DA’s Association Statement on Death Penalty Moratorium

Los Angeles, March 12, 2019 – Michele Hanisee, President of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys issued the following statement regarding the decision by Governor Gavin Newsom to put a moratorium on the Death Penalty.

The voters of the State of California support the death penalty. That is powerfully demonstrated by their approval of Proposition 66 in 2016 to ensure the death penalty is implemented, and their rejection of measures to end the death penalty in 2016 and 2006. Governor Newsom, who supported the failed initiative to end the death penalty in 2006, is usurping the express will of California voters and substituting his personal preferences via this hasty and ill-considered moratorium on the death penalty.


The Association of Deputy District Attorneys (ADDA) is the collective bargaining agent and represents nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

U.S. Attorney’s Office Brings Federal Charges After the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office Agrees to a Lenient Plea Deal in a Violent Robbery

By Michele Hanisee

In the past election cycle, we commented on candidates running for district attorney whose campaign promises involved ignoring criminal statutes they disagreed with and minimizing punishment of those who violate the law.   Fortunately, in California, those efforts were soundly rejected by voters.

Not so in Philadelphia. In 2018, a defense attorney was elected District Attorney promising to protect criminals at the expense of victims.  Not surprisingly, that has led to results like a recent case where a gunman who shot and nearly killed a store owner, Mike Poeng, was given a plea bargain of 3 ½-10 years of imprisonment.  To add insult to injury, the Philadelphia district attorneys office illegally failed to notify the victim of the plea deal.

The US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has stepped in to seek justice, filing federal charges against the defendant.  The US Attorney did not stop there.  Instead, in a stinging four-page statement delivered at a news conference, the US Attorney said, “The District Attorney calls himself ‘a public defender with power.’  That is not his job.  He’s not supposed to be a public defender, advocating for defendants.  He’s supposed to be a prosecutor, advocating for victims and protecting the community.  I can assure you this:  the prosecutors of my Office, working with our federal and state law enforcement partners, as well as with the Philadelphia police, will do everything in our power to keep the City safe.”

The transcript of the US Attorney’s remarks speaks for itself, read it for yourself here.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

Who is Afraid of Judicial Review?

By Eric Siddall

On March 2, 2019, the Los Angeles Times editorial board attacked district attorneys as craven politicians out to maximize punitive sentences. The reason for the attack is because a number of district attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of a law enacted by the state Legislature. The law, enacted pursuant to Senate Bill 1391, prohibits the transfers of 14 and 15-year olds to adult court- no matter how heinous the crime.

The Times editorial may have been in response to Michele Hanisee’s February 21st article “The Well-Founded Legal Challenges To SB 1391.”

The reality is starkly different: Prosecutors are protecting the state’s Constitution and institutions. In our system of government, the Legislature is not vested with absolute power to change the law. In fact, judicial review has been a cornerstone of our system since 1803.  Yet, the LA Times conveniently repudiates this doctrine when it disagrees with the law in question while fully embracing it when the courts are called to review issues that the editorial board supports. These vacillating positions on judicial review are fundamentally inconsistent. The Times editorial board’s situational ethics are quickly revealed by a cursory review of past positions they have taken here,here and here where they advocated for judicial review of enacted laws which the Times opposed.

The editorial staff claimed that Proposition 57 repeals Proposition 21.  It did not. The former merely limited the latter with regard to one discrete issue: the direct filing of cases against juveniles in adult court.  Proposition 57 is not about “treating kids like kids.” Rather, it shifted the power to determine where minors will be tried from prosecutors to judges.

Despite the L.A. Times editorial board’s claims, Propositions 21 and 57 share the assumption that certain minors over the age of 14 should be treated as adults. Specifically, Proposition 57 stated, “In any case in which a minor is alleged to be a person described in subdivision (a) of Section 602 by reason of the violation, when he or she was 16 years of age or older, of any felony criminal statute, or ordinance except those listed in subdivision (b), or of an offense listed in subdivision (b) when he or she was 14 or 15 years of age, the District Attorney or other appropriate prosecuting officer may make a motion to transfer the minor from juvenile court to a court of criminal jurisdiction.”

