Have you ever been shaken to your core by an answer to a question? That happened to me recently when I asked a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles county why his office had objected to a petition for removal from the registry.
Without a pause, the deputy district attorney replied “because we can.”
What? A district attorney is objecting to a petition solely because he or she can. Technically, that answer is correct. After all, the Tiered Registry Law authorizes district attorneys to object to a petition, but their authority to do so is limited to cases in which an individual’s continued registration would “significantly enhance community safety.”
Although it is not spelled out in the Tiered Registry Law, it is implied in that law that a district attorney must have a valid reason for their objection. The law does not state or imply that a district attorney may object to a petition because they can or for no reason at all.
The case in which this oral volley took place involved a person who was convicted about 30 years ago and has not re-offended. In addition, the person has a clean criminal record both before and after her conviction for a sex offense.
Like most people on the registry, this individual has struggled with employment and housing. She has also struggled with determining her gender identity. She first married and then divorced a man only later to marry a woman with whom she has been in a loving relationship for more than 20 years.
Due to her marriages and divorce as well as a first name that is often misspelled, this woman has a long list of names on her Megan’s Law website profile. The deputy district attorney suggested that this long list of names is evidence that the individual is trying to hide from law enforcement. That alone is not a basis for an objection and therefore fell back to the original statement, “because we can.”
When a district attorney objects to a petition for removal, there is not just one reaction. Instead, it starts a chain reaction in the individual as well as in his/her legal representative. That is because in order to overcome a district attorney’s objection, one must provide evidence that “community safety” is not at risk if the judge grants the petition. Often this requires a comprehensive psychological evaluation as well as a lengthy legal brief. Both cost time and money. If the person cannot afford to pay for the evaluation and the legal brief, the only choice left for the individual is to withdraw his or her petition. This means, of course, that the individual must continue to register and the district attorney has won.
In these situations, which are admittedly rare, the intent of the legislature in its creation of the Tiered Registry Law is being undermined by district attorneys. That is, the legislature passed the Tiered Registry Law in order to eliminate individuals from the registry who do not pose a current risk of re-offense. The district attorneys who object to a petition for removal solely because they can should be held accountable by the legislature.
Yes Janice, I have.
When I asked for a reason why officers came to my home they gave 13887.1, which is surveillance of people defined by 667.7 (I.e. habitual offenders).
Given I’ve only had one offense 12 years ago and have 1203.4, they didn’t care. In essence, I had 2 minutes of uncalled for intimidation with police because “they could.”
While getting my 1203.4, the DA also objected, saying that I was still a danger. I submitted possibly 30 pages documenting steps taken towards rehabilitation, letters from professors and therapists saying, in essence, please grant the expungement. The DA still pushed against it calling me a “violent predator” with his back turned to me. I still remember his glare when I said that I apologize and deeply regret my actions.
So yes, I am very familiar with “I will discriminate against you because I can.”
Thank you again for all the hard work that you do. I remember a decade ago this whole thing seemed like a lost cause and there has finally been movement. Thank you again.
Scary
Because ‘We” can, I’ll say it again Does the United states govern themselves? People wondering who “We” the people are? Sure there is a reason for the season. This registry …. what is the reason……..Janice I hate to say it but I’m sure that burned your ego up a bit. Now no offense Janice whats good for the goose is good for the gander. Even rebuking another is good. Now I do not know if this ordeal has happened to others or not but as you said it happened to you. I know you were left for words at the time. Many of us are left for words at the time of our own offenses.
Sure we can talk about the harshness of this registry. Even I have did a bit of preaching on here from time to time but the bible is guidelines. I believe Will Allen said something about guidelines. God does not tempt anyone. Is man going above the Creator… Why do you all think at times I talk about the Commandments on here. Did God actually say set up these people and pretend and catch them, oh and use sex as the means to teach them. Can anyone answer that question without getting so many angry at another.
