LA County’s new district attorney has a major Valley opponent: Fresno’s Lisa Smittcamp
Lisa Smittcamp says she loves being Fresno County’s district attorney and harbors no other political ambitions. “This is it,” she says of the job she first won in 2014. When she ran again in 2018, Smittcamp did not face a challenger, so the county seems to love her, too.
But that doesn’t mean Smittcamp is done with campaigning. Today she is engaged in a battle over a matter of utmost seriousness: the philosophy of justice in California.
She has emerged as one of the state’s leading opponents to George Gascón, the new district attorney in Los Angeles County. He took office last fall after ousting a law-and-order incumbent with his platform of reforming how prosecutors do business in California’s largest county.
Shortly after taking over, Gascón did away with requirements for cash bail and ordered his deputy district attorneys to stop seeking enhancements to charges that would extend a defendant’s sentence. Gascón banned prosecutors from appearing at parole hearings, from seeking the death penalty and from trying juveniles as adults for certain major crimes.
The association that represents Los Angeles County’s 1,000 prosecutors was taken by surprise at the changes, and sued the boss. A Superior Court judge put a hold on the reform measures until they could be heard in court.
Many district attorneys around the state also reacted with alarm to what Gascón was doing. Among them, three have become outspoken leaders of the opposition: Smittcamp, Cynthia Zimmer of Kern County and Anne Marie Schubert of Sacramento County.
Smittcamp has told Gascon she will not let him have jurisdiction over any crimes involving suspects or victims from Fresno County. And she has taken a very public stance in criticizing Gascón. In February she issued a news release with this quote:
“Gascón is not a criminal justice reformer. He is an anarchist. He is a rouge that is disguising himself as a district attorney. He isn’t in office to promote public safety, to assist victims of crime and to help keep children out of gangs. He is there to push an agenda that protects violent gang members, career criminals and those who have a reckless disregard for human life.”
Smittcamp is rarely so blunt in her public statements. So in an interview this week, I asked her if she still felt the same.
“More so now than ever,” she said. “He is setting the whole system of criminal justice in the United States of America — love it or hate it, this is what we have — he is setting it off-kilter.
“Now in Los Angeles County you have two public defenders, not a DA to represent the rights to justice and uphold the Penal Code and the other codes we use.”
Reforming criminal justice
The progressive prosecutor trend across the nation has grown in response to the killing of George Floyd last year and the Black Lives Matter movement. Inherent in the reform platform is the stance that too many men of color are incarcerated for too long. Besides Los Angeles County, other reform prosecutors have been elected in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston.
Smittcamp said the goal of her prosecutors, however, is not necessarily to jail defendants. “We don’t try to send people to prison — we try to keep them out of prison. That’s what’s so frustrating for us who have been doing a lot of different programs. We get labeled to be ugly, white, racist people.”
The programs she refers to aim to get at a defendant’s deep problems, such as substance abuse. Fresno County has a drug court that works with defendants by allowing them to seek counseling rather than putting them behind bars. Another specialized court works with veterans who get into trouble; Smittcamp is the prosecutor assigned to that one. There is court for defendants with mental health issues, and there are restorative justice programs.
Smittcamp on accountability
Smittcamp believes strongly in the accountability of the current criminal justice system. “Despite what some people say, the criminal justice system is a great accountability system for some people. If we let them off, that criminal activity will continue. Sometimes they end up dead. ...
“Is mass incarceration good for society? No, but you have to stop the violence. When you don’t get your way, you don’t kill people.”
Why should residents of Fresno County care about what a DA is doing in Southern California? Because changes in Los Angeles reverberate across the state, Smittcamp said.
There is a new challenge for Smittcamp and her like-minded colleagues. Gov. Gavin Newsom has nominated Oakland Assemblyman Rob Bonta to become California’s next attorney general. As a legislator, Bonta authored or co-authored successful bills to ban the use of for-profit private prisons, abolish cash bail, expunge old marijuana convictions from Californians’ records and require the attorney general’s office to investigate police shootings of unarmed people.
Most of the debate would end if Californians would agree on basic human values, Smittcamp said. “There has to be a united movement of good values, of good, common decency and responsibility. No one thinks it is right to kill another human being unless it is in self-defense.
“We have to figure out our core values.”
