A Toronto family is breathing easier after a Los Angeles judge torpedoed a gambit from the city’s new soft-on-crime district attorney to cut an alleged black widow sentencing slack.
Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen refused to dismiss the special circumstance clause that can potentially send a convicted felon to prison for life without the possibility of parole.
Monica Sementilli, 49, and her boyfriend Robert Louis Baker, 58, are charged with first-degree murder in the insurance slaying of famed Toronto hairstylist Fabio Sementilli, 49, on Jan. 23, 2017, in Los Angeles.
He was stabbed to death on the patio of his Woodland Hills home.
Fresno County’s top prosecutor has penned a letter to her counterpart in Los Angeles County, telling him that a series of controversial directives he issued upon taking office last month are “extreme” and “already wreaking havoc on crime victims.”
The letter, dated Monday, is the second that George Gascon has been sent in recent weeks in which a district attorney from another county has refused to grant him jurisdiction in cases involving defendants accused of committing crimes in the counties they represent.
Last week, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert characterized many of Gascon’s directives as “illegal and unconstitutional” — a contention repeated again by Fresno County D.A. Lisa A. Smittcamp.
The expected switch-over of Los Angeles Deputy Public Defender Tiffiny Townend Blacknell to the District Attorney’s Office as community relations director is not occurring, with Deputy District Attorney Mario Trujillo, instead assuming the role of “community and government affairs liaison.”
Blacknell, a member of the transition team of the new district attorney, George Gascón, stirred controversy in mid-December by sending a link to colleagues and private defense attorneys to an online form to be used in reporting deputy district attorneys who failed to accede to a special directive ordering that all sentencing enhancements be withdrawn. Trujillo, who has been the de facto Number Three man in the new administration, made a statement that the form was not posted with the office’s knowledge or approval.
LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Fresno County’s top prosecutor has penned a letter to her counterpart in Los Angeles County, telling him that a series of controversial directives he issued upon taking office last month are “extreme” and “already wreaking havoc on crime victims.”
The letter, dated Monday, is the second that George Gascon has been sent in recent weeks in which a district attorney from another county has refused to grant him jurisdiction in cases involving defendants accused of committing crimes in the counties they represent.
Last week, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert characterized many of Gascon’s directives as “illegal and unconstitutional” — a contention repeated again by Fresno County D.A. Lisa A. Smittcamp.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office could not be reached for immediate comment on the latest letter.
You might have missed it amid all the shouting about the 2020 election, but the most populous county in the United States will now have a reform-minded district attorney.
Challenger George Gascón beat incumbent Jackie Lacey 54–46 percent in November to become the top prosecutor of Los Angeles County, which has a population of 10 million. It was the most significant win of the cycle for criminal justice reformers who in recent years have focused on local prosecutor races.
Prosecutors announced today that they will not seek the death penalty for a man who is awaiting a retrial for the June 1983 killing of a Los Angeles police officer in Lake View Terrace, with a judge subsequently rejecting a bid by the District Attorney’s Office to dismiss allegations that could carry a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
Superior Court Judge Hayden Zacky ruled that it was “not in the interest of justice” to dismiss the special circumstance allegations of murder of a peace officer in the performance of his duties and murder to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest, along with gun allegations, against Kenneth Earl Gay, now 63, in connection with the June 2, 1983, slaying of Officer Paul Verna.
