Prosecutors drop charges against suspected ‘Skid Row Stabber’
Bobby Joe Maxwell, center, is flanked by two Los Angeles detectives on the way to a court hearing in 1979.
Los Angeles prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against the alleged “Skid Row Stabber” on Friday, closing a 40-year legal saga complicated by a jailhouse scandal, overturned convictions and a defendant who may have only months to live.
Bobby Joe Maxwell, who has been comatose since November, was released from police custody for the first time since 1979 on Friday morning, when Assistant District Attorney Robert Grace asked a judge to dismiss five murder charges against the accused serial killer.
“Forty years. Forty years,” his sister Rosie Harmon said outside the courtroom in between sobs. “Finally.”
Maxwell first fell into a coma after suffering a massive heart attack in late 2017, and nearly died while housed at L.A. County-usc Medical Center on July 4. Court records made public last month showed the chief physician of the jail ward believed Maxwell has less than six months to live.
ORONO, Maine – Democrats have all but acknowledged that they are unable to stop the Senate from confirming Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court this fall.
Moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine, the most closely watched GOP swing vote, are sending strong signals that they will back Kavanaugh. Several Democrats facing difficult reelections this year have indicated they are open to voting for the judge. And leaders of the resistance are already delivering post-mortem assessments and blaming fellow Democrats for a looming failure.
Barring a major revelation, the Senate is poised to install the 53-yearold Kavanaugh on the high court and take the next step toward fulfilling President Donald Trump’s pledge to remake the Supreme Court – and the wider federal judiciary, potentially for decades.
“There were too many Democrats who decided out of the gate that this was an unwinnable fight,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a leading anti-kavanaugh group that will continue to battle the nomination.
The fizzling of the campaign to block Kavanaugh underscores the relative weakness of the Democrats, who had promised their political base a pitched battle to protect the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling and other liberal causes. From the moment Trump introduced Kavanaugh to the nation at a prime-time White House ceremony, Democratic leaders sought to portray the would-be justice as a far-right ideologue and targeted a handful of senators in both parties seen as persuadable.
But Democrats are likely to watch helplessly as the Senate confirms Trump’s second Supreme Court pick after Justice Neil Gorsuch. In addition, Republicans have pushed through 24 circuit court judges, a record number for a president in his first two years in office, and two more are in the queue when the Senate returns next week.