Alameda Co. DA disqualifies veteran judge from hearing criminal cases

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[AU9377 5,043]

She cannot do that.  She can file a motion to have Mickey Mouse hear all criminal cases, that doesn't mean that it will be granted.  The code section they speak of still requires a judge's signature.  The Superior Court judge can suspend her from prosecuting easier than she can disqualify him as a judge.

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8 hours ago, AU9377 said:

She cannot do that.  She can file a motion to have Mickey Mouse hear all criminal cases, that doesn't mean that it will be granted.  The code section they speak of still requires a judge's signature.  The Superior Court judge can suspend her from prosecuting easier than she can disqualify him as a judge.

A lot of bluster, and poor thinking, but in the long run, completely undoable. 

Chesa Boudin PartII...

Edited April 9, 2023 by DKW 86

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https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/media-coverage-of-alameda-county-da-pamela-price-17891024.php

 

 

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Bay Area media members thirst for the recall of Alameda County DA Pamela Price

Column: SFGATE local editor Alex Shultz on the lack of transparency and the loaded, pro-punishment rhetoric from reporters at ABC7 and the Berkeley Scanner

Alex Shultz, SFGATE

April 12, 2023Updated: April 12, 2023 8:34 a.m.

 

In November’s Alameda County district attorney race, Pamela Price, a civil rights lawyer, defeated longtime Assistant District Attorney Terry Wiley, 53% to 47%.

 

Price and Wiley were competing to replace outgoing Alameda County DA Nancy O’Malley, whose 13-year tenure was typical of “tough-on-crime” Democratic Party prosecutors: She lobbied against statewide criminal justice reform ballot measures and embraced the financial support of police unions. On the campaign trail, Price, a Black woman, spoke of how her life experiences shaped her views about how a reform-minded district attorney should operate; her 10-point plan was well-known to voters. In the end, Alameda County voters decided to break with the policies of O’Malley, which would’ve largely continued under Wiley, and instead backed Price’s unapologetically progressive platform. 

Barely three months into Price’s term, a handful of media members have fixated on the new DA, posturing as if they’re doing objective, community-oriented journalism — and even worse, adopting the holier-than-thou stance that their beliefs and biases aren’t shaping whom they choose to interview and how they choose to report stories. They’re using loaded, pro-punishment rhetoric about “public safety,” boldly assuming the very constituency that just elected Price would of course immediately find her policies to be out of step; they’re acting like it’s newsworthy that a selection of Alameda County prosecutors — some of whom donated to both O’Malley and Wiley — would choose to resign from office when a DA with radically different politics became their new boss; and they’re also highlighting gruesome anecdotes, thrusting vulnerable families of brutal crimes into the limelight to cynically dissuade the public from thinking critically about the larger impacts of criminal justice reform.

“It's frustrating to watch this conversation in the media, and I equate it to climate change,” said Cristine DeBerry, founder of the progressive nonprofit Prosecutors Alliance of California. “We spent decades debating whether climate change was real or not. And finally, we've gotten to this place where, OK, the data is in: Climate change is real. It's time to do the same thing in criminal justice. The data is in: [Mass incarceration] did not succeed. It is no longer up for debate. The question is how do we get to a better place? And why are we condemning the people who are trying to get us there?”

With some exceptions, I think journalists can be effective at their jobs regardless of their political persuasions, as long as they’re transparent and show their work. I'm a leftist; my politics of course instruct my worldview. I believe journalism is supposed to be for centering the voices and stories of the most vulnerable among us. At its purest, it's an essential tool to combat the propagandized narratives of powerful interests and institutions. It's my opinion — bolstered by research and reporting — that reforms to the criminal justice system are broadly popular, and they’re quite effective, too. 

For this reported column, I’ve weaved in the testimonies of a few former prisoners, all of whom are Black or Latino, because I believe their perspectives have too often been omitted from media coverage in favor of anonymous prosecutors with a bone to pick. You can decide for yourself how persuasive you find their anecdotes, coupled with incarceration data and my critiques of other media members’ coverage. If nothing else, you know exactly where I stand and what my aims are with this piece.

