But I’d be hard-pressed to find the link.”Īnother member of the panel, Arcadia Police Chief Bob Guthrie, said he saw the state’s massive prison downsizing laws as an important backdrop to Mejia’s case. “Of course we’d want a different outcome - it’s a tragedy. “If the premise is, this is the golden case to show failures, I just don’t think you can point to this case and say it shows the failures,” said Cynthia Hernandez, a lawyer who has served as an independent monitor of the county’s probation department. One of the experts on the county panel that reviewed Mejia’s case said the group’s findings did not discredit California’s recent changes in its prison system or sentencing laws. Many in local law enforcement argue that prison releases and sentencing changes have caused crime to spike in some ares, though backers of the criminal reform movement dispute those claims. The state has become a national leader in easing tough sentencing laws imposed during the 1990s. The documents provide important new details about a crime that has played a key role in the political debate over whether California’s criminal justice reforms have gone too far. County district attorney’s office missed an opportunity to send Mejia to jail and drug treatment for several months in the weeks before the shootings.

The group concluded that Mejia was allowed to cycle in and out of jail with little punishment or treatment for his escalating drug problems because county agencies failed to document all of his rule-breaking, didn’t share important information with each other and gave him an excessive number of chances while he continued breaking the rules of his supervision, according to confidential county reports.Īt the same time, court records reviewed by The Marshall Project and The Times show, the L.A. The killing of Officer Keith Boyer and wounding of another officer have galvanized a movement to ask state voters this November to reverse some of the recent changes to sentencing laws and the prison system.īut a review of the case by The Marshall Project and The Los Angeles Times found a far more complex chain of events that allowed Mejia to remain free despite his record of criminal behavior.Ĭonfidential findings by criminal justice experts appointed by Los Angeles County to examine Mejia’s case identified local law enforcement failures that had little to do with the state’s justice reforms. Why, they asked, was Mejia even on the streets? This story was published in partnership with The Los Angeles Times.

Whittier man shot 5 in back