Aggravated Assault on Common Sense

As a highly respected homicide prosecutor in the 1980s and 1990s, Mike Jacobs helped put away a lot of bad characters. He’s locked horns in court with cop killers, murderer-rapists and serial killers. Some he sent to death row.

This week he zeroed in on Collene McGinley, an 18-year-old Laguna Hills High School graduate.

McGinley is no killer. She’s a young woman who, at a party in July in Coto de Caza, got into a fight with a teenage girl. McGinley’s defenders say it was merely a fight over McGinley’s boyfriend; Jacobs says it was something much more serious.

So he threw the book at her, charging her with aggravated mayhem for biting the other girl’s breast so fiercely that it left a small mark. This deliberate act, Jacobs argues, warranted the serious charge, which carries a penalty of life in prison. This is the kind of case where I ask myself if I’ve lost touch with reality -- or whether prosecutors have.

Jacobs speaks with what sounds like genuine indignation, but can he really think McGinley belongs in the company of kidnappers and killers?

I ask because the law provides no judicial wiggle room, just this line in the penal code: “Aggravated mayhem is a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole.” McGinley spent a month in jail because the bail on this charge is $1 million.

McGinley’s boyfriend and another young woman also were charged in the alleged crime, although neither was charged with biting the victim, which is at the core of the case against McGinley. However, the charges against McGinley’s friends left them vulnerable to the same sentence.

The defense team says the charges are wildly over the top. In a point Jacobs doesn’t dispute, they say the victim never sought medical attention.

Todd Landgren, representing McGinley’s friend Jessie Eckhardt, says, “Why are we going after these kids with life in prison based on this scenario? I’m flabbergasted.”

Jacobs acknowledges that “this is not a murder.” But, he says, “here’s what bothers me about this case: Here’s a girl who supposedly comes from a well-to-do family, from a pretty good neighborhood, and goes and pretty much commits a cannibalistic act in trying to take a bite out of a girl’s breast because she hit on her boyfriend. That’s pretty primitive and brutal conduct.”

Referring to photos of the victim, Jacobs says, “Permanent teeth marks can be seen on the nipple and around the breast area. And then in the center of the bite mark was actually a hole in her breast, where part of her flesh was ripped out. This is the way animals react, not human beings.”

He contends that McGinley specifically attacked the breast area and was “biting as hard as she can and trying to bite the nipple off.” The hole was about half an inch in diameter.

He ducked the question about why, if the wound was so serious, the victim didn’t seek medical attention. “Legally, that’s irrelevant,” he says. The victim “will be scarred for the rest of her life, in a rather sensitive area.”

There’s a development: After a preliminary hearing, Superior Court Judge Carlton Biggs on Tuesday reduced the charge from aggravated mayhem to mayhem, which carries a sentence of two to eight years. He dropped the more serious charges against McGinley’s friends and ordered them to stand trial on assault charges stemming from their alleged participation as McGinley bit the victim. All three will be arraigned this month.

Unbowed, Jacobs thinks the judge erred and says he’ll recommend that the district attorney again pursue aggravated mayhem charges at trial. Meanwhile, McGinley has been released after her family posted a reduced bail of $100,000.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.