The same cannot be said for ABC7 reporter Dan Noyes, who, as far as I can tell, would bristle at the idea of publicly admitting to his political ideologies, including on issues like criminal justice. But his editorial choices, and his sources list, speak for themselves.

Noyes seems to have never reported on Price’s candidacy, or even Wiley’s candidacy, before this year. In March alone, he wrote four breathless stories about Price. The first was titled, “Judge rejects Alameda Co. DA's plea deal for murder defendant accused of killing 3 people.” The implicit framing of the piece was that it would be out of step and absurd for Price to lower the potential sentence of a then-18-year-old implicated in a triple homicide from 75-to-life to 15 years. Reporter Emilie Raguso, who’s guilty of many of the same one-sided reporting techniques as Noyes, took a similar stance at her publication, the Berkeley Scanner, which is dedicated to writing up the grisly details of neighborhood crimes. 

Both Noyes’ and Raguso’s reporting on the triple-homicide case has relied on the disgust of Alameda County Judge Mark McCannon, who denied Price’s 15-year plea deal. Since McCannon’s move, Price has announced that she’s moving to disqualify him from overseeing her cases. Noyes called Price’s decision an “extraordinary action,” but Price’s predecessor, O’Malley, took the same action with a judge less than a year ago.

What neither Noyes nor Raguso bothered mentioning in their coverage is that O’Malley’s office left this triple-homicide case floundering for years, dating back to 2015, because there are questions about whether the evidence would sustain a conviction. And McCannon is not some apolitical figure. In fact, he was an Alameda County deputy district attorney for 16 years under Tom Orloff and then, yes, O’Malley. He even donated to O’Malley’s campaign in 2009. He’s an elected official and someone who was once deeply involved in the office Price is attempting to reform.

What’s more, neither Noyes nor Raguso noted that recidivism rates for prisoners with longer-term sentences are much lower compared with the rest of the prison population or how expensive it is to keep people in prison indefinitely. 

Robert Hernandez and his wife Gina can attest to how spending 15 years in prison feels. Robert was released just a few months ago after serving 16 years. His original sentence, for severely injuring someone in a bar fight, was actually 27 years, because it was his second “strike” under California’s three-strikes law and because he had a “gang enhancement” tacked on. Gang enhancements can add lots of time to a prison sentence, and according to DeBerry, they're applied to Black and Latino people in 98% of cases. Hernandez got out early only because O’Malley lessened his sentence on her way out the door. He’s now in his late 50s; his son, who was 5 years old when Hernandez went to prison, is now 21. 

“After 10, 15 years, you for sure paid for your crimes,” Hernandez, who just found a job and is learning how to use a smartphone, told me. “Most of those people are really old. If you ever go to San Quentin and see the people, you will realize, man, this is crazy. Some people deserve to be in there, don't get me wrong. But there's a lot of people that got caught up in the system. So, so, so many people that are just broken down and hurt and trying to find a way out. Now they got the DA that's willing to give them a chance, at least hear them.”

Gina Hernandez is of course grateful that her husband was resentenced by O’Malley, but she still voted for Price over Wiley, a decision she doesn’t regret in the slightest. “We have been impacted by those [sentencing] choices, where people just want to say, well, this group is hopeless; there's no worth to their life. And that's not the case,” she said.

Compare the Hernandez family’s measured explanation of the carceral system with how Raguso originally reported on Price’s potential plan to shorten a swath of prison sentences and focus on promising rehabilitation outcomes. “While criminal justice reforms remain critically important across the state and nation,” she wrote, “numerous people from the DA's office have told the Berkeley Scanner that this approach is not the right way forward.” For the rest of the piece, anytime a statistic or data point about reform policies started to read as sensible, Raguso made sure to drop in a quote from an anonymous dissenter at the DA’s office.

