Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, whose own deputies sued him for permission to charge repeat offenders to the fullest extent of the law, has pulled out all the stops in his California Supreme Court appeal against them, retaining one of the nation’s top lawyers. Neal K. Katyal, a former Acting U.S. Solicitor General who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute and has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court dozens of times, is also reportedly one of the country’s highest-paid attorneys.

The Association of Deputy District Attorneys on Friday lambasted District Attorney George Gascón for his action in seeking review in the California Supreme Court of a June 2 decision of the Court of Appeal for this district upholding a preliminary injunction that bars enforcement of his “special directive” that deputies plead prior convictions for purposes of bringing a defendant under the three-strikes law.

An advocate for crime victims in California says that Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is "supporting offenders and criminals" with a recent directive. Her comments come after sources told Fox News that the Parole Unit, which is also called the "Lifer Unit," is set to be disbanded by the end of 2022. The office is focused on notifying victims and their family members of information relating to their assailant's parole hearings.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón (D) is facing a second recall attempt as critics argue that his progressive policies are too soft on crime, making him the latest California prosecutor in recent months to face the possibility of a recall. Gascón, who was elected in 2020 after beating out two-term incumbent Jackie Lacey (D), initially stopped his prosecutors from filing sentence enhancements, trying minors as adults or seeking the death penalty.

George Gascón was elected district attorney of Los Angeles County in November 2020 with 54 percent of the vote. “I won handsomely,” he reminisced Wednesday during a 90-minute conversation at the Hall of Justice in downtown L.A. “I got over 2 million votes.” It was a big victory for criminal justice reformers: the leading progressive prosecutor in the country taking over the movement’s top target, the largest county in the country and one that has long been hostile to change.

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin discusses efforts to recall George Gascón after his failure to reprimand criminals.

District Attorney George Gascón’s effort to reduce the death sentences of every condemned Los Angeles County murderer faces a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday. On February 15, Gascón moved to recall the death sentence of a convicted murderer. A brief submitted by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation (CJLF) and the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA) argued that the section of the law invoked in that motion did not give trial courts the jurisdiction to reduce a murderer’s death sentence to life without parole (LWOP).

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Mitchell confirmed yesterday that he is a potential candidate for Los Angeles County district attorney, and former District Attorney Steve Cooley acknowledged that he is being urged to run, should the effort to recall incumbent George Gascón qualify for the ballot. A determination is underway by the county Registrar-Recorder’s Office as to how many of the 715,860 signatures on recall petitions are valid, with 566,857 needed. The count must be completed by Aug. 17.

Roman Polanski’s lawyer indicated Monday that he will renew his request to have the fugitive director sentenced in absentia, a day after a transcript was unsealed that revives misconduct allegations in the director’s 45-year-old rape case. But the path to resolving the case is not at all straightforward. Harland Braun, Polanski’s lawyer, said in an interview that he first wants to get a new judge to handle it.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that since 1973, at least 189 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. That includes 11 in Ohio. For its part, the National Registry of Exonerations counts nearly 3,200 people wrongly convicted of crimes since 1989. The criminal justice system makes mistakes - sometimes big ones. Thus, the system needs mechanisms to help minimize errors. That explains the procedural care in death penalty cases.

In a huge victory for policyholders in the Golden State, Division Seven of California’s Second District Court of Appeal allowed by unanimous decision a COVID-19 business interruption dispute to go forward. The appellate court in Marina Pacific Hotel & Suites, LLC et al. v. Fireman's Fund Insurance Company reversed the trial court’s order, in which the trial court ruled that COVID-19 cannot, as a matter of law, cause direct physical loss or damage sufficient to trigger business interruption coverage under a commercial property policy.

