Dueling Editorials on LA DA Gascón

The Los Angeles Times printed this editorial last Friday, predictably defending LA DA George Gascón and blasting the Association of Deputy District Attorneys’ lawsuit. The editorial is titled, “Let George Gascón do the job L.A. voters asked him to.” But did they ask him to do what he is now doing?

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a much smaller LA paper that focuses on judicial issues, responded yesterday with an editorial titled “Los Angeles Times Defends Gascón With Flawed Arguments.”

Prosecutors are elected locally in most states. A few states have a statewide prosecutor, but those are states small enough that the entire state can be considered “local.” Local election of prosecutors, along with juries of the vicinage, give the people a certain amount of decentralized control over how the criminal law is administered. That is why, for example, the argument of “geographic disparity” in the death penalty doesn’t fly. Variation by locality, within limits, is the system operating as designed, not a defect.

The ADDA suit claims that Mr. Gascón has exceeded the limits. I think there is merit in the suit, especially as regards the Three Strikes Law, where the people of California decided on a statewide basis that prosecutors “shall” allege the prior strikes and then may move for the court to dismiss them in the interests of justice.

However, the suit does not seek to strike down all of Mr. Gascón’s new directives, nor could it plausibly seek that. Most of them of dangerous, unjust, and based on false premises, yet within the legal authority of the district attorney.

If the people of Los Angeles County really understood that they were voting for such an extreme agenda, the arguments in the Times editorial would have considerable merit. But did they? That is the portion of the MetNews editorial that I find most interesting.

The editorial recites the story, well known to readers of this blog, of George Soros infusing money into local DA races. In this case, he gave $2.45 million to an organization with the Orwellian name of CA Justice & Public Safety. Among the achievements of this funding, according to the MetNews, was that “Gascón created the illusion that he was the nominee of the Democratic Party, implying that Lacey, a Democrat, was the Republican contender.” (California DA races are nonpartisan, and no party designation appears on the ballot.)

But what about the issue positions in the campaign? Did Mr. Gascón tell the people how extreme his measures were going to be, and did they elect him to implement them? According to the MetNews:

In his campaign, Gascón did reveal his opposition to the death penalty and to money bail—thus alerting voters that his views do depart from those they had expressed at the polls. He did not make it known, however, that he would, on Day One of his term (when he issued nine “special directives”), forbid any allegations of strikes, special circumstances, or other sentence enhancements. (He backed down, to a small extent, on Dec. 18 in allowing for the possibility of seeking “enhanced sentences in cases involving the most vulnerable victims and in specified extraordinary circumstances”—but excluding the possibility of certain allegations including strikes, gang enhancements, or special circumstances where it would lead to a life sentence without possibility of parole.) Gascón did not hint in his campaign that he would order that all enhancements that were alleged when Lacey headed the office be withdrawn or that he would take the stance that judges, although statutorily vested with discretion as to whether to permit amendments, were obliged, by virtue of the separation of powers doctrine, to accede to his wishes. The candidate did not signal that the “default policy” would be to “support in writing the grant of parole for a person who has already served their mandatory minimum period of incarceration” or that where “a person represents a ‘high’ risk for recidivism,” the deputy could, in a letter, “take a neutral position on the grant of parole.”

The Times says that voters “saw their choices” and elected Gascón. But they did not “see” the full picture. Would voters have opted for that candidate if he had told them he would not oppose parole even if the parole-seeker were the likes of Charles Manson? That he would defy a mandate of the Three Strikes Law to charge all strikes even though courts of appeal have upheld the validity of that requirement? That he would intrude upon judicial independence by seeking to bully judges into acceding to his program?

Not likely.

The Times’s claim that Mr. Gascón is implementing a mandate from the people dissolves in the face of the reality that he did not reveal before the election the extent to which he was going to bend over in favor of criminals.

So what do we do when an elected official springs a surprise of this magnitude on the people after the election? In California, the remedy is recall, as discussed in this post.