It’s not just anonymous dissenters — Raguso and Noyes both rushed to interview Charly Weissenbach, a prosecutor who comically told the Berkeley Scanner she’s “not comfortable in the spotlight,” as she sat down for feature profiles and on-camera interviews about her very public resignation. I spent about three minutes looking Weissenbach up; she has a 2018 Facebook profile photo calling for the reelection of O’Malley, and she donated $2,074.58 to Wiley’s campaign. Why is it newsworthy that she doesn’t want to work for the DA who convincingly beat her preferred candidate?

While Raguso and Noyes have relied on angry prosecutors to make their points, Noyes separately has a penchant for dramatically inserting himself into his “investigative” reporting adventures. On ABC7 segments and on Twitter, Noyes has theatrically spoken of trying and failing to corner Price for an interview. His on-the-ground sleuthing resulted in other disgruntled employees feeding him drivel like how Price took the “extraordinary” step of closing her offices for a day for team-building exercises. As part of what he called an “EXCLUSIVE” report, Noyes discovered that Price asked staffers to bring pens and paper and crayons to an off-site retreat. (He did not reveal the colors of the crayons.)

Noyes has the ideal mentor for these self-absorbed shenanigans in his colleague, Dion Lim, who perfected the routine of chasing around a progressive DA (in her case, Chesa Boudin). Lim has waded into Price’s tenure as well, recently interviewing the family of Jasper Wu, a 23-month-old who was killed by gunfire on Interstate 880 in Oakland. Lim explained in her report that Wu’s alleged killers might — keyword might — receive a lesser sentence because Price is against sentencing enhancements; one of Wu’s parents responded by telling Lim that they do not “believe in second chances” and they disagreed with the idea of eliminating those enhancements.

It is not my place to weigh in on how Wu’s parents feel here. What I will say is this: Lim framed the potential removal of sentencing enhancements as obviously morally reprehensible, and used a distraught family as a prop and proof that her stance is unimpeachable. I find that despicable. In the past week, Lim went back to Wu’s parents for more gut-wrenching quotes, and her reporting seems to have compelled a small protest against Price at the Alameda County courthouse, even though — again — Price hasn’t announced any final decisions about the case. 

According to Dorsey Nunn, a criminal justice reform organizer who spoke to SFGATE about his advocacy work and his own time in prison, some media members “only bring up those frightening stories when they haven't gotten any real evidence that actually the crime rates went up or down,” he said. “I think that they would prefer to rest on the notion that if you punish somebody, it's going to actually produce some real dramatic change, a drop in crime that’s going to make people feel safer. When you run out of those stale arguments, they're going to start talking about, ‘I need a sense of closure.’ But in order for you to have closure, should we as a society be practicing brutal revenge?”

Lance Wilson, a communications assistant at the progressive comms firm The Worker Agency, was in prison for four years, from 2017 until 2021, on a drug conspiracy charge. He would’ve been released in 2020 had he not had a gun enhancement added to his case (he said the gun was found at the home he was arrested at, but it wasn’t his gun). As a result, he was stuck in prison at the height of the pandemic, when he and almost every person he knew caught the coronavirus. “It could have been a death sentence for me,” he said, “all because of this hideous, sneaky thing that prosecutors use to try to just tack more time onto your sentence.”

Wilson told me that certain media members’ ideologically motivated critiques of Price have made him sick to his stomach. “Nobody wants to give you a second chance,” he said. Nunn expressed something similar during our conversation. “At what point will they see me as having integrity, or see people like me as having integrity, and [having] something wonderful that they could add to society?” he asked.

I can’t answer that question for the media members discussed above. All I can do is reiterate that they’re doing a disservice to the public. Already, Noyes is touting a Change.org petition to kick out Price. The Change.org petition carries no official weight, but it’s not hard to read the tea leaves here: An actual recall effort coaxed by the press looks increasingly inevitable.

