Back in 1993, San Diego gun store owner Ross Elvey was bludgeoned to death by two young men who were trying to rob his shop. One of them, who was sixteen, was tried as an adult and received a long prison sentence. The other was fifteen. He was tried as a juvenile, which meant he would be freed at the age of 25.
So brutal had been the attack on Elvey that the public was shocked that one of his killers would receive what amounted to a slap on the wrist and soon be back on the streets, to kill again. The furor led to the passage of California Proposition 21, in 2000, which was approved by voters in a 62% to 33% landslide.
Prop 21 toughened the laws against juvenile offenders by increasing penalties, requiring more of them to be tried in adult court, and making probation more difficult. The new law recognized that just because someone is under the age of 16, that doesn’t give him a get-out-of-jail card for murder or serious sex offenses. Prop 21 even gave prosecutors the ability to give the death penalty for “gang-related murder.”
Elvey’s widow, Maggie Elvey, argued in favor of passing Prop 21. She wondered, reasonably, “Ask yourself, if a violent gang member believes the worst punishment he might receive for a gang-ordered murder is incarceration at the California Youth Authority until age 25, will that stop him from taking a life?” True, Prop 21 was a much-needed tough-on-crime policy, but it didn’t last too long. In 2016, Californians passed another ballot initiative, Prop 57, which repealed Prop 21. Prop 57 was supported by then-lawyer Pamela Price, who wrote, in her 2017 blog, that “placing a child in the adult prosecution track has dire consequences for his or her ‘rehabilitation.’” Never mind that the thugs who murdered Ross Elvey could hardly be described as “children.” Price noted that young people in adult prisons are likely to be sexually assaulted, and are more likely to commit suicide. She complained, too, that since 2003 there was a growing disparity in the rates of juveniles being prosecuted as adults “by race,” pointing out, without offering proof, that for every juvenile White person so treated, there were 11.3 Black persons. But again, Price cited no context, nor did she address the issue that younger Black men are acting more violently than younger White or Asian men. Price argued, “In Alameda County, prosecutors did not charge a single White kid as an adult in 2014. Yet, in the same year, Alameda County prosecutors charged 14 Black or Latino kids as adults.” As she always does, Price hauled out racial discrepancies as her excuse for going soft on Black criminals.
In 2017, Price, who was running for District Attorney against incumbent Nancy O’Malley, said “she would never file a motion to charge a child as an adult,” no matter how heinous the crime. This sort of contempt for the rule of law is what led to the current Recall effort against Price, whose pro-criminal record goes way back. As someone who voted for her for D.A. (but now favors the recall) told CBS News last summer, “She calls [murderers] 'our babies." These are not babies. These are really disturbed young people. And there needs to be a consequence, because without a consequence, everybody else is looking and saying, 'nothing happens.'"
In the event, Prop 57, which repealed Prop 21, passed overwhelmingly in 2016, by 64.5% to 35.5%. One activist who crusades against sexual violence warned that “the ruling could allow more than half of the 20,000 sex offenders sentenced in California to apply for early parole.” Others warned that as many as 25,000 other felons “could seek early release and parole under Proposition 57.” Beyond the warnings, the fact is that, after Prop 57, the number of homicides in California, in Los Angeles and in San Francisco skyrocketed.
It’s clear to rational people that the pro-criminal policies of racialized politicians like Price have had a devastating impact on public safety, making it all the more urgent to recall her (and Sheng Thao) in November.
Steve Heimoff