The state Legislature – ignoring Propositions 21 and 57 – mandated that an entire class of minors was no longer eligible for a judicially approved transfer.  In response, District Attorneys have argued that the revocation of judicial authority specifically granted by Propositions 21 and 57 to transfer these minors to adult jurisdiction unconstitutionally violated both initiatives. Armed with case law, prosecutors presented this challenge before a number of judges, and the judges agreed. Eventually this process will end in our state Supreme Court. This is the process defenders of democratic institutions should embrace; yet the L.A. Times now questions the process it has supported so many times in the past.

Despite the editorial board’s claims, the stance of district attorneys on this issue is not about being punitive; this is about the state constitution and about balancing the rights of the accused against the constitutional rights of victims. Article II, section 8(a), of the state constitution provides, “The initiative is the power of the electors to propose statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt them.” To protect the power of the initiative, the constitution limits the power of the legislative branch to amend or repeal it by statute in  Article II, section 10(c). Our Supreme Court has held that the purpose of this limitation on legislative power is to “preclude the Legislature from undoing what the people have done.”

Yet, this is exactly what the Legislature did. They changed a law that was passed by the voters in two initiatives, Proposition 21 and 57. Proposition 21 allowed 14 and 15 years olds to be transferred to adult court and required a two-thirds majority of the Legislature to change the law. SB 1391 did not pass by those margins. As noted above, Proposition 57 continued to permit the prosecution of 14 and 15-year olds as adults. Proposition 57 allowed the Legislature to amend the law by a simple majority, but only if the subsequent legislative changes furthered the goal of the initiative.

No one knows how the Supreme Court will eventually come down on the constitutionality of SB 1391. As the Times editorial board correctly pointed out when advocating for judicial review of an enacted law that it opposed, “the court’s responsibility is not to anticipate what the public might do. It is to decide what the Constitution commands.” I only wish the L.A. Times would grant as much deference to the courts when they disagree with a given legislative policy as when they don’t.

Eric Siddall is Vice President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

The Well-Founded Legal Challenges To SB 1391

By Michele Hanisee

In a recent op ed, UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky criticized the legal challenges filed against SB 1391 by multiple District Attorney Offices in California. These legal challenges were based on the grounds that the legislation was an unconstitutional amendment of Prop 57. As detailed in a letter from Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff H. Rubin, those challenges were made because the legislature amended a statute created by the initiative process. California law prohibits legislative amendment of statutes created by initiative unless the initiative permits such amendment; otherwise an amendment or replacement of an initiative statute requires a new vote of the citizens via a new initiative.

Prop 57 stated its purpose of balancing the interest of public safety with the interest in the rehabilitation of juveniles. This interest, it stated, would be served by requiring “a judge, not a prosecutor, to decide whether juveniles be tried in adult court.” Ballot arguments in favor of the initiative reiterated that claim. As Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen noted, when initially submitted, Prop 57 limited prosecution of juveniles to those age 16 or older but was revised after public comment (and before being placed before voters) to specifically include 14 and 15-year-olds as subject to prosecution in adult court. Finally, the initiative changed the statutes in the Welfare and Institutions Code to expressly authorize prosecution of 14 and 15-year-olds in adult court for specific crimes if transfer to adult court was approved by a judge.

Against this backdrop of express voter will, SB 1391 eliminated this provision of Prop 57 by prohibiting the prosecution of any 14 or 15-year old in adult court. This legislative action is clearly inconsistent with the intent of Prop 57, as demonstrated above. Voters recognized that some crimes required accountability in adult court.

In the face of this clearly expressed voter intent, Chemerinsky begins with the false premise that SB 1391 is a “common sense” and “desirable” law. The surviving family members of those murdered by a 14 or 15-year old, such as  Oliver Northrup, age 87 and his wife  Claudia Maupin, age 76, who were viciously stabbed to death, disemboweled and mutilated by a 15-year-old, would certainly disagree that a law requiring such murders be prosecuted only in juvenile court with a required release from custody by age 24 was either “common sense” or “desirable.”

