Quine was imprisoned for first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery 35 years ago.
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Jerry Brown announced that he would not take any action on the state’s Board of Parole Hearings’ conclusions that a transgender inmate should be released from jail.
Norsworthy, then 21, was convicted of second-degree murder after she shot Liefer three times.
Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that had every doctor and mental health professional who examined Quine, including two independent experts, said that she needed the gender reassignment surgery.
The CDCR agreed to a similar surgery for a 56-year-old inmate this Friday. Quine’s lawyers said their research shows the cost of the operation she seeks ranges from $15,000 to $25,000.
Quine turned 56 on Friday, the day the state settled her case. In April 2014, a prison psychologist assessing Quine wrote that he believed sex reassignment was “reasonable and necessary to alleviate severe pain”. The procedure was slated for last month but it was delayed because state attorneys appealed the decision shortly after the board decided to approve the parole. If he grants parole, it isn’t clear whether or not Norsworthy would be capable of have the prison-funded surgical procedure earlier than she is launched. Prison records refer to her by her birth name of Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy, though she has lived as a woman since the 1990s. Transgender inmates often are housed apart from the general population in so-called sensitive needs yards, among child molesters, gang dropouts and others whose lives might be at risk. Prison officials in court have said Masbruch has been moved repeatedly in response to threats and assaults.
He already had Norsworthy’s litigation before him. Norsworthy heard that a similar request was granted to an inmate in Massachusetts.
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The issue of the inmate’s gender reassignment surgery raised relevant legal questions when Norsworthy’s legal team argued that denying the inmate’s surgery would represent a violation of her constitutional rights against unusual punishment.