This tier registry is man’s way of deciding the more wicked or worse of the worse when it comes right down to it. Talk about man’s deception. Is that doing onto others.. I would think not. Now I am off the registry… letter or no letter… yes I sent one and they never responded in good faith so are you all gonna trust in the We or the I am? its an easy decision. For everything their is a season. When did the sex offender come into season?
Janice,
I know the DA can object, but doesn’t the judge in the case have discretion? It is quite obvious there are legal documents for the registrant in question can change the name due to marriages. Getting married and changing names is not an illegal act. In fact, it has nothing to do with registration, especially since the registrant has been clean for 30 years already. This DA has gone beyond the scope of the registry scheme regulation violations. All her names are registered as the DA listed them off. There was nothing to hide.
When did a normal activity, like getting married, become criminal? 30 years of being crime free and abiding with the registry isn’t good enough evidence of removal?
Also, if the DA knows that objecting a removal and cost too much to pursue the objection, then this DA will continue to do so to prevent the any registrant from de-registering. Is there a way to discover this DA’s record with petition removal?
I feel terrible for you and the registrant you represent. The case of Melvin v Reid of 1931 showed the court wanted to reward rehabilitation and not continued shame; and it was also based around name change. With the registry, since there are no reviews because it’s not punitive, lets DA’s like this to continue retribution than reward rehabilitation.
It looks like I was lucky my petition was granted. We took the opposite view: the DA had to prove danger enough to counter the mitigating facts. At the hearing, the judge did not hold the lack of certified counseling against me because it did not exist yet, and that length of time worked out in my favor. After all those years of no new sex charges, but with some old petty drug related convictions, that was enough for the judge to say I wasn’t a risk to public safety. Letters from people in support definitely helped as well.
That so-called Assistant District Attorney gives me corrupt Lauren Guber energy. You know, the same “person” that has a history of lying (Google it yourself)? Or what about former District Attorney Jackie Lacey, whose husband pulled out a gun on a protestor?
30 years, never having offended/reoffended before or after, tells us all we need to know! Heck, my opinion is that 10 years is enough registration for any crime, considering sex offender registration isn’t even legally punishment. (Didn’t she already, LONG AGO, serve her sentence in jail and/or prison?)
”Sex Offender” registration already skirts the Constitution because it relies on a literally fake 1986 Psychology Today statistic, argued by Women’s Rights and Right to Privacy Violator John Roberts, in Smith v. Doe. The fact these corrupt assholes find reason to keep people on the registry longer than 10 years only adds flames of insult to injury.
Typical DA scumbags. I hope these corrupt public SERVANTS get the Karma they deserve.
Well my hearing is on the 21st. I’ve got 9 letters of community support, two forensic psychologists saying I’m not a threat. A static 99 that puts me at a very low risk AND in the latest psych eval she wrote after 25 years of no offense of anything, I’m as much of threat as anyone else: We’ll see if that’s enough to withdraw DA’s objection. But my greatest weapon is having Janice as my attorney. I’d like to think this whole procedure is to allow the judge and DA to have psych reports and community letters so they have something to fall back on if it all goes wrong later on. Who knows.
Yeah the DA should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person still poses a risk to public safety.
I recently opined on my concerns about this in Path to Freedom. Only weeks later in the same county I petitioned in, Janice confirms these concerns are well warranted:
“This is one area where the tiered registry law needs to change. We must assume that some non-trivial percentage of detectives and DAs are predisposed to abhor us, yet we count on their purported objectivity to make fair-minded judgments about us during petitioning.
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Similarly, I don’t know what the DA assessment entails. But between Janice’s feedback and other research I did, attorneys are telling clients that DAs may be looking for reasons make objections that have a tenuous-at-best connection to public safety. We’re relying on the integrity and ethical core of DAs not to abuse this public safety argument. And for the XX% of DAs whose predisposition is to dislike registrants, I have strong concerns that they will find their own way to exploit the public safety exception which is tantamount to abusing the tiered registry law.
