For District Attorney: John Lynch

Gil Garcetti’s term as Los Angeles County district attorney has included some of the most divisive criminal trials in memory. Prosecution defeats in the first Menendez trial, the O.J. Simpson trial and the Snoop Doggy Dogg trial bewildered many voters. Other voters were angered by what they construed as political decisions by Garcetti with respect to charges filed, trial strategy employed and the evidence and witnesses presented. As a result, despite the district attorney’s campaign war chest of nearly $1 million and his national name recognition, he faces a formidable “Anybody but Garcetti” backlash in the March 26 primary. He also faces five opponents.

In our view Garcetti’s role in these high-profile trials and the verdicts themselves are not sufficient reasons to oppose his reelection; anyone who occupies the hot seat of district attorney draws fire. But we find in prosecutor John F. Lynch, alone among Garcetti’s challengers, hope for more evenhanded leadership in the D.A.’s office, on the routine as well as highly publicized cases.

Gil Garcetti has made many positive contributions to local law enforcement. He has proven himself a tireless worker with a broad vision. He is not reluctant to use his office as a bully pulpit and views his responsibilities as extending to a wide range of crimes. For example, his aggressive education campaign has heightened public concern over domestic violence. Garcetti also has aggressively prosecuted hate crimes, establishing a hate crimes unit within the D.A.’s office. And he has diligently prosecuted environmental crimes.

But we are also disappointed with Garcetti. On the one hand, he warmly embraced the “three strikes and you’re out” law despite the harsh sentences it mandates for any third offense, even if the offense is nonviolent. Once the law took effect, however, Garcetti compiled an inconsistent record, prosecuting some third-strike defendants charged only with petty offenses and rejecting strikes for others charged with similar crimes.

Garcetti’s opponents have raised questions, questions Garcetti has not always answered in a satisfying way, about whether inappropriate political influence was used in making prosecutorial decisions. We think prosecutors must have discretion in these cases but that discretion must not smell like caprice or favoritism. We are troubled also by Garcetti’s opportunistic support for such dubious proposals as permitting nonunanimous juries in criminal cases.

Neither Garcetti nor his staff bear sole responsibility for the losses that generated heavy public attention. In some cases, prosecutors had to deal with poor police work, compromised evidence and unreliable witnesses. In each, they faced defense lawyers with extraordinary skill and ample financial resources. Nonetheless, Garcetti’s decisions often exacerbated those disparities. In the Simpson case, for example, the decision to rely so heavily on the testimony of Det. Mark Fuhrman, despite his known problems, contributed to the acquittal. Judgments of this sort no doubt were factors in the no-confidence vote Garcetti received last month in an unprecedented plebiscite conducted among his staff by the county Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. Anger toward Garcetti for paying bonuses to Simpson prosecutors while other staff members have gone without a raise for years, and for other administrative decisions, also contributed to the no-confidence vote.

Look at the other candidates. John Lynch, bringing both broad administrative and prosecutorial experience, could help the district attorney’s office regain some of the trust and esteem it has lost. Lynch is a career prosecutor; during his 19 years with the office he has tried the full range of misdemeanors and felonies that come before the D.A. As the head deputy of both the Santa Monica office and, currently, the Norwalk branch office, Lynch has demonstrated he has the temperament and judgment necessary to do the job. He is thoughtful, quiet-spoken and respected by fellow prosecutors, including some Garcetti supporters. Lynch, colleagues say, knows the line between imposing himself and leading.

There are other candidates for Garcetti’s post, including Sterling Norris, whom this newspaper endorsed for D.A. in 1992, but none is as qualified as Lynch. Malcolm Jordan is troubling because his substantial campaign funds, which he is using to advertise heavily on television, give him a prominent public platform. Yet though his tenure is long, his experience is thin, and his proposals are even thinner. Note that his television ads knock Garcetti without presenting any substantive information about himself. Jordan demonstrates no understanding of what is required to run a district attorney’s office that is the largest in the nation, and is shockingly lacking in vision as well as specifics on the range of issues that would come before him as district attorney.

Steve Zand is young and, as a private practitioner, largely without criminal or administrative experience. Harold Greenberg is well-intentioned but without the prosecutorial experience or backing to be a serious contender.

The Times endorses John F. Lynch for district attorney.