Author: Michael Rushford

A civil lawsuit filed the Association of Deputy District Attorneys (ADDA) in Los Angeles Superior Court this morning is seeking a writ of mandate to prohibit newly-elected DA George Gascón from forcing the prosecutors in his office to violate California charging and sentencing law.  In those directives, the District Attorney ordered deputy district attorneys to dismiss pending strike priors, special circumstance enhancements, gang enhancements, firearm allegations, and certain other “felony prior” enhancements. The directives prohibited the filing of strike prior enhancements in new cases.   A statement regarding the lawsuit from the AADA notes that the directives violate California law, which imposes a mandatory duty on prosecutors to plead and prove strike priors. Dismissals of those priors can only be based on individual circumstances, not a blanket policy. Similarly, special circumstance allegations that will result in a life without parole sentence cannot be dismissed under the section cited by the directive.

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At a December 15 preliminary hearing in Los Angeles, a top advisor for the newly elected District Attorney George Gascón, offered a plea deal giving an alleged gang murderer 7 years in prison.  Bill Melugin of Fox 11 reports that a transcript of the hearing indicates that Mario Trujillo, a special advisor to Gascón, went behind the back of the Deputy District Attorney assigned to the case, offering a plea deal to the defense attorney of seven years with no enhancements or special circumstances.   When the deputy prosecutor assigned to the case announced that under a special directive issued by Gascón, the DA’s office would not be seeking any sentencing enhancements or special circumstances in the interest of justice, the judge questioned the interest of justice behind reducing the murderer’s sentence.  The deputy replied, “I believe that it is the new D.A.’s position……that extended prison sentences in Los Angeles county are far too long;  that they are costly and ineffective and harm people in underserved communities.”

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The claim repeated endlessly by liberal politicians, race hustlers and the mainstream media, that America’s criminal justice system is racially biased has been debunked by studies and hard data many times, but it continues to dominate every discussion of criminal justice policy.   Hans Bader’s piece below, addresses this claim, most recently made by newly elected Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón:

Punishment should be tailored to fit the crime, not ignore things that make a crime worse or more serious.  Criminal’s punishment should be proportional to their offense, according to Supreme Court rulings.  That’s why sentencing enhancements exist for crimes committed by repeat offenders, or for those who committ “great bodily injury.”  But Los Angeles County’s progressive district attorney opposes them.
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With the help of George Soro’s bottomless checkbook and the relentless “police are racists” drumbeat of Black Lives Matter, several large U.S. cities have embraced “criminal justice reform” by electing District Attorneys willing to use their office as an instrument of social justice.  George Gascón, recently elected District Attorney of Los Angeles, is in the running to become the most renown of these reformers.  In a piece in The Hill, journalist Rafael Mangual, notes that Gascón’s platform like those of other reform-minded District Attorneys “read as if they were written by those vying to be public defenders.”  He has announced that his office will simply not prosecute misdemeanors such as driving without a license or resisting arrest.  Arrestees for any crime up to murder, will not have to make bail, but will be released to rehab until trial, and at those trials, habitual criminals, even those with violent priors, will be treated like first-time offenders.

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Newly elected Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón has decided to drop the special circumstance allegations for a Utah man who killed two people on the same day in June of 2019.  Robert Gearty of Fox News reports that during a crime-spree which  included two armed robberies, Rhett Nelson shot off-duty LA Sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Solano while he was waiting in line at a Jack in the Box.  Earlier that day Nelson shot and killed Dmitry Kolsov as he stood outside a building in downtown LA.   Police believe that the killings were random.

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A California gang member convicted of the stabbing murder of his 17-year-old girlfriend has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.  Kristine de Leon of KTLA reports on the day that he stabbed Jolina Ramirez to death, Miguel Angel Reyes has just been released from the Orange County jail under the state’s zero-bail order to protect him from catching Covid-19.  Reyes was being held for a gang-related crime at the time of his release.  As the Orange County District Attorney noted, “We didn’t need the zero-bail experiment to tell us what we already knew:  when you let criminals out of jail, they commit more crimes.  It is an unforgivable tragedy that a 17-year-old girl is dead—and she didn’t have to die.”

A man convicted of participating in the double-murder of a young Texas couple was executed by lethal injection at a federal penitentiary Thursday.  Paulina Smolinski and Clare Hymes of CBS News report that Brandon Bernard apologized for the murders before he died.   Facts presented in a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision indicate that in June of 1999, two members of a gang that Bernard belonged to kidnapped Todd and Stacie Bagley from a convenience store parking lot. After taking Stadie’s jewelry and the couple’s ATM cards, they forced them to drive to a bank where the kidnappers withdrew money from an ATM.   They then met up with Bernard and another gang member who had brought a can of gasoline.  The four then drove the couple to a remote federal preserve, forced them into the trunk before one of the group shot both victims with Bernard’s .40 caliber Glock.  Bernard then doused the car with gasoline and set it on fire.

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Newly elected Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón told ABC News Monday that he estimates that his directive forbidding sentence enhancements for habitual felons will impact at least 20,000 cases.  Hans Bader writes in Liberty Unyielding that Gascón’s directive would prevent prosecutors in LA County from seeking the “increased penalties for repeat offenders who commit willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault with a firearm,” approved when California voters adopted Proposition 8.

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For months local news outlets have been reporting on a spike in shootings and homicides in large American cities, often with experts attributing it to the pandemic and the unrest following the death of George Floyd.  But with most businesses closed and most people staying home shouldn’t there be less violent crime?  George Floyd’s death was in May, and while there are still sporadic protests in places like Portland and Seattle, this does not explain the reported 728 people shot in Philadelphia in the month of November, the highest number of Los Angeles murders in a decade, the 26% homicide increase in Nashville, or the 38% increase in Sacramento.

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