Sotheby’s is facing the prospect of liability for an alleged gaffe in turning over $4 million in diamonds, placed with it for possible auctioning, to an unknown person claiming to be an agent of one of the owners, under a decision of the Court of Appeal for this district handed down yesterday. The auction house had “escaped” liability by virtue of the sustaining of demurrers to all causes of action put forth by plaintiff M & L Financial, Inc., Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. of Div. Eight wrote, declaring that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney erred in determining that the plaintiff cannot pursue its claim for breach of contract.

The state constitutional right of public access to government records does not require that statistical information be supplied which relates to any extent to complaints to the Commission on Judicial Performance that do not ripen into disciplinary proceedings, the Third District Court of Appeal decided on Friday. Plaintiff Floyd Chodosh reported Orange Superior Court Judge Robert J. Moss to the commission and also wants the jurist prosecuted for alleged “judge crimes” which he defines as “crime by a judge done from the bench by misuse of office and breach of duty and oath, as opposed to ‘personal’ crime’ ” such as driving under the influence.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed the dismissal of a civil rights action by one-time prominent attorney Stephen Yagman who claimed constitutional deprivations by virtue of a $1,000 parking fine he received for occupying a space for handicapped motorists without displaying the required placard and a $3.50 service fee in connection with an administrative appeal. Yagman sued members of the Beverly Hills City Council and the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission and others based on a July 8, 2021 citation he received, and paid under protest.

A convicted murderer, released from custody after serving just six years of a 50-year prison sentence when an aide to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón refused to call witnesses during a disposition hearing, was arrested this week, allegedly with a gun and drugs, after leading sheriff’s deputies on a three-mile car chase.

An NBA player accused of assaulting his partner in front of their two children has been charged with felony domestic violence in Los Angeles County. Miles Bridges, a forward for the Charlotte Hornets, is accused of assaulting his girlfriend and the mother of his two children in late June, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón. The 24-year-old basketball star faces one felony count of injuring a child’s parent and two felony counts of child abuse. The charges also include a special allegation that he caused great bodily injury to the victim.

A 29-year-old man accused of gunning down a homeless man outside a Sylmar convenience store in what authorities described as a hate-motivated killing was charged Wednesday with murder and attempted murder. The charges against Eric Antonio Sanchez also include a hate crime allegation, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Authorities said earlier the victim in the shooting, 48-year-old Ryan Bush, was wearing women’s clothing while talking to another person in the parking lot of the store near Polk Street and Foothill Boulevard around 1:20 a.m. July 5.

Investigators say they are confident there will be more charges filed against the suspects in the 7-Eleven deadly robbery spree. Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 I-Team at 5 p.m. on July 18, 2022.

A North Texas man who’s suspected of killing three women and a teenage girl in California in 1980 and 1995 was arrested in Fort Worth on Thursday night. Billy Ray Richardson, 76, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in connection to deaths of three Los Angeles victims - 25-year-old Beverly Cruse, 22-year-old Debra Cruse and 15-year-old Kari Lenander - in 1980, and the killing of Trina Wilson, of Inglewood, in 1995.

A 19-year-old California man who allegedly drove 100 mph in a short police pursuit before a crash that killed three passengers has been charged with murder, prosecutors said Thursday. Two teenagers and a man were killed, and three other passengers were injured in the crash Saturday morning in the city of Orange, police have said. The driver, Azarie Dupree Fuller, was charged with murder and other counts, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. He was also injured and remains hospitalized.

A tech executive has been arrested and charged for the third time in connection with a woman’s 1992 killing in the Bay Area after new evidence was discovered, prosecutors said this week. John Kevin Woodward, 58, chief executive of online training company ReadyTech, was arrested July 9 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after arriving from Amsterdam. He is accused of killing Laurie Houts, a 25-year-old computer engineer who was found dead in her car in Mountain View, not far from her office at Adobe Systems.

We turn once again to what has long been and surely will continue to be a limitless source of material for my columns, which is the practice at the Los Angeles Times of trying to concoct a scandal from an entirely lawful and justifiable police shooting. The latest example of this appears in Thursday’s print edition, running under the headline, “Footage casts doubt on LAPD claims.” The sub-headline reads, “Police said Marvin Cua pointed a gun at officers. But video shows him fleeing.”

