wanted, and Unruh said something about transferring control of the port to the city.
“I went right over and had a bill introduced to have the city take control of the port,” Burton recalled. “I just thought that since it was in my district that I should be the one to do it.”
What emerged was a bill to transfer the port, which the state controlled at the time, to the city for the good of the residents.
These days, the port is primarily a giant real estate operation that controls the city’s prime waterfront properties. Fights over how to develop the waterfront have led to some of the city’s biggest political fights.
And you can thank the Burton Act for that.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGO-TV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier
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Woman imprisoned for killing abusive husband, gets freedom, new home - San Francisco Chronicle
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