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ADDA Vice President Siddall Lambastes Garcetti, Krinsky, Chemerinsky Over Op-Ed Piece
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The vice president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys yesterday unleashed an attack on former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, former County Bar Association President Miriam Krinsky, and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, accusing the three of spewing lies in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times in which they faulted a Court of Appeal opinion critical of District Attorney George Gascón.
Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall, second-in-command of the 800-plus-member ADDA, responded to an article published on the Times’s Op-Ed page Friday titled, “California must rein in ‘three strikes’ law.” He acknowledged that the authors “are entitled to their political views” and are “entitled to argue that the law is not just” but declared that “when they lie about facts, when they distort academic studies” and fail to examine the evidence, “then we hit troubled waters.”
Garcetti, Krinsky and Chemerinsky expressed disapproval of the June 2 opinion by Justice John L. Segal of this district’s Div. Seven in Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County v. Gascón. The opinion partially affirms a preliminary injunction secured by the ADDA blocking implementation of portions of the special directives issued by Gascón on Dec. 7, 2000, his first day in office, observing that Gascón “is an elected official who must comply with the law, not a sovereign with absolute, unreviewable discretion.”
A petition for review was filed in the California Supreme Court on July 12.
Article in Times
“Now the California Supreme Court has the opportunity to build more sanity into the state’s failed three-strikes law by ensuring that local elected prosecutors can use their discretion to decline unnecessary and damaging three-strikes sentencing enhancements,” the Times’s contributors wrote.
“The issue before the court is whether a state appeals decision was correct in concluding that prosecutors in California must charge enhancements under the three-strikes law, no matter how draconian or irrational the punishment would be.
“This contradicts long-standing legal principles and practice. District attorneys have always had discretion in deciding whether and how to charge cases, including enhancements under the three-strikes law.”
The trio asserted that requiring district attorneys to charge all enhancements “inexplicably” strips them of their prosecutorial discretion and undermining their ability to pursue rational prosecutions and sentences,” insisting:
“This is a misreading of the statute and an unconstitutional restriction on prosecutorial discretion.”
Garcetti’s Record
Siddall did not address the comments on Segal’s opinion. In a posting on the ADDA’s website, he directed her criticism to the three authors’ assault in their Times article on the three strikes law.
The prosecutor wrote:
“The piece begins with four examples of defendants sentenced to 25 years to life for stealing. These cases serve a rhetorical purpose; the stories inspire righteous outrage. As the authors noted, they are ‘heartbreaking and should trouble us all.’ And they should. One defendant, Vincent Rico, ‘went to prison for life for stealing two pairs of kid’s shoes.’
“But there is one crucial problem: these powerful vignettes are not based on current state law. Not one case was tried, pleaded, or convicted after 2012. In 2012, voters passed Proposition 36 modifying California’s Three- Strikes law to correct the injustices that happened to all four men cited in the [op-ed piece]. Today, not one of the men cited by Professor Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, could be sentenced to 25 years to life.”
Garcetti’s Record
Siddall remarked that “[s]hamelessly (or laughably)” one of the four defendants alluded to was sentenced to life in prison while Garcetti was district attorney. He commented:
“Fortunately, that defendant was released in 2009 by the man who defeated Mr. Garcetti, Steve Cooley.
“In fact, Mr. Garcetti’s track record exemplifies the injustice wrought by Three Strikes before the 2012 reform. When he was the district attorney, he ordered line-prosecutors not to use an ounce of prosecutorial discretion on this law. His orders resulted in men like Mr. Rico being sentenced to outrageous sentences. Maybe that is one reason that Los Angeles voters ousted Mr. Garcetti by a resounding 64 percent in favor of a candidate who promised to end Mr. Garcetti’s draconian policies.”
He continued:
“Another serious flaw—one that a simple fact check would have resolved—is authors’ reliance on a single study to support their bold claim that ‘research has shown that lengthier prison sentences actually increase recidivism rates and make it harder for formerly incarcerated people to successfully reenter society.’
Siddall said that study, which he noted is cited by Chemerinsky and Gascón in legal briefs, “never concluded that lengthy sentences increase recidivism among serious or violent offenders.” He quoted the author of the study as saying:
“This study cannot provide any evidence regarding potential general deterrent effects of incarceration.”
Other Studies
The ADDA vice president added:
“However, the study cites several other studies that provide direct evidence supporting incarceration’s deterrent effects. Competent analysts would incorporate these peer-reviewed studies into their editorial, rather than cherry-picking one study that aligns with their priority—and even a close reading of it undermines their interpretation.”
He pointed to these recent findings by the United States Sentencing Commission:
“1. The odds of recidivism were approximately 29 percent lower for federal offenders sentenced to more than 120 months incarceration compared to a matched group of federal offenders receiving shorter sentences.
“2. The odds of recidivism were approximately 18 percent lower for offenders sentenced to more than 60 months up to 120 months incarceration compared to a matched group of federal offenders receiving shorter sentences.”
Garcetti, Chemerinsky and Krinsky did not respond to a request for comment on Siddall’s article.
(The foregoing article, as it appeared in print, attributed the commentary on the ADDA website to the association's president, Michele Hanisee. That was the byline used on the ADDA's website. A correction was made by the ADDA the following day and the online version of the MetNews article was updated.)
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