Category: General

Much attention has been given to the dramatic spike in crime in large California cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and the focus is often on the pro-criminal policies of local politicians and progressive district attorneys.  But crime in rural California has also increased, even though local political and law enforcement leaders often oppose soft-on-crime policies.  As reported by Fox News,  the CHP pulled over a suspicious vehicle in rural Tulare County on June 24, and found 150,000 Fentanyl pills and two kilos of cocaine.  The two men in the vehicle, both from Washington state, were arrested and charged with crimes which carry a prison sentence of up to fourteen years upon conviction.   Within twenty-four hours a county judge had released the traffickers without bail and instructed them to show up for a July 21st hearing.   Is anybody surprised that they left town?

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Reversing a decades old policy, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office will no longer let crime victims and their families know that the criminal who assaulted them or murdered their loved one is receiving a parole hearing.  Jason McGahan of Los Angeles Magazine reports that an email distributed to deputies on Tuesday announced that DA George Gascón feels that it is “not appropriate” for prosecutors to notify victims and next of kin of upcoming parole hearings.  This comes as Gascón also informed deputies that he will be closing down the “lifer unit,”  which argued on behalf of victims to oppose the parole of murderers sentenced to life in prison.   A spokesman for Gascón explained that informing victims or their surviving relatives can be traumatic, and that victims have a right not to be notified of their assailant’s parole hearing.

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, boasts about the drop in prosecutions under his leadership while his city is setting records on homicides.  Last year, Philly, with a population of 1.6 million, had 562 homicides.  For perspective,  Los Angeles has population of 3.9 million and suffered 397 homicides in 2021.  Attorney Hans Bader, writing in Liberty Unyielding notes that the press seems to give Krasner, and other Soros-bankrolled progressive (read pro-criminal) district attorneys a pass.  In addition to implementing policies that have his office declining to prosecute criminals at two-and-one-half times the rate of his predecessor,  Krasner “owes the city $83,406.50 in back taxes, a story Big Trail published back on April 26th.  For more than two months now, the D.A. has held weekly press conferences typically on Mondays.  And not once has any reporter in  town had the guts to ask the D.A. when he was going to pay up.”

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California’s Second District Court of Appeal has held a 2021 law (SB 567) signed last October by Governor Newsom, cannot require a judge to re-sentence an offender to a lower term.  The Metropolitan News Enterprise reports that the new law required trial courts to sentence a defendant to the the lower term if he/she “has experienced psychological, physical or childhood trauma,” that contributed to the commission of the offense.  The case involved the 2021 conviction of habitual felon Norman Salazar for confining his ex-girlfriend in a motel room and beating and torturing her for nearly twenty hours.  When Salazar took her to her bank to withdraw $3,000, the victim lifted her sunglasses to show the teller her black eye.  The teller called the police and Salazar was arrested.

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Another Los Angeles County murderer is seeking to benefit from progressive District Attorney George Gascón’s policy of reducing all death sentences to life without parole.  My News LA reports that Scott Forest Collins was sentenced to death for the 1996 robbery and murder of Fred Rose in North Hollywood.  Now, twenty-six years later, Gascón’s hand picked deputy, former defense attorney  Shelan Joseph, is partnering with the murderer’s attorney to request that Collin’s death sentence be vacated.  On behalf of Rose’s widow and two daughters, former LADA Steve Cooley and former Deputy DA Kathleen Cady have petitioned the court to deny the murderer’s request.

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On June 14, two El Monte police officers responding to a domestic violence call were shot and killed by a habitual felon free on probation due to the reduced-sentencing policy of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón.  According to the Los Angeles Times the shooter, Justin Flores, a gang member with multiple priors, served 10 days of a 20-day sentence in county jail for a 2021 gun and drug conviction that made him eligible for a three-year prison sentence.  Under Gascón’s ban on sentence enhancements for criminals guilty of multiple offenses Flores was free to kill the two officers.  The County Coroner has concluded that Flores shot himself as other officers closed in on him.   Eric Siddall, Vice President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, has this post on the fallout from these two murders.

Under California law, Flores should have been in a state prison cell on the day he murdered the two officers. Instead, because of George Gascón’s policies, he was in a hotel room in El Monte beating his girlfriend until two officers responded for the call for help. Now two officers are dead.

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……..there’s a bit more to the story, as of all things the New York Times tells us.  The headline spills the beans:  “They Hoped A DNA Test Would Clear Him.  It Did the Opposite.”

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On Friday morning, April 9, 2019,  a police officer patrolling a high crime neighborhood in Pierce County, Washington, noticed a car parked near the entrance to a church with both the driver and the passenger asleep.  The officer knocked on the window for a while and the driver slowly woke up.  The officer asked the driver, Palla Sum, if he owned the car, and the driver responded that the car was not his.  The officer then asked both the driver and the passenger for their names and date of birth.  Sum gave the officer a false name and birthday, the passenger gave his correct name and date.   As the officer returned to his patrol car to check the names, Sum drove away at high speed, running stop signs and multiple red lights before crashing onto a yard.   Police found registration in the car indicating the Sum was the owner.   They also found a handgun.  In a unanimous ruling last Thursday, the Washington Supreme Court held that, because Sum was a minority (Asian), the police questioning of him was illegal.

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A California Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a statute passed by the Legislature to give parole eligibility to murderers sentenced to life without parole for murders committed before their eighteenth birthdays is unconstitutional. The law providing for juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP) sentences was enacted by the people by initiative, and the legislative statute ran afoul of a state constitutional provision limiting the Legislature’s ability to amend initiative statutes.

Section 190.5(b) of the Penal Code was enacted by Proposition 115 of 1990. For the types of first-degree murder that would be capital crimes if committed by an adult, that law gives the trial judge discretion to choose between a sentence of life without parole or 25 years to life. In 2017, the California Legislature enacted SB 394, which added subdivision (b)(4) to Penal Code section 3051. That subdivision authorizes parole after 25 years to inmates sentenced to life without parole under section 190.5(b). The bill’s sponsor told the Legislature that this change was necessary because the U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed life without parole for juveniles in Miller v. Alabama (2012). That was a patent falsehood. Miller held no such thing. Last year in Jones v. Mississippi, the high court further clarified that for juvenile life without parole “a State’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.” Continue reading . . .