Suspect is sent to juvenile system

according to documents the district attorney’s office provided in response to a public records request.

Late last month, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Courtney Dyer argued that the suspect’s criminal conduct in the killings showed “sophistication,” noting he may have used a pillow as a silencer during the assault and set a fire to try to hide evidence.

The defendant also arrived at the scene of the fire hours later and pretended to mourn the victims, the prosecutor said. He even gave false leads to detectives, she said.

Dyer said the suspect had remained “stagnant” and showed no improvement in his behavior in the four years he had spent in the custody of the Los Angeles County Probation Department, and she argued that the gravity of the crime committed was “incalculable.”

“Three parents have lost their daughters. Three children have lost their mothers,” Dyer said last month. “There is a 5-year-old who said she wanted to go to heaven to be with her mother.”

Defense attorney Janet Roh said the suspect had shown improvement in custody, noting he was reading at a fourth-grade level at the time of his arrest and had been smoking marijuana daily since age 12.

In custody, she said, the suspect had responded well to services and education.

“Life in juvenile hall has been a drastically improved experience,” Roh said, adding that the defendant’s father physically abused him at a young age.

An Assembly bill passed in 2022 made it much tougher to transfer juveniles to adult court. The bill requires prosecutors to prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that the juvenile would not be amenable to rehabilitation in juvenile custody.

Gascón filed a letter in support of the bill last year, which was written by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), the wife of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

Prosecutors must meet five criteria to win a transfer motion hearing, and Smith ruled that the district attorney’s office had failed to meet three.

Chiding prosecutors that their repeated allusions to the “gruesome” nature of the crime were not enough to meet the standards of the law, the judge said prosecutors had failed to “put forth any evidence” of what the suspect’s rehabilitative needs were.

Smith also noted that the suspect had “cognitive abnormalities” in his frontal lobe and an IQ low enough to raise questions about his “intellectual function” when he was taken into custody.

Although a probation officer wrote a report suggesting the teen should be tried as an adult, the judge noted the officer ignored the suspect’s cognitive issues and alleged history of abuse in that report.

Under the current state of the law, a minor should only be transferred under the rarest of circumstances. This is in line with a series of legislative changes which aims to treat children like children.

“The change in the law obviously increased the burden for us,” said Tiffiny Blacknell, the chief spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

“We presented evidence that we believed met that burden,” she said. “The court weighed the evidence and disagreed. We respect the court’s decision.”

An attorney for the victims’ families did not respond to a request for comment after the hearing.

Two dozen of the slain sisters’ loved ones packed the tiny Inglewood courtroom where Smith delivered his ruling Wednesday. They teared up as he recounted the brutal nature of their deaths.

Several left in frustration as it became apparent Smith would reject the prosecution’s motion to transfer.

Wednesday marked the end of a frustrating trip through the court system for the families, who first believed the case was over in 2021 when Gascón’s initial policy order led prosecutors to revoke their transfer motion.

As they exited, a man looked a Sheriff’s Department deputy in the eye and said the ruling was “bull—.”

Outside the courthouse, others commiserated with frustrated deputies.

“This was a waste of time and effort,” a teary-eyed relative said in court.