BAIL BONDS IN ORANGE COUNTY

Tik Tok or Tick Tock?

No, not Tik Tok. Do we really need to see more scantily clad young ladies shaking their booties? (if you said yes, you probably don’t need to read any further)

It should be “tick tock”, as in the clock is ticking on George Gascon, the embattled Los Angeles County District Attorney. We at Orange County Bail Bonds support the recall effort, mainly because of Gascon’s stance on bail and bondsmen ( he’s against it)

The recall campaign trying to oust Mister Gascón from office accumulated over 715,000 signatures in an effort to force the issue on the next ballot for voters in November.

Those numbers exceed the prior attempt to recall Gascón (which failed this past year) maybe it can be enough to force the issue to voters, opponents of Gascón’s  supposed reform-minded policies can’t declare victory just yet.

It’s still up in the air whether the referendum on Gascón can qualify for the ballot. Even so, the campaign would face a  tougher challenge: how to convince more than half of voters in a recall race that the man should be removed from office. Here’s a point: due to his no cash bail policy, there has been a corresponding rise in crimes both against persons and property. It’s not just Los Angeles, Orange County, or even California: the policies of reform minded prosecutors like Gascon have contributed to a rise in killings, aggravated assaults, and violent crimes in general. Bail and bail bondsmen have proven to keep criminals in the judicial system and actually lowering crime rates everywhere.

What’s next?

Before the decision can be made by voters to recall an elected official, the campaign must collect signatures from a number of supporters that equals 10% of all registered voters in the election the target of the recall won.

There were 5,668,570 registered voters in L.A. County in November 2020, when Gascón ousted two-term incumbent Jackie Lacey to become top prosecutor, according to the registrar’s office, meaning the campaign to oust him needed at least 566,857 valid signatures.

Although the recall campaign said it turned in about 717,000 signatures Wednesday, some of those will be disqualified during a verification process conducted by the county registrar.

Experts on recall elections have testified that as many as 20% of the signatures can be nullified. They cite  disqualification rates similar to those in efforts to recall San Francisco Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin and Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. Chesa Boudin was successfully recalled, while Gavin Newsom avoided recall and remains in office.

Signatures can be invalidated for any number of reasons, including if a voter isn’t registered to vote in L.A. County, the address at which a person is registered to vote doesn’t match the one given on the recall petition, or if a signature doesn’t match the one the registrar has on file.

The registrar’s office has to verify the signatures submitted by the recall effort, they have 30 days to do so.

A spokesman for the registrar said the office would finalize its methodology for validating signatures after receiving the petition forms the campaign used to collect signatures. And although the recall campaign issued a statement last month demanding the registrar verify the signatures on every petition form, it was noted the state’s election rules permit the office to examine just a random sample of the forms.

If the recall fails to qualify.

A second failed attempt to get a Gascón recall on the ballot would likely mark the end of the effort to oust him prematurely, according to a spokesman for the recall campaign. He said if they come up short this time, organizers would instead turn their efforts to defeating Gascón when he is up for reelection in 2024.

If the recall qualifies.

The soonest a recall election could take place is Nov. 8, in a general election that includes runoff races for Los Angeles city mayor and county sheriff, as well as national midterms. A special election could be held on January 2023 at the latest.

For the recall to succeed, more than 50% of voters would need to vote to remove Gascón from office. And in Los Angeles County, voters must also choose who should replace elected officials who are recalled.

Observers of politics generally agree this type of recall gives the advantage to Gascón. He’d be able to point out the flaws of those seeking to replace him to voters. The presence of Larry Elder on the ballot in the 2021 attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, was widely viewed as an advantage for Newsom, who ultimately parried the recall by a huge margin.

In other Gascon related news, it’s come to the attention of Orange County Bail Bonds that he’s been pushing to have the death penalty dropped for a man convicted of murder.

The daughter of a construction manager who was brutally murdered three decades ago said her family was “tricked” by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which is pushing to commute the killer’s death sentence to life without the possibility of parole — despite their opposition.

Other families said they are also feeling “unheard” and manipulated by embattled LA County District Attorney George Gascón, who is a fierce opponent of the death penalty.