Price might turn out to be an abject disaster for any number of reasons, but there’s nothing tangible to base that on yet. You don’t have to be a supporter of criminal justice reform to acknowledge the scary implications of already knowing, after barely three months, that a politician who won their race fair and square, who hasn’t even fully instituted their suggested policies yet, seems to be on a collision course for a media-backed recall.

Sure, some of you will read this column, and you’ll call me biased, a left-wing advocate, whatever else. What you can’t accuse me of is not being upfront, of not showing my work. I told you how I was going to write up this story, my thought process behind my sourcing list, and I tried to contextualize my reporting, too.

The journalists who are ideologically opposed to progressive district attorneys? There’s no transparency to be had. They’ll continue releasing selective tidbits about high-profile cases, ignoring inconvenient truths about those cases and the criminal justice system at large, and then they’ll anoint themselves martyrs when they’re critiqued for their nakedly pro-incarceration framing.

Their routine is tiring. No need to overthink it: Pamela Price is a progressive district attorney, and some media members don’t like that. Those media members have responded with fear-mongering over following the facts. Worst of all, what they’re doing may very well work.

 

 

[CoffeeTiger 5,180]

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. 

We've been very tough on crime for a long time and it hasn't helped a whole lot. When you keep bringing up generations of people into poverty, poor schools, runaway drug use, guns on every street corner, and institutions filled with systemic discrimination then you're going to forever have a large group of the population that feels like America and society has nothing to offer them and doesn't give them the opportunity for success as a regular law abiding citizen.  

 

We can appoint tough on crime prosecutors all we want and continue to fill our prisons and courts up to the breaking point, but its never going to solve any problems or fix the reasons we have to have all these things to begin with. 

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https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/suspect-charges-jasper-wu-oakland/3247048/

 

 

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Suspects in Jasper Wu killing won't face possibility of life without parole

June 7

The men accused of killing 23-month-old Jasper Wu on an Oakland freeway will not face the possibility of life without parole thanks to Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price -- an issue for the child’s family and their friends.

“At this point transparency is so important from the DA’s office. Time after time we see plea deals or charges being dropped. It's not comforting,” said Carl Chan, community leader.

Ivory Bivens and Trevor Green will face murder charges with a gang enhancement in the case.

Police believe Jasper was killed when his family's car was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout on I-880 back in 2021.  

Chan said Jasper’s family is frustrated by the new DA's decision to drop some of the enhancements set in place by former DA Nancy O’Mally. 

“It is important to the family to seek the maximum so-called sentencing as possible,” he said. “We are not only talking about how many years, it's about what message are we willing to send to the people that are committing the crimes against innocent families.”

While Jasper's family believes the changes are significant, Bivens’ attorney Ernie Castillo believes the change won't mean much for his client. Who he says is still facing the possibility of 265 years behind bars.  

“I think those are changes without a difference really. My client is still facing an indeterminate life sentence, so from my perspective, nothing has changed,” he said. “So we are going to be prepared to fight this thing all the way through.”

Castillo plans to fight the gang enhancement and is adamant that there is no evidence linking his client to the rolling gunbattle.  

“I feel like the way this is charged they have succumbed to the political pressure surrounding the case and I really hope they see the problems in this case and do the right thing,” said Castillo. “The preliminary hearing in this case established quite clearly that Mr.Bivins had nothing to do with this case.”

The other defendant, Green, who police say was in the same car with Bivens, is facing 175 years in prison if convicted. A third suspect, who has now been ruled a victim by a judge, will face a felony firearm charge.  

The DA did not comment Wednesday, but in an earlier statement, Price said she is committed to seeking justice for Jasper, writing, "We will continue to hold these men accountable for these serious charges that will likely land them behind bars for the rest of their lives.”

 

 

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[AU9377 5,043]

9 hours ago, Auburn85 said:

 

She needs to be removed from office.

[DKW 86 7,441]

On 7/19/2023 at 10:07 PM, AU9377 said:

She needs to be removed from office.

