San Francisco Beating: Charges Dropped

[LockedBreech]

Revisiting this post to point out how this impact cannot be understated. Today's news brought word that another prosecutor resigned from the violent felonies unit under DA Kim Gardner in St Louis. They're now down to 1 prosecutor to handle 500 pending violent felony investigations.

The damage done will last a decade +. Prosecuting crimes is not a transactional type job...you can't just plug'n'play new investigators and prosecutors and expect it to work well. It will take years to rebuild an effective team, and that only starts once you recognize there's a problem and try to reverse it.

@LockedBreech @vcdgrips

I can't say much without doxing myself, though I think I've mentioned it on PF a few times vaguely. The reason I left my former prosecutor job was that the DA ran it into the ground. Fumbled things, was horrible to employees, law enforcement, and victims alike, and when I quit roughly 25 people quit in the year and a half after me (it was only a 30-35 person office).

It's impossible to understate the horrid impacts it had on our community. She became so understaffed, law enforcement and victims so disinclined to work with her, and cases so poorly managed that for 2-3 years anything below a violent felony you could basically get away with. Even now, 3+ years late, the DA's office is only now getting back to a reasonable staffing and assistant complement, after she left.

I completely agree that the damage done by a mismanaged prosecutor's office is exponentially greater than even the worst-run law enforcement agency. The inability to effectively and ethically prosecute cases and the lack of institutional knowledge, combined with the fact that hiring lawyers is never all that easy because we almost all have at least a few options means that the damage lingers in dozens of ways.

As a side note, about 1.5 years ago I was strongly encouraged to run for my old DA's position, which would have been about 2x the money I had ever made. I refused emphatically. She had so eviscerated the office that I predict it'll be 2025-2030 before it's fully operational again.

[vcdgrips]

Ramble follows. I have never served as a State Court Prosecutor. I have worked as a federal prosecutor in a metropolitan area than spans at least 5 counties in two states and have some thoughts on the matter after 25+ years.

LB is spot on re how important it is to have enough attys with a variety of experiences staffing a given office.

You need a some older 15+ year sage/wisdom keepers/career prosecutors/ who have tried multiple cases in every division in front of every judge so the office has the institutional knowledge re effective advocacy.

You need several 3-15 years folks who have made the year by year decision to stay on as they do the lions share of the work.

You need a fair number of 0-5 year folks who have tried enough cases to reach what I call trial nirvana - in broad strokes the atty does not care whether it is trial, a deal or an appeal, they just want to know the arc of the case sooner v later because they are busy and want to be able to allocate their personal /professional time/talent/treasure accordingly.

When you get a run on talent who can actually do they work, it starts a cycle that is very hard to reset.

a. folks do not have enough experience/resources/mentorship so they pled things out too low.
b. the defense bar smells blood in the water and exploits the weaknesses be it lack trial talent/workload or some combination thereof.
c. the court starts pushing back by refusing to accept certain pleas or sentencing at the high end of charges pled and accepted.
d. Local law enforcement partners then are often reluctant to present any but the best of cases despite the fact that it is the tough ones on the margins that should most often be tried.
e. Throw in a couple of high profile cases and what little capacity the office had is now fully committed and the bread and butter cases suffer.

In STL City- it seems like the elected (Gardner) got to the edge of her lane on her best day. Hired folks who affirmatively had no prosecutor experience and/or interest. That created an environment where quality folks went elsewhere with a quickness. Given the relative unique "county" divisions and "city" divisions i.e. St Louis County (immediately surrounding suburbs of STL proper v St Louis City ( STL proper) and surrounding multiple municipalities, prosecutorial job hopping was already a thing and it just got exponentially worse.

Moreover, high volume state felony prosecution is not easy on its best day. The job can be very taxing. Contrary to popular belief, many public defenders are quite talented in the court room. The job of the prosecution has also gotten harder because of the public's lack of trust of GOVT/LEOs/JUDGES/Evolving attitudes toward certain crimes etc.

Reasonable minds can differ on the WHY, I am speaking to the nuts and bolts of the WHAT.

