Gascón's handling of cases of repeat juvenile murder is being examined in the DA race

The crime Shanice Amanda Dyer committed as a 17-year-old was as horrific as it was seemingly random.

She was a proven member of a Crips street gang faction in South L.A., appeals records show, and she wanted to help retaliate for a rival group's August 2019 killings.

The targets the gang randomly selected were an expectant father, Alfredo Carrera, and his close friend Jose Antonio Flores Vasquez, an aspiring astrophysicist in UC Irvine's doctoral program, who was visiting Carrera to drop off a baby gift. A car pulled up with Dyer in it. After a brief argument, authorities said, Dyer and two other defendants fired a volley of shots, killing both men. A third man on the street was injured in the back while putting his one-year-old daughter in a car seat.

Dyer sent text messages claiming responsibility for the shooting and saying she was “satisfied” that it made headlines, according to an appeals court that submitted documented evidence collected from her Instagram account.

Dyer was tried as a juvenile in the Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who at the time advocated a strict policy against prosecuting teenagers as adults. She admitted the murder charges in 2021, and parole records reviewed by The Times show she was released last February. Six months later, she was arrested in connection with another murder, this one in Pomona.

Dyer's case is one of several in which a defendant, Gascón, showed leniency and was released only to be charged with another violent crime. Now that the incumbent district attorney criticized his challenger's progressive policies in the November election, the question of how to deal with the most violent juvenile offenders has become a central issue.

Although Gascón's juvenile justice policies are in line with a broader movement aimed at keeping teenagers out of adult prisons in California – where only a dozen teenagers were tried in adult courts last year – Dyer could have faced a life sentence for the double murder if her case were to end if he had not done so, he would remain before a juvenile judge.

In the most recent case, prosecutors allege she lured 21-year-old Joshua Streeter to a Pomona mall in June, where he was shot. Although he is not accused of pulling the trigger, Dyer, now 22, is being charged again with murder.

Court records show she has entered a no contest and is due back in court next month. Her lawyer declined to comment.

When Gascón took office in 2020, he banned prosecutors from charging juveniles as adults under any circumstances, citing research on adolescent brain development that shows people do not reach full maturity until age 25.

Gascón backtracked on his ban midway through his term and decided to allow prosecutors to seek transfer to adult court in some cases. The move came after widespread backlash over the case of Hannah Tubbs, a 26-year-old who was tried in juvenile court for a sexual assault she committed as a teenager.

Charging juveniles as adults requires court approval, and the hurdle tends to be high. According to a report released by the California Attorney General's Office, two-thirds of attempts to bring juveniles into adult court last year failed.

But critics of the “godfather of progressive prosecutors” argue that harsher sentences for violent juvenile offenders should be enforced more aggressively.

Shawn Randolph — the district attorney's former top juvenile prosecutor who claimed she faced retaliation after opposing Gascón's policies and won a lawsuit against him last year — called Dyer's latest alleged killing “predictable and preventable.” “.

Regarding Gascón's initial ban on bringing charges against adults, Randolph said: “He ordered that juveniles who had shown a propensity to kill would be released long before their brain development was complete, setting them loose on a vulnerable public to do so again.” to kill.”

Under Gascón's current policy, L.A. County prosecutors who want to charge juveniles as adults are required to refer cases to an internal committee; According to prosecutors, 23 such proposals were approved and only one was referred to adult court by a judge.

Tiffiny Blacknell, Gascón's chief spokeswoman, said it was unlikely that Dyer's first case would have met the standard for transfer to adult court, even if Gascón had been allowed to pursue that option in 2021. Blacknell said the teen had no criminal history and “the evidence suggests that she was told to commit the crime by someone with greater influence because of her age and status in the gang,” which was a factor in the The decision is whether a minor can be transferred to the adult system.

Blacknell said another teenage suspect involved in the murders was also tried as a juvenile and is now “doing well on probation.” Blacknell said an adult suspect in those murders is still awaiting trial.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to win a petition to transfer a teenager to adult court in California, in part because of a 2022 Assembly bill that Gascón sponsored. The law requires prosecutors to prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that a juvenile cannot be rehabilitated in a juvenile detention center before a judge can authorize a transfer.

Some prosecutors argue that the new standard borders on the impossible. In 2022, an Inglewood judge ruled that a teenager accused of shooting his girlfriend and her sister in Westchester before setting the crime scene on fire still did not meet the standard for transfer to adult court.

Former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who sought to unseat Gascón, said his opponent “couldn't have handled the Dyer case worse.”

“First, he imposed a blanket rule that prevented juveniles from being referred to criminal court under any circumstances. “He also rejected the recommendation of his senior prosecutors, who warned him that if she was held in juvenile detention and released in a few years, she would most likely kill again,” Hochman said in a statement. “What I will do is empower my prosecutors to make the best decisions based on two things: the facts and the law.”

Asked what strategies he would use to overcome the heavy burden of the federal transfer law if elected, Hochman said he would “never shy away from a difficult fight” but did not provide further details.

Changes in the state's juvenile justice system have little meaning for crime victims who draw a clear line between Gascón's actions and street violence.

Alfredo Carrera's sister Cynthia said her family was not informed of Dyer's release this year.

“She is a cold-blooded murderer who has been released,” Cynthia said of Dyer. “It's pretty shocking that she's done it again. That’s what comes out of LA’s soft-on-crime laws.”