Ditto.

She and the Assistant are not there to work for the People. While I understand and appreciate the incarceration issues, bias is not allowed in the Justice System. It is allowed in Politics etc. But not in court.

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[DKW 86 7,441]

SSDD in California. 

And we wonder why the people are leaving in droves...

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https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/12/01/alameda-county-district-attorney-excludes-the-berkeley-scanner-reporter

 

 

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Berkeley reporter barred from Pamela Price press event says ‘it raises all kinds of questions

by Alex N. Gecan Dec. 1, 2023

 

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office barred a local journalist from attending a press conference Wednesday, drawing criticism from First Amendment advocates.

Emilie Raguso, a former Berkeleyside reporter who now runs The Berkeley Scanner, a daily news site that focuses on Berkeley public safety and the DA’s office and averages 200,000 monthly pageviews, was turned away by District Attorney Pamela Price’s staff, who cited unspecified “safety issues” despite letting other members of local media attend, Raguso said.

“I have been on the DA media list for many years, but then in August, they took me off the list,” Raguso told Berkeleyside. She asked several times to be put back on, but “they said the media list is under review,” she said.

Two spokespeople for the agency told Raguso she wouldn’t be allowed into the press conference when she arrived, she said. She said she’s never been turned away from press events before.

The event itself, at the agency’s headquarters in Oakland, was focused on Price’s work for crime victims and their families.

“Ms. Raguso displayed her Oakland Police Department press credentials, although that was not required to verify her status as a reporter, which is well known to you and your staff, nor was it necessary to enter a press conference,” David Loy, legal director at the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, wrote to Price Thursday. “Nonetheless, it confirmed she is a member of the press, but your staff still refused to allow her into the press conference.”

Loy wrote that Price’s office “violated the First Amendment and threatened freedom of the press.” His letter was cosigned by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“In particular, the First Amendment prohibits the government from arbitrarily excluding specific reporters from access to press conferences or other facilities or materials generally open to the public,” Loy wrote.

Raguso said no other reporters were asked to show identification or their affiliations Wednesday, and she felt Price’s office had singled her out.

Raguso said the only direct contact she has had with Price has been at press events or in passing at court.

“Public officials are well within their rights to decide who they will have a sit-down with, who will they call on at a press conference,” Raguso said. “The DA’s office has been extremely selective with who they give that time to.”

Raguso said she has made several inquiries to the agency, trying to get more information on her exclusion and the agency’s media policy, but has gotten no response. Spokespeople for the office did not respond to requests for comment from Berkeleyside.

“I’m definitely planning to follow this through. I don’t think government overstepping like this can be allowed to stand,” Raguso said. She said she was curious who else might also be excluded from press events.

“It raises all kinds of questions about who is allowed to cover our elected district attorney,” Raguso said. “This isn’t just a fight for me; it’s a fight for equal access to everyone.”

 

 

 

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https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/12/01/alameda-county-district-attorney-excludes-the-berkeley-scanner-reporter?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_berkeleyside

 

 

 

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Update: DA Pamela Price restores press access to Berkeley journalist

 

After press freedom groups rallied behind Emilie Raguso of The Berkeley Scanner, who was barred from a press event last week, she was told Saturday she was now ‘welcome’ at media events.

 

 

[autigeremt 6,714]

On 4/12/2023 at 3:36 PM, CoffeeTiger said:

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. 

We've been very tough on crime for a long time and it hasn't helped a whole lot. When you keep bringing up generations of people into poverty, poor schools, runaway drug use, guns on every street corner, and institutions filled with systemic discrimination then you're going to forever have a large group of the population that feels like America and society has nothing to offer them and doesn't give them the opportunity for success as a regular law abiding citizen.  

 

We can appoint tough on crime prosecutors all we want and continue to fill our prisons and courts up to the breaking point, but its never going to solve any problems or fix the reasons we have to have all these things to begin with. 

When does right from wrong enter that equation?