Rep. Karen Bass was still six months away from launching her Los Angeles mayoral bid when she endorsed city attorney candidate Faisal Gill in March 2021. At the time, she described Gill as a friend she had known for more than a decade, saying he would champion criminal justice reform and be “a fighter for progressive policies.” Nearly a year and a half later, Gill is leading the race to be the city’s next top lawyer and Bass is the front-runner to succeed Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Our paper and this newsletter have closely followed the pursuit to dethrone Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón. That effort has tracked with a national surge of anger at reform-minded prosecutors among people who link recent upticks in crime to those prosecutors’ tenures. The Times’ James Queally has closely followed the race and - looking hard at the D.A. office’s filing rates, homicide solve rates and crime statistics - found a far more complicated picture of the surge in violence than the one asserted by some of Gascón’s opponents.

In an average year, gun violence in America kills 40,000 people, wounds twice as many, and has an economic consequence to our nation of $557 billion. Without a doubt, the human cost of gun violence - the people who are taken from us and the survivors whose lives are forever altered - is the most devastating. In addition to this human impact, examining the serious economic consequences of gun violence offers a wider lens for understanding just how extensive and expensive this crisis is. 

The city has agreed to settle a lawsuit stemming from the rough arrest of a blind man who says he was nearly suffocated to death. Eric Leonard reports July 20, 2022.

Louis “Skip” Miller is an attorney who frequently represents the county of Los Angeles, and the county does not willingly share how much they compensate his law firm, Miller Barondess, LLP, but the county does allow Skip wide latitude when it comes to speaking out in court and to the press. For this, we are eternally grateful. As in the LA Magazine article yesterday by Meghann Cuniff about the city of Los Angeles’ settlement of the high-profile federal lawsuit brought by the LA Alliance over the ongoing homelessness crisis.

As Los Angeles County prepares for a possible return to an indoor mask mandate, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer is facing more controversy. Julie Hamill, an attorney representing the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents, sent a letter to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors warning that if the mask mandate returns for L.A. school children, she plans to file a lawsuit. Hamill is asking the supervisors to step in and take some power away from Ferrer.

The man mistakenly released from jail after he was arrested and charged with shooting Lady Gaga’s dog walker is now the subject of a $5,000 reward announced by the U.S. Marshals Service. James Howard Jackson, 19, was erroneously released from custody April 6, 2022, due to a clerical error, and he’s been on the run ever since, federal authorities confirmed this week as they publicized the award. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department first announced the jailhouse snafu four months ago as it asked for the public’s help finding Jackson.

The troubled felon accused of almost blinding Olympian Kim Glass in Los Angeles previously attacked a prosecutor - who is blaming woke officials for allowing the “entirely predictable and preventable” violence. Irene Lee was a deputy district attorney in LA when Semeon Tesfamariam randomly attacked her while she was on a coffee break in August 2020. “He just came up behind me and he socked me. I felt like a car or bike had hit me and I started stumbling forward and just crying,” she told KCAL9.

If you are among those still perplexed by the failure of the police in Uvalde, Tex., to respond decisively to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, recent news from Chicago may help you understand how it may have happened. On Saturday afternoon, Chicago police received a Shotspotter alert that ten gunshots had been detected at 615 South California Avenue, on the city’s West Side. An officer monitoring the Shotspotter system accessed a camera in the area and saw that the shooters had exited a white Dodge Charger with a black hood.

A man who is being sought in connection with a 2019 homicide in Sylmar has been added to the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives, authorities announced Wednesday. Omar Alexander Cardenas, 25, is wanted by local and federal law enforcement officials for his involvement in the killing of another man on Aug. 15, 2019. Cardenas allegedly shot Jabali Dumas in the head at the Hair Icon Barber Shop in Sylmar, the FBI said. It is unknown if Cardenas knew the victim.

