Now the Victorious Garcetti Needs to Mend His Office

The waiting for the outcome of the Nov. 5 district attorney’s election is over. Los Angeles County election officials have declared that it is mathematically impossible for Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to lose his reelection bid.

Garcetti’s victory caps a bitter campaign that, in many respects, began in earnest more than a year ago with O.J. Simpson’s acquittal on charges of double murder. Lingering anger among some voters over what they regarded as the D.A.’s blunders in that case and others made for an unusually acrimonious campaign. Some critics focused on the office’s reliance on the testimony of Los Angeles police Det. Mark Fuhrman, who last month pleaded no contest to charges that he committed perjury in the Simpson trial.

After his narrow defeat of John Lynch, Garcetti’s biggest challenge may lie in healing the wounds the Simpson trial opened within his office as well as in the broader community.

Morale is low and frustration high within the nation’s largest public law office. Losses in the Simpson case, the first trial of the Menendez brothers and others contributed heavily, but so have Garcetti’s management practices and questions about the influence of campaign contributors and potential improprieties by a Garcetti deputy in a criminal case involving music executive Marion “Suge” Knight. The bruising campaign with Lynch, who heads the D.A.’s Norwalk branch, only adds to these problems.

Like some of his predecessors, Garcetti has banished some complainers to branch offices in the county’s hinterlands. He can ill-afford to do more of that. His campaign against Lynch, which at times turned sharply negative, has left divisions within the office not limited to a few disaffected deputies.

Given the county’s crushing load of criminal cases, Garcetti needs to be particularly gracious in victory and should turn his energies to retaining experienced, hard-working deputies and avoiding actions that might set one group apart from the other. To do otherwise is to open the door for more embarrassing losses in the courtroom and more dissension--and defections--in the office.

Garcetti should refocus on his core task, criminal prosecution, and make constructive efforts in the areas of domestic and gang violence. Certainly every D.A. is as much a politician as prosecutor, but after the Simpson verdict Garcetti publicly embraced some dubious legislative proposals such as eliminating the unanimous-jury requirement in criminal trials. That’s fodder for grandstanding, not public policy.

L.A. County’s criminal caseload is higher than that of any other county in the nation. California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law has severely compounded the burden on prosecutors as well as on local courts and jails. Managing that caseload in a quietly efficient and evenhanded manner should be enough of a task for any district attorney.