Thirty years after being sentenced to life without parole for hiring someone to kill her husband, Susan Bustamante, 71, still travels back and forth between Orange County and Sacramento to advocate for a bill that she herself admits will not help her. This is the central paradox of the story unfolding in the California legislature: a woman who spent three decades in prison is fighting for others, not for herself.
Bustamante's story is the starting point for understanding why this bill exists. According to lbpost.com, in 1987 she was sentenced to life without parole after being charged with hiring her brother to kill her husband, Steven Bustamante, and helping conceal his body to collect $100,000 in life insurance. She says that during a two-day trial, she was not permitted to tell the jury about being abused and threatened with death by her husband. Thirty years later, former California Governor Jerry Brown commuted her sentence in 2017, and she was released in 2018 — according to both lbpost.com and 102.7 KIIS-FM, which confirmed the commutation took place that same year.
The activist advocating for AB 910 is herself not eligible to benefit from it.
From a trial where the story could not be told to a bill named AB 910
In 2023, Bustamante testified before the California legislature for the first time about the need for a law allowing abuse victims to fully present their circumstances in court. Since then, at least one of the legislature's two public safety committees has passed similar bill versions each year, only to have a budget committee reject it — a cycle that has repeated four years in a row. This is not uncommon: two budget committees of the California legislature meet twice a year to eliminate hundreds of bills without public debate, a mechanism often called 'bill graveyard' in Sacramento observer circles.
This year's version is called Assembly Bill 910, sponsored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, a Democrat representing Oakland. According to 102.7 KIIS-FM, the bill would allow victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, or sexual assault to use their trauma as a legal defense when prosecuted for violent crimes, with an exception for most murder cases. People previously convicted could file petitions asking the court to overturn their sentences; if approved, arrest and conviction records would be treated as if they never occurred, case files would be sealed and destroyed, and unpaid fines and restitution would be erased, according to lbpost.com.
Notably, Bustamante herself — the movement's originator — admits she would not qualify for sentence dismissal under this bill. This detail reveals the practical limits of AB 910: it is not an open door for everyone who was abused and committed a violent crime, but a narrow, conditional mechanism designed mainly for specific future cases rather than correcting the past.
The boundary between 'being heard' and 'being absolved of responsibility
Currently, California law already allows defendants to present evidence of past abuse and call experts to explain how trauma affects behavior; judges can also consider a history of human trafficking or domestic violence when sentencing. This is the point that opponents — police and prosecutors — seize on to argue that the bill is unnecessary.
Greg Totten, former district attorney for Ventura County and current head of the state prosecutors' association, argues that allowing defendants to escape responsibility for violent crimes is a serious concern, and emphasizes that defendants already have the right to argue about being abused or trafficked during sentencing, according to lbpost.com. The police and prosecutors' argument, according to 102.7 KIIS-FM, also extends to concern that the bill could overwhelm the court system with a flood of sentence dismissal petitions.
Proponents counter that the gap between 'being presented at sentencing' and 'being used as a formal legal defense before a jury' is enormous. Mitigating testimony in court does not change the nature of the offense; a valid legal defense can change the entire trial outcome. This is why at least 17 organizations, including ACLU California Action and the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, support AB 910, according to lbpost.com. Leigh LaChapelle, policy director at the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, argues that even if only one person benefits from the bill, the social cost of maintaining this mechanism is still worthwhile.
The key point to distinguish: supporters claim very few people convicted of violent crimes would actually qualify under the new law — this is an assertion from advocates, not yet verified by an independent agency with specific data. Conversely, prosecutors' concern about court system overload is also a prediction, not data from something that has already happened. Both sides are arguing on the basis of speculation, because California has no precedent for operating a similar mechanism at scale to measure actual impact.
Who will decide the fate of AB 910
The next moment is decisive: the Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Senator Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat representing Riverside, is expected to consider the bill next month, according to lbpost.com. This is the 'bottleneck' that has strangled previous versions of the bill for four years. If history repeats, AB 910 could die silently in a committee meeting without any public debate — exactly as the mechanism of California's two budget committees works.
Bonta presented to the Senate Public Safety Committee that AB 910 is a bill about second chances and human dignity, and argued that survivors should not have to pay their entire lives for abuse they endured — this is the bill's sponsor's argument, not a legal conclusion that has been passed. What makes this year different from previous years is that the bill has passed the public safety committee and advanced further in the process — but 'further' does not mean 'certain to pass.
A perspective from the Vietnamese community: when family violence meets legal and cultural barriers
This story touches on a reality that many organizations supporting abuse victims in the Vietnamese community in Southern California have been speaking about for a long time: domestic abuse victims in Vietnamese families often face double pressure to stay silent — both from fear of the American legal system they do not fully understand, and from cultural assumptions that treat family matters as 'internal household business.' A Vietnamese-origin woman in Westminster, for example, may have lived many years in an abusive marriage without ever reporting it, fearing community judgment or facing language barriers when seeking lawyers and court access. If one day that person is pushed into a situation where she must defend herself and faces prosecution, AB 910 — if passed — would open a legal pathway for her experience of abuse to be considered more seriously than merely as a sentencing mitigating factor.
This also directly concerns Vietnamese-origin nonprofit organizations that specialize in supporting human trafficking and domestic abuse victims in Orange County and the Bay Area, places that have repeatedly spoken out about gaps in protecting immigrant victims — a group often hesitant to contact police out of fear for their immigration status. A bill like AB 910, if passed, would not only affect individual criminal cases, but could also change how community organizations advise victims about whether to report or defend themselves in dangerous situations.
Conclusion: a narrow mechanism, but a test of how California redefines criminal responsibility
After four years of being blocked by the budget committee, AB 910 is now closer to decision than ever before, but the path ahead remains narrow and uncertain. The bill's nature is not a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' for any crime, but a conditional mechanism that excludes most murder cases and requires victims to prove a direct connection between their trauma and their criminal conduct. The case of Bustamante herself — who does not qualify to benefit from the bill she has been advocating for three years — is the clearest evidence that AB 910 is designed to look toward the future rather than correct the past.
Regardless of what the Senate Budget Committee decides next month, this debate has forced California to confront a difficult question: how should the justice system treat people who commit violent crimes under circumstances where they themselves were victims of serious violence. This is not a question that can be answered by a single bill, but AB 910 is where California is forced to provide its first concrete answer.