Chemerinsky’s fact-free argument was followed by various false assertions. Among them, Chemerinsky claims that prosecutors who have raised legitimate challenges to the constitutionality of SB 1391 have “manufactured” their legal challenges when, as noted above, serious questions about the legislative amendment of an initiative have been raised. He rails that prosecutors are attempting to substitute their own policy preferences for the democratic process, when, in fact, the democratic process was the enactment of Prop 57 by voters. In contrast, SB 1391 was the product of the policy preferences of certain legislators. Chemerinsky then complains that the prosecutor challenges are a “cynical move with no legal basis,” shockingly (he is a law professor, after all) ignoring the California Constitution, the Victims Bill of Rights and well-established case law which form the basis of the legal challenge.

In the world view of Chemerinsky and his paternalistic ilk in the legislature, anyone who attempts to interfere with their usurpation of the legislative process is motivated by ill intent. None should dare to challenge the eternal wisdom of our elected officials. Yet challenging our elected officials is the core of the democratic process. Even when done by other elected officials.

To conclude with an ironic quote, it is Chemerinsky who said, “The Constitution is no more than words on old parchment that is kept under glass unless there is the power of judges to enforce it.” As the professor should know, the court’s power to enforce the constitution must be predicated by a legal challenge to place the issue before the courts. Fortunately, in California, the courts, and not pontificating law school deans, get to make the determination of whether the legislature violated the law.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

The Long Stall

By Michele Hanisee

Every time the issue of capital punishment has been put before California voters, they have voted to keep the death penalty and rejected efforts to eliminate it. Yet our paternalistic elected officials and their appointees smugly substitute their own values over the ratified votes of the majority. This includes the Attorney General, who is supposed to defend the judgments of our courts and juries on appeal, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) which is charged with carrying out those judgments.

For the past 12 years the Attorney General and CDCR have engaged in a conspiracy of foot dragging that has deprived crime victims of their rights as set forth in the California Constitution Victims’ Bill of Rights. Now, however, the charade is being exposed. In briefs recently filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, crimes victims and prosecutors have called out the Attorney General, CDCR and the Federal District Court for their part in the decade and a half of delay in carrying out death sentences imposed by California jurors.

The last execution in California was January 17, 2006. Clarence Ray Allen was already serving a life sentence for the murder of Mary Sue Kitts because she had identified Allen for his involvement in the burglary of Fran’s Market. From prison, Allen ordered the murder of the witnesses who had testified against him in the trial for Kitts’ murder. At Allen’s direction, an accomplice went to Fran’s Market where he murdered Bryon Schletewitz, the son of the owner, and employees Josephine Rocha (17) and Douglas White (18) with a sawed-off shotgun.

After Allen’s execution, the next scheduled execution was of Michael Morales. Morales was sentenced to death for the murder of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. Morales beat Winchell’s skull in with a hammer then raped her before stabbing her four more times. When faced with anexecution date, Morales filed an Eighth Amendment challenge in federal court to California’s three-drug execution protocol. The resulting stay has continued to block executions in California. However, what is critical is that during this long stay period the federal court, twice gave the state the option to proceed with an execution using a single barbiturate rather than the three-drug method. The state has since switched to the single-barbiturate method, yet the stays, inexplicably, remain in effect.

Two court challenges have been filed to force the Attorney General and CDCR to enforce the law. The first challenge, which can be read here, here and here is a request by local District Attorneys to intervene in the Morales lawsuit now pending before the 9th Circuit so that their interests and the interest of the victims can be represented. The filed court papers document how, in the context of this lawsuit, the Attorney General is acting not as a representative of the people but as defense counsel for CDCR, which has shown no inclination to carry out the sentences imposed by juries in this state.

