Supreme Court refuses to block the release of 10,000 California prisoners

The US Supreme Court has denied California's request to delay the release of 10,000 inmates from the state's overcrowded prisons.

The court's 6-3 ruling on Friday likely means the state is out of options for preventing the early release of nearly 8 percent of the prison population by December 31. 

Governor Jerry Brown has been fighting against a 2009 court order to reduce the prison population to about 110,000 inmates.

The original ruling by a three-judge panel was in response to a lawsuit that declared prisoners' constitutional rights to health care and mental health treatment were being violated due to overcrowding.

The level of crowding, the ruling said, was tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment.

Brown's office made an emergency request to halt the order claiming it would cause a public safety crisis.

"California must now release upon the public nearly 10,000 inmates convicted of serious crimes, about 1,000 for every city larger than Santa Ana," Brown said after the court's ruling Friday.

California argued that it has already made "meaningful progress" in reducing the population by transferring thousands of "low-risk" inmates to county and local jails.

The state has cut its adult prison population by about 46,000 inmates since 2006, in part by finding places outside of California to house them.

California renewed contracts with several private out-of-state prisons that house about 8,900 inmates.

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Brown's office appears to be holding out hope of an appeal since the court on Friday stopped short of ruling on the appeal itself.

But the fact that the state refused to block the prisoner release is a "terrible sign", Donald Specter, a lawyer for the inmates who sued the state over health care in 2001, told the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Justice Antonin Scalia – joined by Justice Clarence Thomas – wrote a scathing dissent of the ruling saying that he has opposed the lower court's release order from the start.

"So also today, it is not our fault that California must now release upon the public nearly 10,000 inmates convicted of serious crimes – about 1,000 for every city larger than Santa Ana," he wrote.

"As for me, I adhere to my original view of this terrible injunction. It goes beyond what the Prison Litigation Reform Act allows, and beyond the power of the courts. I would grant the stay and dissolve the injunction."