Monthly Archive: January 2024

Last month the California Board of Parole Hearings, which is under Governor Newsom’s authority, approved parole for child murderer Patrick Goodman.  Goodman, a repeat felon, beat his girlfriend’s three-year-old son to death in 2000.  Sean O’Driscoll of Newsweek reports that the little boy died of a broken neck, broken ribs, a severed bowel, a severed artery and fifty separate external injuries.  In 2002 Goodwin was convicted of murder and child abuse in San Francisco and sentenced to 25-years-to-life.  Twenty-one years later, after fifteen minutes of deliberation, the two Board  Commissioners announced, “We find that Mr Goodman does not currently pose an unreasonable risk to public safety and is therefore suitable for parole.”  Assistant District Attorney Victoria Murray-Baldocchi pleaded with the Commissioners not to parole Goodman.

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Last year when Los Angeles County was considering adopting a zero bail policy, progressive District Attorney George Gascon announced his support saying that letting criminal defendants out without posting bail was safe and would make more of them return to court for trial.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Gascon’s claims regarding zero bail have turned out to be false.  The most recent example is Victor Duartemacias, one of LA county’s many catalytic converter and car thieves, who led police on a high speed chase the day after Thanksgiving.  Duartemacias was driving a stolen car when he blew through an intersection and smashed into Pedro Barrera’s pickup.  The pickup was hit so hard it knocked down a light pole as the stolen car burst into flames.  Barrera lost an arm in the crash, and died a month later in intensive care.

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A Californian is four times more likely to be killed in a hit and run accident than a person living in New York or Illinois. Marc Sternfield of KTLA reports that data from the National Traffic Safety Board indicate that more than one out of every ten fatal car accidents in the state were hit an run incidents. The national average of traffic fatalities that involve a hit and run driver is 6.33%.  It is 10.48% in California. The city with the highest hit and run death rate is San Francisco at 22% followed by Los Angeles with 15%. Most of the Californians killed by hit an run drivers were pedestrians. California also leads the nation on the number of stolen vehicles according to 2022 data with over 202,000, nearly twice as many as the second-place state of Texas. So the next time a California politician brags about the state being a national leader, believe him.

An illegal alien from El Salvador, who has been deported four times, is facing vehicular homicide and DUI charges for killing a Colorado mother and son while driving drunk. Greg Norman and Greg Wehner of Fox News report that on December 12, Jose Guadalupe Menjivar-Alas was driving a pickup at high speed in the town of Broomfield when he crashed into a car driven by 47-year-old Melissa Powell, killing her and her 16-year-old son Riordan. Menjivar-Alas had been convicted of drunk driving four times since 2007 and was deported after serving each sentence. Colorado is among the twelve sanctuary states in the U.S. which resist federal efforts to deport illegal aliens.

Utah is preparing to execute Ralph Leroy Menzies for the 1986 robbery and murder of Maurine Hunsaker. Scott Pierce of the Salt Lake City Tribune reports that after decades of appeals, Menzies has run out of further opportunities to delay his execution. This morning the Utah Attorney General asked a District Court Judge to sign an order for Menzies’ execution by firing squad. While that method of execution was Menzies choice, in December he and three other condemned murderers claimed that it was cruel and unusual punishment which violates the Eighth Amendment. That claim was rejected. It would be the first time a murderer has been executed in Utah since 2010.

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s agreement last Friday to review an appeal by the City of Grants Pass challenging a Ninth Circuit ruling which is blocking the enforcement of ordinances prohibiting camping on streets and in parks, has garnered national attention. While that ruling (Martin v. City of Boise) only affects the nine western states in the Ninth Circuit, twenty states have submitted argument to the high court seeking to overturn the Martin ruling in the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, including Texas, Oklahoma and Florida. CJLF has filed a brief in that case and Legal Director Kent Scheidegger was a guest yesterday’s John Kobylt show, the most listened to talk radio broadcast in Los Angeles, to discuss it. Here’s the link to the podcast. The interview is at 24 minutes into hour 2 of the show.

Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old who murdered 10 people at the Tops Grocery Store in Buffalo in May 2022, is facing federal murder and hate crime charges which, if convicted could result in a death sentence. Greg Norman of Fox News reports reports that Gendron’s case will be the first time Attorney Merrick Garland’s Justice Department has decided to seek or uphold a death sentence since it defended Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s  conviction and death sentence in 2021. Under Garland’s leadership, the DOJ has withdrawn from seeking the death penalty in over two dozen federal murder cases. As with the Boston Bomber case (United States v. Tsarnaev) the Attorney General’s decision  appears to be political. Gendron has already been convicted of the murders in New York and is serving a life without parole sentence.  He has agreed to plead guilty to the federal charges in exchange for another life sentence.

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