To quote from the moving papers, “Despite satisfying every level of process to ensure a just outcome for each criminal case, the death judgments against Plaintiffs remain frustrated by the underlying litigation.” The filings go on to add, “The District Court failed to account for the Attorney General as an independently-elected official with prosecutorial duties of his own, rather than merely serving as a counselor to the executive officers here. And since that former role is absent from the underlying litigation, the voice of the People who obtained the death judgments must be permitted to participate. The cost of the Plaintiffs’ crimes to the People of the State of California is immeasurable. A silencing of their voice by a lack of inclusion puts the confidence of all process in question. The District Court’s decision to deny intervention to the District Attorneys must be reversed so that voice may be heard.”

The second challenge is a Writ of Mandamus filed by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (CJLF) on behalf of two victims of crime, Bradley Winchell (the brother of Terri Winchell, discussed above) and Kermit Alexander. Alexander’s sister Dietra Alexander and his nephews Damon Bonner, aged 6, and Damani Garner-Alexander, aged 12, were gunned down in their beds, while his mother Ebora Alexander was killed in the kitchen as she enjoyed her morning coffee, all because gang members carrying out a hit went to the wrong address

The writ, filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, seeks an order directed at the District Court to vacate all stays of execution and refrain from further stays now that the state has adopted the single-drug method of execution for which the inmates in the federal case advocated.

In the filed court documents, CJLF said “the suit has become a semi-collusive one, with the defendants using stay orders they know are improper as a shield to avoid their duties under state law, blocking petitioners’ statutory right under state law to compel performance of those duties.” “In the stay orders issued by the District Court in this matter since 2012, there seems to be a tone implying that halting all executions in the state for an indefinite period is, to use the vernacular, ‘no big deal’.”

It is unacceptable that CDCR has pursued a course of action that obstructs executions rather than carrying out its mission to enforce the judgements of our courts and juries. It is further unacceptable that the Attorney General is acting as a shield for CDCR rather than as a representative of the People. It is this bad faith that has required these two legal challenges to be brought, to ensure that the will of the people of the State of California and the judgments of our citizens who act as jurors is carried out.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

Parole Board Again Wants To Free Brutal Manson Family Killer

By Michele Hanisee

Here we go again.

For the third time in three years, a state parole board panel wants to free cold-blooded killer Leslie Van Houten.

Van Houten, a member of the notorious Manson family, admitted to participating in the slaughter of Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, on Aug. 10, 1969. First, she held down Rosemary LaBianca so fellow Manson-follower Tex Watson could skewer her with a bayonet. Then, she plunged a knife 14 more times into the helpless woman’s back.

During her trial, Van Houten laughed and giggled her way through her own testimony. She was originally sentenced to death but her sentence was commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty. She was later granted a new trial and ultimately sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Nineteen times, she applied for parole. And nineteen times, the parole board struck down her requests. Until 2016, when a panel at the California Institution for Women in Chino, where Van Houten is incarcerated, inexplicably decided that she deserved freedom. The panel made the same recommendation in 2017.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown rejected the panel’s two previous recommendations to parole Van Houten, correctly finding that she posed “an unreasonable danger to society.” But the panel struck again last week.

Now, following a 120-day legal review of the decision, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom will determine Van Houten’s fate. He will have a number of options to choose from. He can affirm, reject or modify the parole board panel’s decision. He can take no action, which would allow the decision to stand. Or he could order the full Board of Parole Hearings to review the panel’s decision.

How Newsom acts will have ramifications beyond Van Houten’s fate. His ruling will signal how he will likely approach public safety issues going forward.

The ADDA advocated forcefully against Van Houten’s release when she was up for parole in 2016 and in 2017, and we will continue to do so this time around. We also strongly encourage everyone to write to the governor expressing your adamant opposition to releasing this callous killer.

