Criminal justice reformers are destroying the trust in the criminal justice system that is necessary for the system to operate, and they are doing so by misleading victims and the public about how long a criminal is going to stay behind bars.
California released David Funston, who was convicted of kidnapping and raping multiple children, under its “elderly parole” system. California views any criminal over the age of 50 as “elderly” and worthy of being released, with few exceptions. Kidnapping and sexually assaulting multiple children is not one of those exceptions, so Funston was released.
DON’T LET CRIMINAL JUSTICE ‘REFORM’ RUIN THE DECLINING CRIME RATE
He was immediately arrested and charged with another kidnapping and molestation from 1996 in Placer County. Why is he only being charged with it now? Placer County didn’t move forward with the case back then because Funston was already given three life sentences, and prosecutors decided they did not need to use the resources to add a fourth. Funston’s victims, and the public, were assured that that monster would never see the light of day again.
Now, if Funston gets another life sentence, how is anyone supposed to believe that such a sentence means anything at all? Of his previous three life sentences, he served just 25 years before California was ready to loose him to the public. Why should anyone in California believe that a “life sentence” means anything at all?
This has been the norm in California under the criminal justice reforms of the state’s Democratic Party. California Democrats passed sentencing laws that retroactively changed the sentences of hundreds of criminals who were, as a result, released between 2019 and 2022. California has forced its “justice” system to renege on agreed-upon plea deals by changing the law to retroactively reduce sentences. Plea deals are designed to give the victims and the public certainty that someone will serve an agreed-upon sentence, but California consistently passes laws that retroactively reduce sentences, even for criminals who have agreed to plea deals, undermining that trust.
THE CALIFORNIA MODEL: TAKING THE ‘CRIMINAL’ OUT OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Then you have such betrayals of trust as we saw in Los Angeles under “reform prosecutor” George Gascon. Gascon’s job was to keep criminals in jail, but his goal was to release as many as possible. Gascon shut down the prosecutor’s unit that informed victims when the criminals who victimized them were having parole hearings, trying to hide the hearings so victims couldn’t testify against the release of those criminals.
Under California’s criminal “justice” system, sentences and plea deals mean nothing. They are loose guidelines that are designed to shut victims up and get them off the back of prosecutors and politicians until the state can try to quietly release them when the heat dies down. That has been proved time and time again, and it is being proved now with the state’s handling of Funston’s three “life” sentences. California is decimating any trust anyone could have that the justice system is fair and honest, and that will have debilitating consequences.