State prison and jail inmates with two months or less left to serve on their sentences are receiving early releases due to fears of widespread corona virus outbreaks.  Sam Stanton of the Sacramento Bee reports that at least 1,700 inmates will be released from the Los Angeles County Jail while another 3,500 will be released from California prisons.  Officials said that most of the inmates released are non-violent offenders.  Other county jail releases have been ordered for Sacramento County (541), Alameda County (314), Fresno County (207) and Orange County (130).  No word on if the classification of “non-violent” is based on the inmate’s most recent crime, or his entire record.  Under California’s Proposition  57, a car thief with priors for rape and second-degree murder is eligible for early release.  If this is the same criteria being used for releases due to corona virus fears, many serious offenders will be hitting the streets.

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An employee of a smoke shop in Arlington, VA is being held without bail facing felony charges for using a gun to defend his place of business during an early morning break-in and burglary.  Tom Roussey of WJLA reports that 31-year-old Hamzeh Abushariah was sleeping in a back room when he was startled awake by three burglars breaking into the store at 4:53 am Sunday.  He grabbed the gun the store’s owner had purchased to protect the business from burglars, and confronted the suspects, shooting one.  All three managed to escape.  The employee was staying in the store to save money and avoid the corona virus, which had infected residents of his D.C. apartment complex.   Newly elected Arlington Commonwealth Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Taft has not yet charged the burglary suspects, but Abushariah was immediately arrested and charged.  Dehghani-Taft, a progressive who received over $620,000 from liberal hedge fund billionaire George Soros, was elected last November after knocking off incumbent Theo Stamos in the June primary.  Stamos raised just over $161,000.  Dehghani-Taft’s election is just the latest win for Soros-funded progressive (read pro-criminal) District Attorneys across the country.  The Soros funds are funneled through PACs such as New York Justice and Public Safety PAC, which have been set up in several states to give directly to selected candidates and run campaign ads on TV and radio.

In an unpublished ruling released earlier this month, a divided panel of the California’s First District Court of Appeal overturned the murder conviction of DeAngelo Cortijo, a well known Bay Area  criminal justice reform advocate.   The San Jose Mercury News reports that a jury found Cortijo guilty of the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Oakland resident Jamad Jerkins in 2016.  At trial, Jerkins’ girlfriend testified that he had told her about an earlier incident where Cortijo had pulled a gun on Jerkins.   The judge sustained the defense objection that the girlfriend’s statement was hearsay, and instructed the jury to ignore it, but he refused Cortijo’s request for a mistrial.   Cortijo later testified that he had confronted Jerkins in an apartment parking lot, pointing a loaded gun at him,  and claimed that when Jerkins tried to slap the gun away, it went off.

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