In a recent posting, we proposed a blueprint that would allow Newsom to remain true to his values while taking steps to address the more egregious elements of recent public safety disasters such as Props 47and 57, AB109 and SB1437. We firmly believe that by ruling Van Houten should remain behind bars, Newsom would show he is a governor who cares about public safety.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

The Oddly Tragic Position of Wishing We Had Been Wrong…

By Michele Hanisee

We have repeatedly documented how ex-Governor Jerry Brown, falsely promised that violent felons would not be freed early from prison under Prop 57. Brown knew if he admitted the truth voters would reject his pet initiative.

Reality has struck again.  An appellate court just ruled that Gregory Gadlin, a convicted rapist and child molester serving 35 years to life in prison for a new conviction of assault with a deadly weapon, is eligible for early release under Prop 57. In the crime of assault with a deadly weapon for which he is currently incarcerated, Gadlin viciously assaulted his girlfriend Tamara (the ADDA does not publish the full names of domestic assault victims) with a seven-inch butcher knife, slashing her several times across the face, back and stomach. When Tamara raised her hands to tried to shield herself from his attack, he slashed three of her fingers to the tendon. The injuries required numerous stitches, and as detailed in filed court documents,left Tamara with limited mobility in her hand and scars from the attack on her face and back.

His prior convictions-both “strikes” under the three-strikes law-are even more alarming. In 1980, while he was on parole from the California Youth Authority, Gadlin raped a pregnant 17-year-old girl. The girl had just been assaulted on the street by two females. The injured victim accepted Gadlin’s offer to take her to the hospital. Instead, he took her into his residence where he hit her in the face, threatened to kill her, then raped her, sodomized her, and forced her to orally copulate him. Gadlin was sentenced to nine years for the rape. He was again out of prison in 1986, when he took his eleven-year-old niece to a hotel room where he raped her, forced her to orally copulate him, then urinated in her mouth.

Most lucid individuals would concur that the brutal assault by Gadlin on his girlfriend in every way fit the definition of a violent offense. However, thanks to obvious flaws in the way Prop 57 was written, assault with a deadly weapon is a “non-violent” offense. So, notwithstanding his prior strike convictions for forcible rape and child molestation, based on Gadlin’s current conviction the court ruled he must be considered for early release.

So, add a rapist, child molester and knife slashing attacker to the ever-growing list of dangerous and violent offenders whom Prop 57 has now made eligible for early release. We have highlighted inmates convicted of arguably violent offenses who have been released early thanks to Prop 57. Our warning in the campaign that sex offenders would be eligible for early release has sadly proven correct thanks to this and other court rulings.

Prop 57 supporters have been reduced to sputtering that even though violent offenders are eligible for early release, the Parole Board or the Governor will not likely approve such releases. Such claims are not only disingenuous but would be an admission that the parole board is violating equal protection laws by not exercising its discretion within the parameters of the law as defined by the courts. If the court has ruled that inmates such as Gadlin are eligible, the Parole Board mustmeaningfully consider them for early release. Moreover, we are talking about the same Parole Board that has granted release by the busload to murderers serving life sentences. The latest figures (2016) showed the Parole Board had recommended for release 1,590 inmates serving a life sentence, and only 20% of those release decisions were subsequently blocked by the Governor. A discerning stopgap guarding public safety they are not.

We consistently warned voters that Prop 57 would result in early release of violent inmates, but the lies of the Prop 57 supporters won the day. Now we are in the oddly tragic position of wishing that we had been wrong.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

CDCR Rehabilitation Programs Documented to be Total Failure

By Michele Hanisee

You won’t find much disagreement that it is good public policy to offer rehabilitation programs for inmates to increase the odds that they will be law-abiding citizens after they’re released. Good intentions, however, are not enough.

The success of rehabilitation programs depends on several factors. One is developing programs that are effective. Another is having processes in place to measure their effectiveness. Inmates must be placed in programs that best address their needs. And it certainly helps if these programs are actually offered to the inmates who so desperately need them.

A scathing new audit concludes the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) fails miserably in all these areas. By itself, this finding would be troubling enough. But as the State of California rushes to empty its prisons no matter the risk to public safety, the prospect of early release of dangerous prisoners who haven’t undergone any meaningful rehabilitation is positively unnerving.

