OLYMPIA – A self-described gang “wannabe” who killed a Gonzaga Law School student during a 1992 robbery does not deserve early release from prison at this time, a state board ruled Monday.

Daniel Delgado has received too many infractions during his time in prison, including a recent one that was gang-related, the Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board said in turning down his request for release under a new law that allows inmates convicted as juveniles to be released early from some prison terms.

Delgado was 17 when he killed Mike Maykowskyj, who was working as a pizza delivery man during a summer off from GU Law School. Delgado and two accomplices ordered a pizza to be delivered to a darkened house in West Central Spokane with a plan to rob the deliveryman for beer money. Delgado ambushed Maykowskyj when he got out of the car and shot him with a stolen sawed-off shotgun.

Maykowskyj’s family, including his daughter who was 2 years old at the time of the murder, begged the board not to release him. Delgado avoided the death penalty and life in prison without parole when he accepted a plea bargain that resulted in a 37½-year sentence, they said, and he should serve his time.

“I beg you not to take away the only justice we have,” daughter Ashley Cavuto said in statement that was read by her aunt, Marne Maykowskyj Nordean, when the younger woman broke down in tears and couldn’t continue.

In his hearing last month at the Washington Correctional Center in Shelton, Delgado admitted that the robbery plan was his, hatched when he was a teen trying to make a name for himself as a gangbanger in West Central Spokane. The interview he gave before his sentencing was an effort to project an image that would go with him into the prison system.

“In my heart, I don’t truly feel that. I thought that was what people respected,” he said.

In prison he joined a prison gang, the Surenos, and compiled a record of 35 serious nfractions. He told the board he’s a changed man and his last infraction, in 2011, was a result of a fistfight that stemmed from leaving the gang.

His recent infractions, which are gang-related, are the reason the board cited for denying Delgado’s release. It told him he could request another review in one year.

David Freeburg, an attorney for the Maykowskyj family, said the board was signaling its opinion that Delgado is likely to commit more crimes if he’s released.

Under the law, which the Legislature approved in 2014, the board is directed to release anyone convicted of a homicide as a juvenile who has served at least 20 years of a sentence unless the members believe the inmate is likely to commit more crimes. The law was a response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said persons convicted of murder as juveniles cannot serve life without parole without their sentences being reviewed later to determine if age and other circumstances are factors that would warrant their release.

Freeburg said the Washington law goes farther than the court decision, setting up a system that presumes juveniles sentenced to more than 20 years should be released unless the board believes they would commit more crimes.

The board has approved three requests for early release from inmates convicted of murders committed when they were juveniles and denied four, including Delgado's.

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