George Gascon's bleak fate awaits

Woke and embattled L.A. County District Attorney George Gascon can't survive reelection

L.A. County D.A. George Gascon awaits the decision of voters who will probably send him home.

It took a while, but in 2000, when voters removed Gil Garcetti from his role as LA County DA, it was largely because of the unfolding Rampart Scandal involving crooked LAPD officers and his office’s failure to convict O.J. Simpson.

Failure was a word used a lot back then.

Ira Reiner, Garcetti’s predecessor, failed in his prosecution of the four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King.

These were high profile cases bungled by the huge bureaucracy inside the county prosecutor’s office. Voters in the late 1990s and early 2000s were no nonsense when it came to crime and law and order. They made it clear at the ballot box.

Despite sweeping changes in criminal law, sentencing and punishment standards since then, voters sense outright failure in the DA’s office under the very “woke” Gascon, who promised criminal justice reform and promised sweeping changes in the way the accused are treated by the judicial system.

None of it happened. The system is as broken and inhumane as it ever was and crime is rising at historic rates.

For all the right reasons, voters will send Gascon packing Tuesday night.

That’s not the end. In the meantime, he’ll make the most of his final days in the way prosecutors have in LA for decades — via a high profile case. Later this month Gascon will ask that the brothers, convicted of brutally murdering their parents in 1989 be resentenced under new guidelines and released.

I’ll have more on that here later on election night.