Darryl Lamar Collins was released in 2020 under California youth-offender rules before prosecutors said he killed again in 2021.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — When Darryl Lamar Collins was sentenced to life without parole for killing Fatima Johnson, the punishment resolved a South Los Angeles murder case while also casting new attention on the California parole law that had allowed him to leave prison after serving 25 years for two earlier murders.
The legal backdrop was not a side issue in this case. Prosecutors repeatedly pointed to the fact that Collins was released in 2020 under youth-offender parole provisions expanded by state lawmakers and that Johnson was killed 364 days later. That timeline made the sentencing more than a standard murder hearing. It became a moment for prosecutors, family members and court observers to measure what the law had intended to do against what happened after Collins came home.
California’s youth-offender parole framework gives special review to many people who were under 26 when they committed their controlling offense. State materials say the law was broadened in stages, first to people under 23 and later to those 25 and younger. Collins fit that age range because he was 24 during the crimes that first sent him to prison. Officials said that change allowed him to be considered for release even though he had been sentenced in January 1998 to two consecutive terms of 25 years to life for separate 1995 murders. By March 2026, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman was using that legislative history as part of his argument that Collins should never have been back in the community.
The earlier crimes were violent and, according to prosecutors, random. On Sept. 17, 1995, Derrick Reese, 28, was at a pay phone when Collins carjacked him, took the vehicle and then backed up and shot him at least twice. On Sept. 28, prosecutors said, Collins entered a diner in Inglewood, confronted cashier Thomas Weiss, 44, at gunpoint and shot him in the face when he did not comply with a demand for money. Those killings established the record on which Collins was sentenced to 50 years to life. They also set up the central contradiction in the later case: a man imprisoned for killing two strangers was eventually judged eligible for release because of his age at the time of those crimes.
The Johnson case gave that contradiction a victim and a date. Prosecutors said Collins killed Johnson, 53, on July 2, 2021, in her apartment in the 7600 block of South Western Avenue. Her daughters and best friend later found her bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket. The cause of death was listed as asphyxia due to neck pressure and possible smothering. Prosecutors said Collins then stole her cellphone, jewelry and Lexus, pawned two necklaces and sold the car for drugs within hours. Johnson was a mother of six, grandmother of eight and nursing home worker who was pursuing her nursing license. Those facts made the parole argument concrete: the law may have explained how Collins got out, but Johnson’s death explained why the release drew such fierce scrutiny afterward.
The prosecution also had to decide how to charge the new killing. Local reporting said then-District Attorney George Gascón initially faced criticism because office policy generally opposed filing special-circumstance allegations that could lead to life without parole. In June 2022, however, Gascón said an internal review approved a policy deviation in this “extremely rare instance,” allowing prosecutors to add the special-circumstance allegation. Collins was later convicted Feb. 19 of first-degree special-circumstance murder, and Judge Craig Veals imposed life without parole on March 20. That sequence mattered because it marked a second policy layer in the case: not only the parole law that helped free Collins, but the prosecution choice that ensured he could not again become eligible for release.
By sentencing day, the policy questions had narrowed into personal ones. Johnson’s children told Collins what the loss had done to their family. One daughter said he should never have seen freedom. Another said her mother had been killed for “a hit of dope.” The judge told Collins he would be locked up for the rest of his life, and a packed courtroom responded with applause, according to local coverage. Whatever broader debate follows around youth-offender parole, the trial court outcome in this case is fixed: Collins is back in prison for life, this time without a parole date.
The immediate next phase is no longer about sentencing law but appellate review. Collins has been in custody since his September 2021 arrest, and any future change in the case would have to come through appeals. The larger argument over parole reform, however, is likely to outlast this one courtroom file.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.