Nearly 200 people suspected of murders, sexual assaults and other serious crimes in Los Angeles are behind bars following a joint effort by police and U.S. Marshals to hunt down fugitives in 10 of the nation’s largest cities, officials said Thursday, July 7. Operation North Star resulted in the total arrest of 192 men and women between June 1 and June 30 in Los Angeles, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said during a news conference Thursday afternoon at the department’s headquarters downtown.

Thieves have targeted yet another high-end retailer on the Westside of Los Angeles, this time using a van to smash through a window at a Chanel store. The smash-and-grab, in addition to a series of other robberies, has police warning residents and shoppers in the area to take precautions. The latest incident took place on North Robertson, when a group of about eight suspects pulled up in a white cargo van and two other vehicles, rammed the front glass of the retailer and grabbed items out of the display window before taking off.

A bystander's decision to shoot a man who opened fire at an Indiana mall was a rare occurrence of someone stepping in to try to prevent multiple casualties before police could arrive. Police on Monday praised the quick actions of 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, an armed shopper who killed 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman after Sapirman killed three people and wounded two others at a mall in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement agencies continued an investigation Monday into the theft of millions of dollars in jewelry and gems from a Brink’s truck in Lancaster. The Brink’s truck was taking the merchandise from the International Gem and Jewelry Show in San Mateo to another show at the Pasadena Convention Center when the heist occurred early last Monday.

A brazen robbery in broad daylight occurred at the Malibu Lumberyard shopping center shocking bystanders and store clerks. A crew of six Black male and female suspects, wearing masks and hoodies entered the luxury goods store Maxfield on Tuesday July 12 at 2 p.m. The robbers pushed past the store’s security guard and grabbed armloads of “high-end” designer handbags. The crew then quickly raced out of the store and across Cross Creek Road and were seen getting into two separate vehicles. No license plates were noticed.

Starbucks may not be done closing stores over safety concerns. "We are beginning to close stores," because of safety issues, interim CEO Howard Schultz said in a video posted to Twitter last week. "This is just the beginning. There are going to be many more.” Starbucks said last week that it is closing 16 stores over safety concerns. Around that time, Debbie Stroud and Denise Nelson, both senior vice presidents of US operations at the company, outlined the efforts that Starbucks is taking to make stores safer in an open letter.

Amazon.com Inc. customers filed a proposed class action claiming the online retail giant violates antitrust laws by requiring suppliers to guarantee both competitive pricing and minimum margin payments to the company, a complaint filed in Washington federal court shows. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Washington, takes aim at the minimum margin agreements Amazon allegedly requires certain suppliers to sign.

The Federal Communications Commission has ordered phone companies to stop carrying traffic related to robocalls about scam auto warranties. US voice service providers must now “take all necessary steps to avoid carrying this robocall traffic,” or provide a report outlining how they’re mitigating the traffic, the FCC’s Robocall Response Team said in a statement on Thursday. The calls are coming from Roy Cox, Jr., Aaron Michael Jones and related companies and associates.

The new district attorney in San Francisco is cleaning house after the ouster of her embattled progressive predecessor Chesa Boudin, firing at least 15 employees from the prosecutor’s office. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, whom Mayor London Breed swore in eight days prior, issued a statement Friday saying she made "difficult, but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms."

An Upland attorney is suing California Attorney General Rob Bonta after a leak exposed the contents of a state database of concealed weapon permit holders’ personal data. “We have four females. They’re all solid human beings. Older. Every one of the females that we represent obtained their (carrying a concealed weapon permit) because they’re upstanding citizens, they’re good mothers, they’re concerned for the safety for their families,” attorney Brian Hannemann said Monday, July 18.

Convicted drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted in the 1985 kidnapping and murder of a U.S. drug agent, has been captured, the Mexican government said Friday. Caro Quintero, who was freed in 2013 after spending decades in prison for killing U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, was on a national registry of detained people, Mexico’s Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection confirmed. No additional details about his capture were provided.

