Sirhan Sirhan, Sirhan Bishara SirhanWhen Shaun McCarthy became a detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, he never envisioned doing the job of a prosecutor, fighting to keep his best friend’s shooter behind bars at a parole hearing.
But that’s exactly what happened when McCarthy recently fended off the release of an inmate who shot off-duty Deputy Carlos Ponce in the head at a flower shop in 1998. McCarthy worked with Ponce in the gang unit when the shooting happened and was intimately aware of the facts.
Now a homicide detective in the cold case unit, McCarthy’s days are filled with researching decades-old crimes — not for his regular job, but to fill the void left by District Attorney George Gascon, who prohibits prosecutors from staffing parole hearings.
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The Sheriff’s Department has 4,500 unsolved cases, and calls with new tips come in every day. Thirty-five of those murders are solvable and assigned to McCarthy, but they will have to wait because his days are spent on parole hearings.
“In the past, the DA would always go to these hearings. Now it’s up to us to help out the family. If we don’t help them, there is no one,” McCarthy said. “They are on an island, ignorant of the process. They don’t know what to do. We stepped in to help.”
A 2008 California constitutional amendment states that prosecutors shall assist and represent victims at parole hearings, which has been a very solid and effective policy in Los Angeles since the early 1970s, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley told the Washington Examiner.
Steve Cooley“Gascon’s complete abandonment of victims at parole hearings is unprecedented and breathtaking!” Cooley said in an emailed statement. “The relatives of murder victims are left to fend for themselves against murderers of their loved ones and their defense attorneys, who are funded by taxpayers.”
America saw the glaring results of this policy on Aug. 27, when Sirhan Sirhan was granted parole for the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. He was housed in a San Diego County prison, where a stunned district attorney there openly criticized the lack of victim representation at the parole hearing.
Then there was Stephen Kay, who prosecuted the Manson family in 1970 and dutifully attended their 60 parole hearings, spanning some 30 years. He only stopped because of retirement and wasn’t there on Sept. 9, when the parole board recommended release for Leslie Van Houten.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has not ruled on either case.
Charles MansonDuring hearings, the prosecutor’s role is to state heinous facts pertaining to the underlying crime, cite legal issues, and outline concerns from custody reports detailing a killer’s conduct in prison. Kay used these reports to his full advantage with Manson in an April 21, 1992, hearing.
Detectives are hampered by the fact that they do not receive custody reports or have copies of the district attorney’s case file.
Immediately after taking office in 2021, Gascon reversed many long-standing policies, such as prosecuting misdemeanors and charging defendants with strict code sections pertaining to guns, gangs, and great bodily injury. The embattled DA is now facing a recall campaign as critics blame him for a crime surge.
“A whole cottage industry exists to represent the interests of prisoners seeking parole, I had the obligation to step in and fill the void,” Sheriff Alex Villanueva said. “The prisoner is going to try to undersell their culpability and paint themselves as reformed or innocent. Unless we are there to portray the truth, it isn’t going to happen.”
Villanueva pointed to Jessica Corde, a mother who was forced to view the district attorney’s file containing photos of the death and torture of her son Marquis LeBlanc in preparation for a February parole hearing. The 2009 murder happened in a Los Angeles County city outside the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department, so Corde had no law enforcement to help her.
“The poor victims are harmed three times: once by crooks, second by the criminal justice system, and a third time revisiting the horrors of the crime when Gascon is trying to release them ahead of their sentence because of no parole hearing representation,” Villanueva said.
Los Angeles DADeputy District Attorney John McKinney prosecuted LeBlanc’s murder and did all he could to help Corde.
“This made me extremely angry,” McKinney said over the mandate that he not attend the hearing. “I felt incredibly bad for her … she called me the day of the hearing before it started, during the break, and immediately after it was over. Halfway through, she had some hope the hearing would turn out the way she wanted, but by the end, she was a mess. She was crying and yelling.”
Parole was granted, and Corde mounted a campaign to make Newsom overturn the result based on trial evidence that LeBlanc was killed because he was black. She was successful.
Gascon defended his parole policy by saying that victims are provided with trauma counselors.
“When heinous crimes occur, victims and their families are changed forever,” said Gascon’s special adviser Alex Bastian in an emailed statement. “That is why the District Attorney is so focused on ensuring that victims are provided trauma informed services.”
Bastian disputed Cooley, saying a prosecutor’s role ends at sentencing and that pertinent facts are already provided to the parole board.
“If someone is the same person that committed an atrocious crime, that person will correctly not be found suitable for release,” Bastian said. “However, if someone is no longer a threat to public safety after having served more than 30-40 years in prison, then the parole board may recommend release based on an objective determination. Our office policies take these principles into account and as such, our prosecutors stay out of the parole board hearing process.”
However, in Corde’s case, the defendant was granted parole after 12 years, while Sirhan Sirhan could still be deemed “the same person” because he has never shown remorse.
“I am not sure what trauma-informed service will help victims cope with being abandoned by the very organization that was supposed to protect them,” said prosecutor Eric Siddall, vice president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles.
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“His policy is simple: If you agree with the defendant’s attorney, speak up. If you’re going to say something that may keep him in custody, don’t show up at all. In other words, he wants two advocates for the defendant, none for the victim and the public,” Siddall said.
