Crime victims need and deserve justice, not talk
No one gets to tell the parents of a murder victim how to feel when detectives spent what should have been their son Sam’s 27th birthday looking for Sam’s decapitated head in a park. His killer also murdered a 23-year-old woman in an effort to conceal his crime. No one gets to tell her parents how to feel about the loss of their beautiful daughter Julie.
A 6-year-old girl who along with two of her young sisters survived being hit by a repeat drunk driver who ran a red light at 75 mph drew pictures of her dead mother and father to tell the judge how much she missed her parents. No one gets to tell those three little girls how they feel about celebrating birthdays and Christmases without their mom and dad.
Cristine Soto-DeBerry’s condescending column “What do crime victims actually want — and what do they need?” reduces victims and their grief to numbers and percentages. This is beyond offensive.
Victims are not numbers. They are not percentages. These are real lives that have been shattered into a million pieces because their lives intersected with a criminal.
Victims have a voice. And the voices of all victims should be heard.
No one should be lured into a false sense of security by thinking Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is looking out for the rights of victims over the rights of criminals. He is not.
The voice of someone who chooses to kidnap, rape and murder a 6-year-old child should not drown out the voice of the child or the loving parents who were forced to live on without the joy of their little boy.
That little 6-year-old girl who watched her parents die at the hands of a drunk driver doesn’t care about home security systems or medical bills like Christine Soto-DeBerry wants you to believe. That little girl wants her mommy and daddy back to blow out birthday candles and walk her down the aisle.
There are people on this earth who have committed crimes so heinous that they do not deserve a place on this earth. Yet Gascon disbanded the Lifer Unit, which notifies victims of parole hearings so they can make their case
Amiya Rivera, 3, right, of El Monte holds a candle next to a picture of her uncle Juan Videl during a candlelight vigil to honor loved ones that have been victims of violent crime in front of the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 2020. Videl was murdered in 2016.
No one should be lured into a false sense of security by thinking Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon is looking out for the rights of victims over the rights of criminals. He is not.
to keep their abuser or their loved ones killer behind bars. He stopped sending prosecutors to parole hearings, forcing mothers to study crime scene photos of the very children they brought into this earth riddled with bullets. That is not being a “modern prosecutor”; that is being a criminal advocate.
People don’t want to just feel safe — they want to be safe. And they aren’t going to be safe if modern prosecutors don’t have the ability to exercise their discretion in seeking sentences that reflect the wishes of victims while protecting our communities from further harm.
I was one of six elected district attorneys who voted to seek the death penalty for Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer who murdered 13 people and victimized 74 other people at 53 separate crime scenes from 1975 to 1986. The final accounting of his crime spree included nearly 50 rapes that could not be prosecuted because of the statute of limitations had expired — but the victims were still very real — and their voices were still heard.
Decades had passed — and witnesses and victims were passing away. Memories were fading. There is no doubt DeAngelo deserved death — but six District Attorneys decided to accept his offer to plead to life without the possibility of parole to allow the victims to have their day in court.
There were so many victims it took four straight days to hear all of the victim impact statements. Victim after victim took the opportunity to address their rapist — the murderer of their parents — the burglar who broke into their house and robbed them of their property and their sense of security — even 40 years later.
Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman told DeAngelo he “deserves no mercy,” as the
Sacramento State ballroom packed with victims erupted into applause.
DeAngelo was sentenced to 11 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for 13 murders, an additional consecutive life term for 13 kidnappings, plus another eight years for weapons charges.
Victims have spent years advocating for a voice. I was the statewide co-chair for Marsy’s Law to ensure victims would have a right to be heard at every critical stage of a criminal proceeding. It was not until 2008 when California codified Marsy’s Law that the rights of victims were made a permanent fixture in the criminal justice system.
We all want to be safe. We’re not going to be safe if we start listening to the criminals over the voices of victims.