Crime Beat

system is that it is not rehabilitative.
    ‘Evil Until He Dies’
    “The theory of rehabilitation is a pie-in-the-sky dream,” he said. “You take a guy like Comtois, and he is evil from day one, and he is going to be evil until he dies. His record speaks for itself.”
    Prof. Ernest Kamm, chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at California State University, Los Angeles, said a flaw in the way society tries to deal with someone like Comtois is in the presumption “that at one time the person was habilitated.”
    In fact, he said, “we find a great number of people have never adopted the mores of society in the first place. And they can’t or don’t want to once they return from prison.”
    Kamm said that, although the answer to that might be the warehousing of career criminals to keep them from society, California laws aimed at enhancing sentences for repeat offenders and putting habitual criminals permanently in prison are often circumvented.
    “The reality is that there are too many holes in those laws,” he said. “People can get through them.”
    Lynn said Comtois had to commit an aggravated crime such as he is now accused of before he could be considered under the habitual crime law. He said Comtois’ previous convictions for robbery, burglary and drugs would not have applied.
    Coming and Going
    “Under our system, you don’t do life until you do something it considers serious,” Lynn said. “As long as he stayed below that line, he was one of the guys who kept coming in and going out.”
    Although guidelines allow longer sentences for criminals with previous convictions, it appears Comtois reduced his time in prison by pleading guilty in almost all of his convictions. When he faced the drug and weapon charges in 1974, records show that, in exchange for his guilty plea, his previous convictions were not considered at sentencing.
    Finally, authorities suggest, the system is too crowded and has too few resources to give individuals the attention required for true rehabilitation or for the protection of society.
    “The system cannot accommodate the intense flow of individuals,” Kamm said. “Too frequently, individuals never get out of the cycle. They may wind up doing intense damage to somebody.”
Roland Comtois’ Criminal Record
April 1941: At age 11, he is charged with petty theft and diagnosed as an incorrigible delinquent. He is committed to reform school in Attleboro, Mass.
March 1947: Charged with breaking and entering in West Concord, Mass. He is given an indeterminate sentence limited to two years.
May 1952: Charged with assault with intent to commit rape in New Bedford, Mass. He is sentenced to three to five years in prison.
August 1955: Charged in Massachusetts in Peeping Tom incident. His parole is revoked.
February 1960: Charged with attempted bank robbery in Los Angeles. He is sentenced to one year in federal prison.
May 1960: Charged with burglary in La Mirada. His sentence is set to run concurrently with federal imprisonment.
July 1961: Charged with robbery in Los Angeles. He is sentenced to five years to life in state prison.
July 1974: Charged with possession of heroin with intent to sell and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He is sentenced to five years in state prison.
March 18, 1987: Charged with grand theft and forgery in Los Angeles. The case is pending.
June 1, 1987: Charged with burglary in Los Angeles. The case is pending.
July 27, 1987: Charged with car theft in Los Angeles. Case dismissed.
Sept. 24, 1987: Charged with murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and several other felonies in Los Angeles. Case is pending.
Source: Court records and probation reports
    NOTE: Roland Comtois was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In poor health because of drug abuse as well as being shot during his capture, he died in prison in 1994 while awaiting the carrying out of the sentence. Marsha Lynn Erickson was convicted of being his accomplice in the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

NAMELESS GRAVE
IDENTITY OF MURDER VICTIM STILL SHROUDED IN MYSTERY
    SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
    April 14, 1986
    T HE GRAVE AT Hollywood Memorial Gardens has no name on it. There simply isn’t one to put there. The identity of the man who is buried there is a mystery.
    He was murdered March 11, 1985, in a Fort Lauderdale motel room. He was strangled. Authorities have since solved the mystery of who killed him; one man was convicted and sentenced to life in prison