“When you take someone’s life, there has to be consequences … and there have been massive consequences for my family that is permanent,” said Heather Scott, who was only 12 years old when her father, Fred, was slain.

Scott, 43, said she was blindsided when DA officials told her they filed a motion to resentence Scott Forrest Collins, the man who killed her father “execution-style” in 1992, but assured her and her family  that “it would be the same thing” since California has a moratorium on death row cases.

California has not had an execution since 2006, and Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on executions three years ago when he took office. But prosecutors who support maintaining capital punishment said the moratorium could end if Newsom were to leave office.

Earlier this year, Newsom went even further and moved to dismantle the country’s largest death row, San Quentin State Prison, within two years and transfer condemned prisoners to other facilities where they could be housed with other inmates where it is deemed safe.

The LA DA’s Office, meanwhile, has so far said it is reviewing just two cases where the defendants are seeking death row appeals — but sources told The Post that Gascón could file motions to resentence at least 65 post-conviction death penalty cases.

Grieving families said Gascón’s “resentencing crusade” only further victimizes them because the office that once supported their wishes has turned its back on them.

“I was in total shock but then I began to realize that maybe we have been lied to because it’s not true when they told us that nothing would change,” Ms Scott told The Post.

She asked why they would do this because that sounds like something (Collins’) defense attorney would do, not the DA. She claimed . the response she got was, ‘He would never would’ve been executed in the first place,’ but that’s not true. They can’t guarantee that he will never get out of prison, and that’s her family’s biggest fear.

Deputy DA Shelan Joseph wrote In a February court filing, that Collins is a “model prisoner” who was only 21 years old at the time of the offense. She added that Collins “experienced hardship as a child,” including the death of his father, and that he had multiple learning disabilities that were “never adequately treated in school.”

Collins was transferred out of death row and into a voluntary program at a correctional facility in Tehachapi, Calif., for inmates who have shown good behavior, Joseph wrote in the motion.

Scott said her family were only notified by the DA’s Office about the resentencing motion as a formality. However, documents signed by Joseph on February 15 — and obtained by The Post — say prosecutors wanted to proceed with Collins’ resentencing without a hearing, leaving Scott and her family with no opportunity to object in person.

Former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Kathy Cady has been representing families who are against DA George Gascón’s resentencing policies.

In an order filed March 10 asking for further briefing, LA Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan said, “Although the statute does permit such resentencing, in the court’s view, that appears to run contrary to the rights that victims and their family have in addressing the court and giving a victim impact statement.”

Ms. Scott, along with her husband and her mother, appeared in court on June 22 and provided their statement to the judge. Sharon Rose,Ms. Scott’s mother asked the judge to take into consideration her wishes and deny Gascón’s motion.

She wrote “Anything short of denying the motion to resentence would be to victimize my family again”. “In the end, a jury and a judge handed down the correct verdict and chose a sentence, which is still to this day a legal sentence in California. The voicemail I received promised ‘nothing will change.’ What the current DA is doing changes everything. It changes our entire judicial system and the faith we can place in verdicts and sentences today.”

LA County DA officials told The Post on Friday that they continue to reach out to victims and their families. Gascón, however, faced more criticism after he announced about two weeks ago that he was scrapping the critical “Lifer Unit” and reassigned prosecutors who alerted victims of their assailants’ parole hearings.

“District Attorney Gascón remains committed to ending the death penalty in Los Angeles because he claims it is racist in its application, morally untenable, irreversible, expensive and it has never been shown to deter crime,” another said.

One hundred percent committed to undoing the death penalty verdicts achieved over the years by many predecessors of the DA’s Office. It’s a scheme and a scam.”

Ms. Scott said Gascón’s policies provide no comfort that her father’s killer will remain in prison.

“Not only did my dad lose his life, but we grew up without him. And even to hear things like, ‘Oh, (Collins) had ADHD or he grew up without a father,’” she told The Post. “Well, I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the violent way that he was killed. I also grew up without a dad.

She added; “I don’t think that’s an excuse to have a sentence reduced when you take someone else’s life.”