In its review, the California State Auditor examined a range of programs that the CDCR implemented over the past several years. The state poured tens of millions of dollars into this effort. The budget for these initiatives at California’s 36 prisons ballooned 27 percent over the past five years, to $298 million from $234 million. Ostensibly, the idea was to provide inmates with rehabilitation programs targeted toward an individual’s specific needs: drug abuse, anger management, job skills, literacy etc.

But the audit, released last week, determined the effort is a disaster.

Inmates who completed cognitive behavioral therapy programs had about the same rate of recidivism as inmates who didn’t complete the programs. That’s right – the recidivism rates for those who are “rehabilitated” is nearly the same as for those who were not. The overall recidivism rate for inmates released from prison remains at a staggering 50% despite the increased funding of and emphasis on rehabilitation. But then, it’s not rehabilitation if it doesn’t work.

A staggering 62 percent of the 24,000 inmates who were released in fiscal year 2017 did not have their rehabilitation needs met. Corrections officials did not have any method to evaluate whether the programs they administered were working. And a number of programs were not based on any evidence that they reduced the likelihood of an inmate committing new offenses after they’re released.

The findings are especially troubling given that the state is saddled with the mess known as Prop. 57. Prop. 57 offers inmates – including those convicted of horrific violent crimes – the chance of early release. Even worse, inmates who go through rehabilitation programs, which are now documented to be failures, can earn credits toward reducing their sentences. All that matters is showing a “completed program.” It doesn’t matter how meaningless or ineffective the program proved to be.

The CDCR appears unfazed by its failures. It’s asking for even more money for the programs that don’t work – $6.4 million more at California State Prison, Sacramento, and $7.1 million more at San Quentin State Prison, for example.

The State Auditor said the failures “highlight an urgent need for corrections to take a more active and meaningful role in ensuring that these programs are effective.” It called for the state Legislature to take action to implement new oversight and monitoring.

The real issue is not “oversight and monitoring” but whether the programs deliver real and measurable results. Otherwise, these programs are nothing more than expensive fluff for paid for by taxpayers, with the sole beneficiaries being the inmates who get an early release for attending useless programs. Which begs the question – if they aren’t actually being rehabilitated, why are they being released early?

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

The Media Marginalization of Crime Victims

By Michele Hanisee

We have noted multiple times how the California Legislature, in pursuit of “criminal justice reform,” has repeatedly ignored the victims of crime and instead focused compassion on criminal defendants. However, it is not just the Legislature that has marginalized crime victims. The media has contributed as well.

One glaring example is the media omitting names of victims and instead identifying them by generic descriptors such as their sex or occupation. Likewise, any recitation of the crimes frequently downplays the brutal facts and trauma to the victim. This media practice was highlighted in a recent spate of news articles recounting the California Supreme Court’s virtually unprecedented overturning of ten clemency grants by former Governor Jerry Brown on the grounds that Brown had abused his power.

Take, for example, this story which covered the pardon and commutation reversals. While the murderers were referred to by name and some of their individual circumstances, their victims were merely referred to as “a person,” “a driver,” “a man” or “a woman.” Not once did the name of a victim appear. In a similar vein are these stories referring  to victims as a “store’s owner,” a “bystander” or a “liquor store owner.”

Likewise, the facts of crimes are given short shrift. If the media bothered to inform readers of those facts, they might provide some insight into why the pardons and commutations were reversed. Typical of media reporting are stories covering the reversal of commutation of murderer Joe Hernandez: his commutation was opposed by the LA County District Attorney’s Office. In one story readers were merely informed that Hernandez “killed a rival gang member one night, then shot two other men whom he mistakenly believed were part of a rival gang. One survived,” while the other story recounted the crime as the murder of “a rival gang member and a bystander.”

