Bad -- and worse? Los Angeles D.A. candidates

I'm feeling glad not to be a Los Angeles County voter faced with the available choices in the March district attorney contest.

The incumbent, Jackie Lacey, would never get my ballot. She's one of the (few) California prosecutors who remains enthusiastic for the death penalty.

Among the major issues confronting Lacey is her office’s ongoing use of the death penalty. An ACLU report issued this year identified 22 people who were sentenced to death while Lacey has been in office, and all of those defendants were people of color.

LA Times

She's also got the police and sheriffs union endorsement; again, not a recommendation to me.

And then there is George Gascón, former San Francisco D.A., now Los Angeles candidate for the same job. The national media want to make him the progressive reformer in the race. Certainly he did good work advocating for California Prop. 47 which downgraded the penalties for drug possession and some thefts from felonies to misdemeanors.

But on his watch, San Francisco suffered five killings -- five murders by police officers of civilians (black and brown naturally) -- and none of the officers involved received so much as a slap on the wrist from the legal system. None of the cases were adjudicated in a trial where all the facts would have been brought out. They just disappeared in Gascón's office. For all we can tell, he construes the law to allow police killers to walk free.

There is a former public defender in the L.A. D.A. contest. I don't know anything about Rachel Rossi but, if I were an Angeleno, I'd give her a look. After all, San Francisco has just elected a former PD who has jailbird parents. This can happen when the people in power screw up enough.

The Real Justice PAC which works nationally to "elect prosecutors who will fix our broken criminal justice system" has not make an endorsement in this race.