New Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón Implements Sweeping Changes in Death Penalty Policy

Just hours after tak­ing office, new­ly elect­ed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón issued a series of sweep­ing changes that end­ed new death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions and moved towards recon­sid­er­ing exist­ing death sen­tences in the coun­ty with the nation’s largest death row. The pol­i­cy changes sig­naled the poten­tial nation­wide impact of local pros­e­cu­tor elec­tions in 2020, as new reform pros­e­cu­tors pre­pare to take the helm in coun­ties that con­sti­tute more than 11% of the country’s total death row. 

Issuing a series of spe­cial direc­tives, Gascón ush­ered in a new era of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. ​“In any case charged from this day for­ward,” Special Directive 20 – 11, the new Death Penalty Policy, declared, ​“the District Attorney’s Office will not seek the death penal­ty.” The direc­tive fur­ther declared that ​“The District Attorney’s Office will not seek an exe­cu­tion date for any per­son sen­tenced to death[,] … will not defend exist­ing death sen­tences and will engage in a thor­ough review of every exist­ing death penal­ty judg­ment from Los Angeles County with the goal of remov­ing the sen­tence of death.”

Other direc­tives announced that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office would no longer seek cash bail in case of mis­de­meanors or non-vio­lent felonies, will not try juve­niles as adults, and will not seek to enhance crim­i­nal pun­ish­ments using alleged gang mem­ber­ship. ​“Punishment must be pro­por­tion­al and in the community’s best inter­est,” Gascón said dur­ing his swear­ing in ceremony. 

The intro­duc­tion to the Death Penalty Policy states that ​“Racism and the death penal­ty are inex­tri­ca­bly inter­twined.” Los Angeles County, it says, ​“has his­tor­i­cal­ly been one of the nation’s most pro­lif­ic death penal­ty coun­ties, and it exem­pli­fies how racism infects death penalty proceedings.” 

Gascón unseat­ed incum­bent dis­trict attor­ney Jackie Lacey in the November 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. The death penal­ty became a major issue in the dis­trict attorney’s race after a June 2019 whitepa­per by the ACLU report­ed that “[a]ll of the 22 peo­ple who have received death sen­tences while Lacey has been in office are peo­ple of color. “

“The real­i­ty is the death penal­ty does not make us safer, it is racist, it’s moral­ly unten­able, it’s irre­versible and expen­sive and begin­ning today it’s off the table in LA County,” Gascón said. 

Gascón’s poli­cies rep­re­sent a marked charged from Lacey’s. His first meet­ing after being sworn in was with Black Lives Matter pro­tes­tors, who had an antag­o­nis­tic rela­tion­ship with Lacey, who was often crit­i­cized for fail­ing to police the police. ​“The mur­der of George Floyd this sum­mer was a hor­rif­ic reminder that too often our pro­fes­sion has failed to hold its own to the same stan­dards we impose on the com­mu­ni­ties that we are sworn to pro­tect and to serve,” Gascón said. ​“It gal­va­nized a gen­er­a­tion to stand up, and speak out against a sys­tem that the pub­lic large­ly views as a two-tiered sys­tem: one for police offi­cers and pros­e­cu­tors, and one for everyone else.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office is one of the most pow­er­ful coun­ty pros­e­cut­ing offices in the nation, rep­re­sent­ing more than ten mil­lion peo­ple. With 225 death-row pris­on­ers, Los Angeles has the nation’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty death row. By itself, the coun­ty accounts for more than 31% of California’s death row and just under 9% of the nation’s death-row total. 

Gascón head­lines a crop of new reform pros­e­cu­tors who won elec­tions across the coun­try with pledges nev­er to seek the death penal­ty or to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce its use. Wins in run-off elec­tions December 6 in Orleans Parish (New Orleans), Louisiana and Gwinnett County (Athens), Georgia topped off a year in can­di­dates who said they would nev­er seek death also won elec­tion in Pima County (Tucson), Arizona; Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia; Travis County (Austin), Texas; and Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon. Newly elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors in Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio and Orange-Osceola Counties (Orlando), Florida also cam­paigned on spar­ing­ly using the death penal­ty. Collectively, the nine pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al offices set local pol­i­cy affect­ing more than 300 death-row prisoners. 

“It’s com­plete­ly trans­for­ma­tive,” said con­sul­tant Natasha Minsker, a for­mer ACLU lawyer who is a mem­ber of Gascón’s death penal­ty tran­si­tion team. ​“The fact that Los Angeles County is now, as of today, going to stop pur­su­ing death sen­tences and going to shift in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion … is a com­plete game changer.”