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But it would be helpful if the subjectivity of the public safety exception could be reeled in and codified with specific language. The ambiguity of that language now is big enough to drive a truck through, and I have no doubt there are plenty of truck drivers in the DA offices across California. This is a problem.”
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We’ve got deputy AGs disparaging former registrants as “offenders” and deputy DA halfwits bragging about abusing the tiered registry law “because we can.” It is completely unacceptable and makes my blood boil.
A case like this somehow needs to eventually make it to the appellate courts. Make it so that a three-judge panel has to define the enormous burden one must establish in defining “community safety.”
Of course, all of this should be 100% moot, considering that Smith v. Doe relies on a FAKE 1986 STATISTIC. Even Robert Longo and Barbara Schwartz, whose “statistic” the Supreme Court relied on in making sex offender laws Constitutional, concede this fact.
Hence, we shouldn’t even be required to register as “Registered Sex Offenders.” Everything that doesn’t address the fake statistic is just beating around the bush, especially this upcoming shenanigan circus of arguing what defines community safety.
Has anyone even bothered to take testimony, under oath, from Robert Longo and Barbara Schwartz? To be realistic, they are getting up their in age, can pass away at any time, so it might be a good idea to get their videotaped testimony, under oath, simply for if it might be needed in the future, to how the Supreme Court misused their “data” in establishing the constitutionality of sex offender laws.
Hey lets Protest… because we can. Sounds like someone either has stink’n think’n or didn’t study American History.. Lets take the land from the Indians.. because we can or lets have a Boston Tea Party because we can. See guys many of these in humaine issues are wrong. Sure if one wants to look at dirty pictures that’s their fetish. Course its not a good idea.
How about growing weed. Well here in VA its legal. Selling it is a whole different story, yet “because we can” they can make stipulations on selling it. Look at the bootleggers of the past. Guess some even took their own stills to prison… I think Will Allen bootlegs moonshine also.. I’ve heard stories about his state as well. This registry is a bit areogent and vain if you ask me.
No one will ever be able to convince me that DAs, and other big government employees running their incarceration business, are not worthless pieces of shit. I intend to make it unfortunate for such people that I’ve decided that big government and their Registries are immoral and criminal and that I am the only one who gets to judge that and the consequences. If they ever held a moral high ground, they lost it long ago.
Unfortunately all I can do in this fight is raise money and spread awareness so people can know the truth about what the registry really is.
The California DA’s office has to much power.
Once I’m off the registry and I start kicking up dust all across California I bet they throw my az back on the registry, trying to silencing me from speaking out publicly about what happened to me in high school and how they destroyed my whole life and how this could easily be you or your child or love ones placed on Megan’s law for something stupid as teenagers dating teenagers
Gee Janice?
You think that AGs and their minions actually play fair? That is in fact the reason why the role of “judge” exists in the first place. Prosecutors don’t necessarily play it clean, and only rarely get caught AFTER they’ve cheated ( by appeal). Never are prosecutors punished for wrongly convicting individuals so why wouldn’t they continue to cheat? Nevertheless by their actions is the political class kept secure in their corruption. This is why the viable third party hasn’t arrived on the American political landscape. You can bet your house the DDI is being used to make damn sure that third party doesn’t happen.
That’s true because they can. I filed my petition to be revived from the registry and. It was halted at the District Court Level. I filed a motion to correct an abstract of jugement the DA halted that I filed a salutatory Rape from my daughters ex Boyfriends that was halted.I filed a complaint to the Bar it was never acted on because them DA said my complaint was based on nonsense.? Be Cause they can..
“Because we can” are the flippant and arrogant words of a power-hungry tyrant.
This is what happens when a bad law has been constantly defended with LIES and HATE for decades.
I wish you luck in your attempt to hold this person, and all like them, accountable for their actions.
