Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman reversed a ban on the death penalty set by his predecessor, George Gascón.
Hochman announced Tuesday that he was rescinding Gascón’s “extreme and categorical policy forbidding prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in any case,” effective immediately.
“I remain unwaveringly committed to the comprehensive and thorough evaluation of every special circumstance murder case prosecuted in Los Angeles County, in consultation with the murder victim’s survivors and with full input on the mitigating and aggravating factors of each case, to ensure that the punishment sought by the Office is just, fair, fitting, and appropriate,” he said in a statement.
There will be limits on how often the tool will be used, and prosecutors would only be able to seek the death penalty “after an extensive and comprehensive review and only in exceedingly rare cases,” the district attorney’s office added.
“This new policy recognizes an evolving determination that the death penalty should be restricted to the most egregious sets of circumstances,” the press release from Hochman’s office continued. “In addition, the standard to charge such death penalty cases at all stages of review will be beyond a reasonable doubt, not the prior standard of probable cause.”
Hochman ousted Gascón in a landslide victory last November after he campaigned as a “hard middle” independent candidate and vowed to undo many of the incumbent’s progressive crime policies.
One of those policies regarded the death penalty. Gascón took the measure “off the table” for Los Angeles prosecutors when he was elected in November 2020, telling them that “a sentence of death is never an appropriate resolution in any case.”
Gascón instituted his special directive as a wave of Black Lives Matter activists characterized the justice system as systemically racist after George Floyd’s death. Gascón argued the death penalty was racist because more black people were on death row than white people.
“Racism and the death penalty are inextricably intertwined,” he wrote in his Death Penalty Policy. “Numerous studies have found that race influences who is sentenced to die in this country and in California; this includes both the race of the defendant and the race of the victims. Los Angeles County has historically been one of the nation’s most prolific death penalty counties.”
NATHAN HOCHMAN’S VISION OF LAW AND ORDER IN LA INCLUDES MAJOR COURSE CORRECTION
Hochman rose to power after running a campaign promising to “make crime illegal again,” reversing the prohibition on the death penalty and other crime policies.
“Safety is a crossover issue,” Hochman said at his election party last November after Los Angeles voters handed him a decisive victory. “We’ll go back to just two things — the facts and the law.”