Mike He in

Ri e ide Co n Di ic A o ne

O e ealo P o ec o
Prosecutors ho d extraordinary discretionary power in the American justice system. How they exercise their discretion is
the difference between fairness and corruption; between justice and inequa ity; between a community that has faith in
its justice system and the aw essness that occurs when it does not.

Mike Hestrin, District Attorney for Riverside County, Ca ifornia, which is home to near y two and-a-ha f mi ion peop e,
wie ds tremendous power. Hestrin has used that power to send more peop e to death row than any other prosecutor in
America, a ow po ice officers to ki citizens with impunity, and to (unsuccessfu y) fight against the ega ization of
marijuana, which Hestrin ca s a gateway drug

The mo blood hi Since taking office in 201 , Mike Hestrin oversaw the prosecution of 1
peop e sentenced to death row, more than any of the other 2, 00 e ected
p o ec o in Ame ica
prosecutors in the country. To put the sca e of Hestrin’s out ier status into
perspective, every state in the Deep South (A abama, Arkansas, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Caro ina) had fewer death sentences over
the same time period. Hestrin a so persona y obtained seven death
sentences, inc uding for a man who was diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia and had endured chi dhood trauma so severe that the state
had to remove him from his mother’s home. The man u timate y committed
suicide after Hestrin put him on death row. In 201 , when Governor
Newsom dec ared a moratorium on executions in Ca ifornia, Mike Hestrin
set out on a speaking tour across the state and tried to get a court to
overturn Newsom’s order and resume executions.

B eeding a c l e Law enforcement officers in Riverside County have ki ed at east 0 peop e

since Hestrin took office. Hestrin sought charges in just one of these cases
of police imp ni
—the murder of a man by Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Oscar
Rodriguez, who pinned the victim down to the ground and then shot him at
point-b ank range in front of the man’s mother. The victim was not a
stranger to Rodriguez, rather he was the boyfriend of a woman with whom
Rodriguez was having an affair. However, Hestrin initia y dec ined to
prosecute Rodriguez, conc uding that the deputy did not commit a crime.
Hestrin reversed his own decision years ater on y after the county was
forced to sett e a civi case for $ mi ion to the fami y of the man that he
ki ed—one of the argest payouts for the county in recent history.

An e ample of a police Kenneth French, an unarmed, non-verba inte ectua y disab ed man
diagnosed with schizophrenia, was shopping at Costco with his parents to
killing ha He in
prepare for a Father’s Day ce ebration. Whi e waiting for a sausage samp e,
did no p o ec e a minor a tercation broke out between French and an off-duty po ice
officer who was a so standing in ine waiting for a free samp e.
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 The officer reacted by taking out his gun and shooting at east eight rounds
at the entire fami y—u timate y ki ing French, putting French’s mother in a
coma, and causing French’s father to ose a Kidney. The Los Ange es Po ice
Chief issued a report that conc uded that even the officer’s drawing of his
weapon was out of po icy , and further exp ained that the officer’s conduct
was improper because whi e Kenneth was being pushed away from the
officer and was not armed the officer made no attempts to communicate
with Kenneth in an effort to deesca ate the incident and did not take time to
correct y assess the incident and ana yze the threat Despite the fact that
experts say a grand jury wi “indict a ham sandwich” if a prosecutor asks it
to, the grand jury fai ed to return an indictment in the case. Hestrin, who
has the power to proceed with a prosecution notwithstanding the grand
jury’s opinion, dec ined to prosecute. In August 2021, the Ca ifornia
Attorney Genera had to step in and prosecute the case because Hestrin
refused to do it.

Wh i He in o illing o One reason might be that Hestrin has received at east $ ,000 in
campaign contributions from aw enforcement unions. A University of
n a blind e e o police
North Caro ina Schoo of Law study of campaign donations over two
office ho kill ci ilian ? recent e ection cyc es found that Hestrin took more money from po ice
unions than any of the other , e ected prosecutors in the country.

Tole a ing eg egio In 201 , a federa appe ate court reversed the murder conviction of a
Riverside County man, Johnny Baca, due to f agrant prosecutoria
p o ec o ial mi cond c
misconduct. A former Riverside prosecutor, Robert Spira, testified that a
jai house snitch had not received any incentive to testify against Baca. It
turns out he was ying. A Ca ifornia appe ate court found that Spira’s
c aims were hee fan a and that his testimony bea on a e ficia
e emb ance o ea i And whi e the prosecutor doing the questioning
during the tria , Pau Vinegrad, apparent y knew that his co eague Spira
was ying, he so icited the informant’s testimony anyway. A federa
magistrate judge, Patrick Wa sh, said that the Riverside County District
Attorney s Office turned a b ind eye to fundamenta princip es of justice to
obtain a conviction During ora argument in the federa th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appea s, the Chief Judge at the time agreed. The chief judge
asked the government’s awyer to ask Kama a Harris, then attorney genera
of Ca ifornia, if she rea y wants to stick by a prosecution that was obtained by
ying prosecutors He a so asked a oud why the former prosecutors were
not being prosecuted for perjury. Mike Hestrin, far from prosecuting either
man for perjury, refused to admit that either prosecutor committed
misconduct. He a so promised to retry Baca, a man who a ready has spent
20 years in prison.

