It’s not looking good for George Gascón. The results of the primary and recent polls show he’s likely to be unseated as Los Angeles County District by Nathan Hochman. Much of it is his fault: he has demonstrated a lack of common sense and poor leadership skills.
In a recent interview of Gascón that I participated in along with members of the editorial board for this publication, Gascón appeared to be on the defensive the entire time. He didn’t take responsibility for any of his questionable decision-making. Instead, he consistently blamed public misconceptions about the state of crime in LA County that were, according to him, produced by his well-funded political opposition.
Gascón didn’t make it too difficult for his opposition given his many blunders that made for easy eye-popping headlines. We’ll come back to those shortly.
Many of Gascón’s policies are highly defensible. Almost immediately after coming into office, Gascón ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for some minor crimes.
Yes, it seems unfair that wealthy people are freed while poor people have to remain in jail as they await trial.
He ordered his staff to stop seeking the death penalty. Right – there are too many problems with how the death penalty is implemented, and it results in too many injustices.
Gascón stopped prosecuting people under the age of 18 as adults. Sure, teen brains are very much underdeveloped, which affects their decision-making skills and therefore reduces their blameworthiness – that’s the whole point of having juvenile courts.
Setting aside the concern that Gascón’s mandates did away with the possible benefits of prosecutorial discretion, many of his policies are well justified. The problem is that he bungled so many individual decisions.
A clear example is when he demonstrated little common sense in how he handled the Hannah Tubbs case – Tubbs, who already had a history of violent crime, received a very light 2-year sentence for sexually assaulting a 10 year old girl after Gascón refused to transfer Tubbs’ case to an adult court.
While he later admitted that he should have recommended that Tubbs be tried as an adult, it should have been obvious to him at the moment given that Tubbs had already been convicted twice of aggravated assault and that Gascón’s office had jail phone calls that revealed Tubbs gloating over a light sentence. It should have been obvious that Gascón’s blanket policy against trying juveniles as adults was misguided. The original prosecutor was attempting to present the calls as evidence but Gascón removed him from the case.
District attorneys in other California counties have lambasted Gascón and publicly stated that they would not share jurisdiction on cases with him. Most of the prosecutors in his office voted to support recall attempts against their own boss. Gascón’s arrogance has disallowed him from appreciating the fact that he has gone too far.
He has been overly confident that he knows best while forgetting about the need to not look crazy to voters and his prosecutors, which is why he’s now probably going to lose his position. During the interview, he never took accountability. It was always someone else’s fault and there was always some explanation for why some unsavory statistic was unreliable.
It appears to be the case that he desired to exercise absolute rule over his prosecutors, didn’t tolerate dissent, and allegedly dislodged those who expressed legitimate concerns. This led to most of them wanting him gone.
He’s not a leader, he’s an overconfident idealist with no leadership skills.
Early in his term, Gascón ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking life without parole. The apprehension with doing away with the death penalty is somewhat mitigated by having the alternative of life without parole. Gascón fails to understand that justice sometimes requires that people be imprisoned for life. He has focused on the effects that incarceration has on public safety and completely neglected the fact that sometimes people deserve to be in prison and victims deserve for those criminals to be in prison beyond the impact that their imprisonment has on public safety.
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It’s true that the threat of life in prison without parole may not affect general crime rates, but that’s not the only thing we care about as a society. When a mass shooter destroys families, they do not deserve another moment of freedom and justice for the families demands that they never step foot in society again. Frankly, they deserve the death penalty but since the death penalty is so thoroughly flawed, the next best thing for justice to be served is that they be given life in prison without parole.
This is the aspect of the public’s conception of justice that Gascón has completely ignored. His neglect has understandably caused many people to believe that he’s unequipped to serve and it has led directly to his likely defeat.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.