As always, my thanks to all of ACSOL for all you do, and for having the courage, compassion, and commitment to justice to do it!
I was originally convicted of a non-violent, no-contact offense in VA. As part of my court proceedings, two psych evaluations were done; one by VA, one by myself for my defense (my very costly defense). Both said I was at low-risk of recidivism, and along with my other mitigating factors, I was given the minimum sentence possible.
Fast forward one year. I successfully transferred my probation to NY to attend grad school. Three months in I get a letter from NY’s SO Governing Board, recommending that I be given a “mid-tier” risk designation. I mount a legal defense costing over $6000, including another psych evaluation which again states that I am at low-risk of recidivism, and argue that I should be given the “low-tier” risk designation. I’ll note that in NY, low-tier registrants are not listed on the public-facing state registry!
The ADA comes to the hearing is harried and unprepared, misrepresenting some of the facts, and argues that I should be kept at “mid-tier”. The judge ultimately rules in my favor.
I swear this will be forever ingrained on my conscious: after the hearing concludes, the ADA comes over to the defense table and sheepishly tells my lawyer and I “Sorry, I just had to get the DA’s position on record”.
$6,000 and months of agonizing anxiety, and the risk of all of the collateral consequences that comes with a higher-tier designation, to fight against an uncaring system that just wants to look good (on false pretenses no less). It was infuriating.
Jonathan Hatami is an example of how the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is filled with Scumbags.
In The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, a so-called “documentary” on Netflix, Hatami can be seen fake crying and sniffling; it was almost laughable. Hatami came off as nothing but a sanctimonious prosecutor, trying much too hard to make himself as the “good” guy, when in reality, you can just tell he was after another notch in his belt so he can get promoted. At least, that was my initial impression after seeing the so-called documentary. Then, ironically, about one year ago, Hatami went off to run against Gascon. Quite frightening, since Hatami seemed a bit mentally unstable, with a one track mind, and not very intellectual, in said documentary. But I suppose that’s the reputation of especially county-level prosecutors; they tend not to have been the smartest and/or best students in law school. It showed in Hatami’s Fox News interview.
As for The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, it’s a stupid so-called documentary that used a child’s life for Netflix propaganda. What happened to Gabriel was extraordinarily tragic. The film portrayed the County of Los Angeles as Evil, which it certainly is, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, then under the infamously corrupt Jackie Lacey, as “good.” Netflix propaganda made it as if the LACDA is NOT part of the incompetent County of Los Angeles. It certainly is!! LOL!! The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office was certainly part of the problem, yet in usual Netflix propaganda fashion, they did a pretty good job at gaslighting.
Of course, to make a story that sells, someone had to play the “good” guy. It just wouldn’t have sold if reality was portrayed which, in fact, the LACDA’s Office is as responsible as the rest of Los Angeles County’s other incompetent and corrupt entities.
Anyway, I think the corrupt Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office should work on its wrongful conviction record, which is the highest under the country. The LACDA’s wrongful conviction rate soared under Steve Cooley and Jackie Lacey.
If the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has among the highest wrongful conviction rate in the United States, what makes you think they’re accurate in being able to pick and choose which petitions to “object” to, irregardless to the fact that so-called “Registered Sex Offenders” have low sex offense re-offense rates to begin with?
Specifically, if the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office can’t even properly prosecute past conduct, what makes you think they’ll make great fortune tellers in figuring out your FUTURE conduct?? 🤔 🤔 🤔
Suffice to say, when you’ve got evil and corrupt clowns like Lauren Nicole Guber, Jackie Lacey, and Jonathan Hatami in the LACDA’s Office, that “office” will always be nothing more than a Trash Can. 🗑 🗑 🗑
But of course, this would not fit nicely into the Mainstream Media’s narrative. 📺 💩
I’m interested to know the name of this so-called “prosecutor.” Put the prosecutor on blast, for Google searches to discover and show to the world.
We need our own Brady List.
