David Allen Funston, a 64-year-old convicted serial child molester serving three consecutive sentences of 25 years to life, walked out of state prison on February 26 and straight into the custody of Placer County law enforcement. Prosecutors filed new charges from a 1996 case alleging he sexually assaulted a child in Roseville, booking him for alleged lewd and lascivious acts against a child. He is being held in the Placer County jail without bail.
The arrest came the same day Funston was set to be released from Chino's California Institution for Men, after a parole board granted him freedom earlier in February through California's elderly parole program. Public backlash followed the announcement of his pending release.
The timeline tells the story. A jury found Funston guilty on 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation from a 1999 case. Officials said he lured children younger than 7 years old. He was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 25 years to life, plus an additional 20 years and eight months. Placer County prosecutors previously decided not to pursue a separate 1996 case against Funston because the sentences from the 1999 conviction were already so heavy.
Then the parole board opened the cage door, and prosecutors had to scramble to find another way to keep a predator off the streets.
California's elderly parole program allows inmates to seek parole after reaching age 50 and serving 20 years, or reaching age 60 and serving 25 years. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the program excludes:
Notice what's not on the exclusion list: serial child molesters convicted on 16 counts of kidnapping and molesting children under seven. The law carved out protections for cop killers but left the door open for predators who targeted the youngest and most vulnerable.
Parole commissioners, according to a transcript cited by the Los Angeles Times, pointed to Funston attending therapy and sex offender treatment courses, showing good behavior behind bars, and expressing remorse for his crimes. Therapy and remorse. For a man convicted of kidnapping and molesting multiple children younger than seven, as The Daily Caller reports.
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire blamed "changes in state law and recent parole board failures" for Funston's parole. His office moved to refile the 1996 charges that prosecutors had previously shelved, recognizing that the statute of limitations still allowed them to act.
"This individual was previously sentenced to multiple life terms for extremely heinous crimes."
Gire's statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, laid out the reasoning plainly:
"When changes in the law put our communities at risk, it is our duty to re-evaluate those cases and act accordingly. David Allen Funston committed very real crimes against a Placer County child, and the statute of limitations allows us to hold him accountable for those crimes."
Anne Marie Schubert, the former prosecutor who tried Funston in the original case, said his release "shocks the conscience of all Californians."
That a local DA had to dust off a 29-year-old case to prevent a serial child predator from walking free tells you everything about how California's criminal justice system currently functions. The system designed to keep people safe failed. A prosecutor had to find a workaround.
California's political class has spent years building a criminal justice apparatus that treats incarceration itself as the problem. Elderly parole programs, sentencing reforms, early release mechanisms: they all operate on the premise that time served is punishment enough, and that rehabilitation is the system's highest calling.
No one asked the child Funston allegedly assaulted in 1996. No one asked the families of the children he kidnapped and molested in the case that sent him to prison. The parole board weighed his therapy attendance and good behavior. It did not weigh the permanent damage inflicted on children younger than seven.
This is the pattern. California writes laws broad enough to release predators, then acts surprised when predators walk through the opening. Prosecutors scramble after the fact. Communities absorb the risk. And the state congratulates itself on its compassion.
Gire's office stopped this one. The 1996 charges gave them a legal hook, and they used it. But the question lingers over every case where a dusty file doesn't exist, where the statute of limitations has actually run, where no backup plan sits in a filing cabinet.
Funston sits in Placer County jail without bail tonight because one DA's office refused to let the system's failure become a community's nightmare. The system that put him on the street has not changed.
