Carr: Bay Area DA didn’t appeal mass murderer’s death penalty ruling. Was it all politics?

Between and men in Santa Clara County were sentenced to death for murders with special circumstances like kidnapping torture and rape Mass murderer Richard Farley who killed seven and wounded four others in at ESL Inc in Sunnyvale was one of them In District Attorney Jeff Rosen decided he had lost faith in the death penalty and hatched a plan to have their sentences reduced to life without possibility of parole He claimed concern about implicit bias and structural racism notwithstanding more than half of these murderers are White and that fairness and justice drove his change of heart After sending a form letter to specific of the murdered casualties family members advising them of his plan Rosen filed identical boilerplate motions attacking the death penalty vowing to dismantle it The reviewing judge was rightly unimpressed and alerted Rosen that his newfound antipathy was not a legal basis for reducing death sentences The court noted that Rosen s motions were silent as to the criteria written in a new law allowing certain sentence reductions Rosen re-tooled his pitch Related Articles A violent ambush in Idaho leaves firefighters dead and injured What to know about the attack Gunman started Idaho blaze and then fatally shot firefighters in ambush attack officers say Minnesota Rep Melissa Hortman s family dog gravely injured in attack has died In a report Rep Melissa Hortmans children say We are devastated and heartbroken Lifelong friend of man accused of killing two Minnesota lawmakers struggles to comprehend a sick man Conveniently he ignored that the statute on its face doesn t apply to death sentences Not surprisingly the murderers went along At the hearings family members who tearfully objected were listened to politely but with the district attorney and defense arm-in-arm the judges fell in line Every death-row inmate s sentence was reduced Richard Farley was the final circumstance Surprisingly the judge denied Rosen s request What happened Could it have been that it was the first event where an attorney appeared for the casualties families and survivors and presented legal arguments that the district attorney had conveniently ignored Attorney James McManis successfully argued that Rosen s motion should be rejected Farley s death sentence remains intact Rosen could have appealed the court s ruling He hasn t and the time has now expired Why would Rosen who once so fervently sought Farley s sentence reduction just walk away Several possibilities come to mind if the appellate courts concluded that the statute Rosen used doesn t apply to capital cases then none of the other murderers should have had their sentences reduced That humiliation could be a peril he was unwilling to take especially facing reelection and given his aspirations for higher office Perhaps it was the more than people in court or watching remotely including countless law enforcement officers seeing the county s chief law enforcement officer going to bat for a mass murderer Or the television cameras interviewing the survivors of Farley s massacre who talked about its horror and how they still suffer years later No wonder Rosen had no comment for the media after his defeat Fairness and justice never remotely required that Farley s sentence be reduced But if it did Rosen s decision not to appeal would be unconscionable The death penalty remains the law in California despite a moratorium on executions imposed in In fact voters rejected referenda to abolish the death penalty in and San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe just now publicized his office would seek the death penalty against the man who allegedly murdered seven and critically wounded one person in Half Moon Bay in District attorneys take an oath to follow the law Dutiful prosecutors don t allow their political religious or other personal views to influence their professional judgment Rosen abused his oath of office by reaching back years to steal justice from the casualties of the largest part terrible murders in the county Santa Clara County residents deserve better than a district attorney who cares more about murderers than casualties of crime Dolores Carr is a retired Superior Court judge and served as Santa Clara County district attorney from -