Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor and co-director of the university’s Criminal Justice Center, supports letting Belcher return home.

“It seems very odd and unfair to oppose compassionate release where we have an utterly non-dangerous defendant whose children are now at very grave social psychological and economic risk, with no adult available to provide continuous care,” Weisberg said in an interview. He said the amount in the misdated insurance bill was so small that prosecutors would normally have refrained from filing charges.