Repea edl p o ec ed In most p aces in the country, prosecutors err on the side of keeping
chi dren accused of crimes in juveni e court, on y moving kids to adu t court
kid ,di p opo iona el
after carefu review and in the most extreme circumstances. This is not
Black and La ino child en, how it works in Hestrin’s Riverside County. The first year that Mike Hestrin
in ad l co took office, the number of kids that Riverside County tried in adu t court
increased by . For context, Riverside County fi ed near y seven times
as many cases that year against kids in adu t court as Los Ange es County
did even though Los Ange es has a popu ation that is five times arger than
Riverside. Hestrin’s office was . times more ike y to prosecute B ack

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 chi dren and . times more ike y to prosecute Latinx chi dren than white
chi dren in adu t court. The next year, in 201 , Ca ifornia voters passed
Proposition which stripped prosecutors of the power to direct y fi e
cases against chi dren in adu t court. Riverside County voters supported the
proposition by a significant margin. Hestrin did not, ca ing Proposition
a terrib e idea and warning the pub ic that some very serious crimina s are
about to be re eased in their midst He ca ed the proposition, which mere y
brought Ca ifornia in ine with the aw of other states, the most
dangerous to ever be put on a Ca ifornia ba ot

Tend o belie e ma ij ana In 201 , voters in Ca ifornia passed Proposition which ega ized the
recreationa use of marijuana in the state. Most Riverside County voters
i a ga e a d g
supported ega ization. Mike Hestrin voca y opposed the effort, ca ing
marijuana a gateway drug predicting that marijuana wou d fa into the
hands of chi dren and even pets and warning that marijuana today is very
different and a much more potent drug than it was in the s and the s
containing THC eve s that makes it a ha ucinogen and is very dangerous ”
Hestrin a so c aimed that *medica * marijuana ega ization caused “a rea
uptick in the number of marijuana re ated fata ities where we prosecute cases
typica y mans aughter cases and forecasting an open season if Proposition
passed.

A deadbea dad Hestrin has bui t his po itica brand on being a man of traditiona va ues.
Hestrin is named as an A y For Life supporter of Corona Life Services,
which bi s itse f as a “crisis pregnancy center” that is dedicated to saving
the ives of unborn chi dren by offering a ternatives to abortion Hestrin used
campaign funds—not his persona bank account—to make a $1,000
donation to this group. Interesting y, whi e Corona Life Services preaches
that “the on y effective choice for the prevention of unp anned pregnancy is
abstinence for unmarried coup es, Mike Hestrin impregnated a woman out
of wed ock in 1 and then fai ed to pay her chi d support which ed to his
Riverside County wages being garnished. Pau Ze erbach, the former
District Attorney of Riverside County, ca ed Hestrin a deadbea dad

Relen le p i of a Kimber y Long came home ear y one morning to find her boyfriend
murdered in their iving room. Prosecutors convicted Kimber y of murder
pape hin ca e ha
arge y based on a discrepancy between the time ine that she gave and a
co an innocen oman a conf icting time ine given to the po ice by one of Kimber y’s friends who
decade of he life died before tria . The first tria ended in mistria with a majority of jurors in
favor of acquitting Kimber y. A second jury convicted her, but the tria
judge went out of his way to state on the record that he persona y wou d
have found Kimber y “not gui ty” if it were up to him. A federa judge ater
said he had grave doubts about the case and that it was virtua y
impossib e for Kimber y to have committed the murder in the time ine that
Riverside prosecutors contended. More than a decade ater, Kimber y was
back in court with new evidence of her innocence: (1) there was unknown
ma e DNA at the crime scene, (2) evidence that her boyfriend had died ong
before she had been there, and ( ) evidence that the victim’s ex-gir friend
had been harassing and threatening to ki both him and Kimber y. A judge
reversed Kimber y’s conviction, but Hestrin fought against the ru ing,
insisting she be tried again and ca ing her a io en d nk and a e f
admi ed a ho e The Ca ifornia Supreme Court ru ed against Hestrin,
unanimous y overturning Kimber y’s wrongfu conviction. Nonethe ess, it
took Hestrin five more months to fina y re ent and dismiss the charges.

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 Inapp op ia e beha io and Riverside County’s top e ection officia pub ic y accused Mike Hestrin of
engaging in po itica intimidation interference and reta iation According to
nla f l in e fe ence
the oca e ection officia , Hestrin demanded that she remove a ba ot drop
box from outside of her office—where it had stood for more than 20 years
—and then threatened to sue her if she didn’t do it. Hestrin a so pressed
her to order her staff to photograph peop e who ega y drop off bund es of
comp eted ba ots but do not fi out paperwork identifying themse ves.
Fina y, Hestrin urged her to a ow p ainc othes investigators from his office
to hover near the ba ot boxes to photograph the icense p ates of peop e
dropping off ba ot bund es. The e ections officia ca ed Hestrin’s behavior
inappropriate and worried that his un awfu interference with her job duties
wou d not stop Hestrin a so came under fire after the 2020 presidentia
e ections, when, in what the Los Ange es Times dubbed a “ o
Thank gi ing S i e weeks after e ection night, Hestrin notified oca
e ection officia s that he had in his possession 1 ba ots that a Repub ican
women’s group inexp icab y gave to him instead of e ection officia s. The
president of that women’s group a so runs a po itica action committee that
is a major donor to Hestrin.

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