[Joe in PNG]

Reading the last few comments, and one does see the plausibility of the theory that George Soros is deliberately working to undermine the justice system by promoting bad District Attorneys.

[Totem Polar]

Reading the last few comments, and one does see the plausibility of the theory that George Soros is deliberately working to undermine the justice system by promoting bad District Attorneys.

It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s no longer just a theory. We can add in Portland area DA Mike Schmidt, who took a fat chunk of funding from Soros. I’ve heard *directly* from late career cops involved in training every LEO in the region that he’s fucked the whole gig up for everyone—cops, citizens; everyone gets in on the grief.

[cheby]

It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s no longer just a theory. We can add in Portland area DA Mike Schmidt, who took a fat chunk of funding from Soros. I’ve heard *directly* from late career cops involved in training every LEO in the region that he’s fucked the whole gig up for everyone—cops, citizens; everyone gets in on the grief.

https://www.koin.com/news/civic-affa...edium=referral

[Totem Polar]

https://www.koin.com/news/civic-affa...edium=referral

There’s some grist for the mill in there, and undoubtably a lot left out. I’ll just say that I’m an ally of anyone wanting to be left alone, regardless of identity, and an enemy to those that refuse to leave people alone, again, regardless of identity.

[0ddl0t]

Update: Back in April charges were suspended, not dropped, after the "victim" failed to show up to a preliminary hearing because he did not want to incriminate himself (he was captured on video pepper spraying sleeping homeless people 8 times in the past few years).

The case still eventually went to trial, but today jurors acquitted the homeless man, Garret Doty. Don Carmignani, the "victim," did not take the stand and prosecutors were forced to concede he may have acted aggressively towards other homeless people in the past. A defense witness also testified that Carmignani threatened to kill Doty, the homeless man, with a knife if he did not leave the block.

10 jurors voted for acquittal as deliberations began and the other 2 joined the majority in short order.

[FNFAN]

If you're wondering how far things have deteriorated in San Francisco...
You'll especially love the next to last sentence in the story.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/san-franc...145629569.html

"Brittany Bernstein
Wed, April 26, 2023 at 7:56 AM PDT·2 min read

The San Francisco district attorney’s office on Tuesday dropped the charges against a homeless man who allegedly attacked former San Francisco fire commissioner Don Carmignani earlier this month with a crowbar, sending him to the hospital for emergency surgery to treat a hole in the back of his skull.

The case was dropped after prosecutors concluded the attacker, Garrett Doty, was acting in self-defense when he beat Carmignani so badly that he broke the former fire commissioner’s jaw and left him in need of 50 stitches, the New York Post reported.

The incident began when Carmignani confronted Doty and two other vagrants who were allegedly blocking Carmignani’s mother’s driveway in the city’s Marina District while consuming drugs and harassing neighbors. His mother’s calls to 911 had gone unanswered.

During the confrontation, the trio refused to leave and Doty allegedly became aggressive. Carmignani then deployed pepper spray on Doty.

Because Carmignani sprayed Doty, the district attorney’s office has concluded the homeless man was acting in self-defense when he viciously attacked Carmignani, despite prosecutors having obtained video of the attacker taking the crowbar out of a garbage can and taking practice swings before the attack.

Video appears to show Doty cornering Carmignani, who was heavily bleeding, against the wall of a gas station store while brandishing a crowbar. Carmignani tried to fight back, but Doty struck him in the head with the crowbar when Carmignani went to wipe blood from his eyes.

Carmignani attempted to escape toward the road but Doty hit him in the head again and then chased him down the sidewalk, according to the report.

The attack left Carmignani in the ICU for several days.

While Doty was initially charged with assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with serious bodily injury, and assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, it may be Carmignani who now faces charges for spraying the pepper spray, according to the report.

Police and the district attorney’s office did not interview Carmignani about the incident before dropping the case, a source close to the victim told the paper.

The ultraLeft will only abandon their stance on non-prosecution when a few folks are found swinging from light poles.

[paherne]

CA is an old west state and has very strong self-defense laws. The victim's refusal to testify and both subjects' lack of jury appeal/sympathy probably had a lot to do with the jury's verdict.