Here, in sharp contrast to the descriptions above, is how the 9th Circuit habeas ruling recounted Hernandez’s crimes: “Torres, upon seeing Hernandez and Cota, shouted his Hayes gang affiliation. Unimpressed, Hernandez responded by getting off the bicycle, brandishing his gun, and shooting Torres several times. Torres, who was not armed, died as a result of the multiple gunshot wounds.”

Later that same evening, Hernandez stopped a car containing Silva and Gonzalez and “approached Silva on the passenger side of the car, and asked from where he hailed. Silva, who was not a gang member, responded that he was from Rosemead. Hernandez put a gun to Silva’s head, and ordered him to get out of the car and kneel on the ground, placing his hands behind his head. Hernandez told Silva that he was going to die, then fulfilled his prophecy, shooting Silva in the head. Silva died as a result of the gunshot wound.” Gonzalez then struggled for the gun which “discharged, striking Gonzalez in the chest. Hernandez then shot Gonzalez twice more, striking him in the shoulder and back. Leaving Gonzalez for dead, Hernandez and Cota drove Gonzalez’s car away from the scene.”

In a similar vein, several of the stories above went on to recount the reversals of a pardon for the murderer of Manijeh Eshaghoff, which wecovered in a previous blog. In this case, Mrs. Eshaghoff was reduced to a “liquor store owner” shot and killed during an “attempted (sic) robbery.” Contrast that version of events with the facts as recited in our prior blog.

The facts of these cases are easy to research. Most are well documented in the detailed written opinions of the courts and available for free online. So why is this readily available information being omitted from news stories by the media?

Failing to name the victims of crime in stories about their perpetrator, and instead substituting a descriptive label, dehumanizes and marginalizes crime victims and renders them mere props in a story.

Failing to include the horrific descriptive facts of the crime similarly serves to dismiss the harm done. The media owes its readers, viewers, and innocent victims of crime, better.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.

A Common Sense Public Safety Blueprint for Gov. Gavin Newsom

By Michele Hanisee

Governor Gavin Newsom enters office with a liberal resume and promises to fulfill a progressive agenda. But this doesn’t condemn the Governor to stumbling down the dangerous path that his predecessor carved out. This path is littered with a series of public safety experiments that former Gov. Jerry Brown championed and signed, including Props 47 and 57, AB109 and SBs 1437. The cumulative result of these measures have severely eroded public safety by drastically reducing the consequences for criminally victimizing the residents of California.

In addition, there have been a series of inconsistent messages, such as enacting more restrictions on the lawful possession of guns in California while lessening the penalties for those who use guns to commit crimes.

It’s unrealistic to think that Gov. Newsom and the Democratic-dominated Legislature would completely scrap these measures. But Newsom could – and should – adopt a hybrid approach that maintains the spirit of the initiatives while fixing some of their more egregious flaws. In doing so, he would show that he is a compassionate pragmatist who cares deeply about public safety. He also would show that he’s a governor for all Californians.

It’s unclear where Newsom stands on reforming the so-called reforms. He expressed his support for Prop. 47. At the same time, he said he believes Prop. 47 can be improved. Several state lawmakers have attempted to do exactly that. But all legislation that would have addressed the most glaring problems with Prop. 47 and its equally dangerous cousins was scuttled by Brown or the Legislature.

Gov. Newsom and the Legislature would be wise to heed the lessons offered by our state’s history. It was not that long ago that a furious voter backlash resulted in the removal of California Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird because of her obstinate soft-on-crime agenda.

As we wait to see which course Newsom pursues, the ADDA will continue to be a vocal advocate for public safety. A key element of our advocacy is our strong support for the “Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act” which will appear on the 2020 ballot. The Act will make reasonable changes to fix some of the problems caused by Props 47 and 57 and AB109, including provisions that unanimously passed the Legislature before being inexplicably vetoed by Governor Brown. It would be the sign of a new day for commonsense criminal justice in California if Governor Newsom was to urge the Legislature to again pass those changes so he could sign them into law.

Michele Hanisee is President of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, the collective bargaining agent representing nearly 1,000 Deputy District Attorneys who work for the County of Los Angeles.