In 2016, amid national outcry over a North Carolina law preventing transgender people from using restrooms that aligned with their gender identity, California countered with its own legislation. California lawmakers banned state-funded travel to any state that enacted anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws. The boycott was a way to “fight back against the discriminatory policies passed in states like North Carolina,” its author, Assemblyman Evan Low, said at the time.

A man who forcibly brought a teenage girl from Arizona to Los Angeles to work as a prostitute was sentenced to ten years behind bars, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Thursday. Jahque Williams, 21, of Los Angeles, was sentenced last week in federal court in Phoenix, Arizona. He had previously pleaded guilty to a federal charge of sex trafficking of a minor. On July 23, 2020, the Human Trafficking Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department found the then-17-year-old girl, who appeared to have been physically assaulted, at a Los Angeles hospital.

A son of Beverly Hills City Councilman Lester Friedman pleaded not guilty Monday to two criminal counts for allegedly creating a fake social media account impersonating another City Council candidate. Adam Friedman, 37, was charged last week with one felony count of identity theft and one misdemeanor count of internet/electronic impersonation, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.

California parole officials have approved the release of a notorious former Mexican Mafia prison gang leader who has been cooperating with law enforcement for nearly 20 years. Two consecutive governors previously blocked parole for Rene "Boxer" Enriquez in part based on the argument that he is safer in prison than on the streets, where he may be targeted as a snitch by his old cronies.

California prison officials must face claims that they callously disregarded inmates’ constitutional rights by orchestrating a prison transfer that caused a deadly Covid-19 outbreak at San Quentin. U.S. District Judge William Orrick III refused to dismiss a spate of lawsuits from inmates contending that state prison medical staff and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation executives caused a massive Covid-19 outbreak at San Quentin when they pushed through a transfer of 122 medically vulnerable inmates from the California Institution for Men in Chino.

I don’t plan to read Paul Pringle’s book Bad City, even though this excerpt in The Hollywood Reporter shows I’m a featured character. In Pringle’s telling, I’m an ill-tempered buffoon of an editor with sub-par journalism standards and someone who can’t recognize a good story from a great one. This version of me, Pringle claims, joined my corrupt then-colleagues - editors Marc Duvoisin and Davan Maharaj - to try and thwart Pringle and his band of heroic reporters working in secret to expose wrongdoing at the University of Southern California.

Eight prominent conservatives released a 72-page report Thursday refuting claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in dozens of unsuccessful court cases brought forth by former President Trump and his allies. The group - which includes former federal judges, Republican senators and Republican-appointed officials - said they reviewed all 64 court cases Trump and his allies initiated challenging the election outcome, saying they had reached an “unequivocal” conclusion that the claims were unsupported by evidence.

The Los Angeles Times has tapped Kevin Rector to cover the legal affairs beat, while Libor Jany will take over coverage of the Los Angeles Police Department. Recently a LAPD reporter, Rector will now cover the California Supreme Court and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He will write about legal trends and issues. Previously, he was at the Baltimore Sun for eight years, where he worked as a city cops and crime reporter and an investigative reporter. Rector graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

A California court recently refused to infer an implied right to certain pension benefits requested by former employees of the University of California, upon finding no clear basis for such rights in a resolution of the board of regents. In Broome et al. v. Regents of the University of California, the board of regents of the University of California adopted a resolution granting approval for establishing a plan for the restoration of retirement plan benefits denied due to limitations under the Internal Revenue Code.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System announced Wednesday a preliminary -6.1% net investment return for the 12-month period that ended June 30, representing its first loss in more than a decade. CalPERS said Wednesday that “tumultuous global markets” played a role in the system’s first loss since the 2009 financial crisis. Factors like “volatile global financial markets, geopolitical instability, domestic interest rate hikes and inflation” impacted public market returns, CalPERS wrote in a news release.

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