This is a perfect example… why the US GOVERNMENT is 100% CORRUPT !!
“The deputy district attorney suggested that this long list of names is evidence that the individual is trying to hide from law enforcement”.
100 percent truly presented by Janice. You honestly could not make this stuff up. Here is the issue with this DA’s inconsiderate comment, he’s weak minded and has nothing to go on past the original conviction date. The monster as they label many offenders, did not materialize into the monster they thought he or she would become, but instead never offended again. Odd, huh. Little does this DA realize, that the hit list is furnished with the names the registrant informs the PD when registering. If he or she was hiding from LE, (CDL not changed, SSN not changed, address is verified and valid), how does using your married last name constitute hiding when you share this information on the alias/es section? This is proven by keeping all your copies of your registering paperwork. Did this idiot not realize that the only reason it is listed on Megan’s Law, is because the registrant honestly provided it? The name was not legally changed, it used like many women do in the course of a marriage. The boxes you mark when registering clearly say if you legally change your name, you must report it in 5 working days. Legal changing of one’s name is not permitted with registrants, unless you marry of course. That would involve you changing your license information, which was not done, so what crime was committed? There was none. And, guess what Mr. DA, it was ALWAYS reported to LE. Plus, the DOJ misspells names as well, making it look like you have 3 possible last names? How many Americans run their credit report and see their last name or even the first name spelled wrong, many many times! Joan as Jane, or Robert as Rob, and so on. How does that perpetuate safety concerns to the public? If you use a name and at your annual, you report this on the section under aliases, how does not migrate into “hiding”! He must be really dim as a prosecutor or he’s left with no other grounds. The DA’s in LA County are on the hot seat for Gascon being so called “soft on crime”. It is not the people of LA County who are ruining LA with sex crimes, it is the homelessness, drunks, addicts, and violent criminals who are bringing down LA. But like typical, political power, they are clueless on how to solve real crimes, so let’s pick on the easy kid in the class. Just like a class bully did folks in grade school.
I know this case will most likely be one of the hardest she will fight for, but I think we all know, the winner that prevails will be Janice. She is smart, tenacious, fact DRIVEN, and you cannot make up 30 years of post release with no re-offense convictions.
Absolutely ZERO CONFIDENCE in the “government.” In neighboring San Bernardino County, did you hear about how 15-year-old Savannah Graziano was gunned down by police and deputies? They had her on Amber Alert for several days. Law enforcement were bragging about how they were going to “save” her. Yet at the end, it’s the cops that shot at her while she seemed to have been running for their “help.”
I think the most disgusting part about all of this is Sheriff Shannon D. Dicus (yes, a dude) initially tried to get hero clout for him and his deputies, then changed stories when questions began to arise about how Savannah was murdered. Then, in usual Copaganda press conference form, Dicus turned around and tried to victim-blame 15-year-old Savannah. SMH. What a joke.
It’s not just San Bernardino County, however. It’s all over California and America. Last month, in Alameda County, a Black Alameda County deputy sheriff murdered an Asian couple–husband was an engineer, wife was a nurse–yet where are the protests?
Point is unless circumstances neatly fit the mainstream media’s manipulative narrative, a lot of these things are swept under the rug, never to be spoken about again.
I would be very willing to bet that she, the registrant, in her 20+ years of registering, has never had any issues with her residence or with any law enforcement address verifications/compliance checks. Therefore, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney’s suggestion that her “long list of names is evidence that the individual is trying to hide from law enforcement” is patently absurd! 😠
This is ridiculous, but it’s happening a lot more than people realize, especially in Fresno County! I wish someone could look at the cases in Fresno County, the DA is objecting to about 90% of the filings and the judge is finding in favor of the DA in almost all of the hearings! A few of the cases in Fresno have been appealed, but looking at the appeals it looks like they weren’t followed through on by the registrants (I’m guessing that the appellate process must be expensive which is why they weren’t followed up on).