Endorsement: Nathan Hochman for Los Angeles County District Attorney

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results,” observed the late economist Milton Friedman. This observation is one this editorial board has long taken to heart when evaluating the merits of any public policy or the track record of elected officials.

Four years ago, we endorsed George Gascón over incumbent Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey. “It must be said… that looking at the state of crime and justice in L.A. County, that the status quo isn’t working,” we wrote at the time. “Can anyone say that L.A. County has a justice system worth replicating elsewhere?”

Despite the tough-on-crime approach of Lacey, violent crime had actually increased throughout her time as DA. What Los Angeles County had, then, was the worst of all worlds: a system that was highly punitive and still yielding bad results. Add in Lacey’s consistent opposition to criminal justice reforms, even on issues as modest as marijuana legalization, and we believed at the time it was worth trying a new approach.

Gascón ultimately prevailed and was sworn in at the end of 2020. Four years later, the record speaks for itself. Gascón once told our editorial board to judge him by whether or not Los Angeles County is safer, so that is what we will do.

One measure of that is looking at the crime stats, and on that front Gascón clearly failed.

From 2020 to 2023, the last year for which full county-wide data is available, violent and property crimes reached new heights not seen in many years. The number of violent crimes surged from 54,600 to 61,193. Homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults all increased on his watch. Property crimes did, too.

Another measure is public polling, which has consistently cut against Gascón. As this newspaper reported earlier this year, citing a poll conducted by Thrive L.A., “Seven in 10 voters think that property crime, hate crimes, and smash and grab thefts are extremely serious or very serious problems in Los Angeles.” Just 26% of voters approved of Gascón’s performance as DA at the time, and that’s about the percentage of votes he received in the March primary.

Regardless of Gascón’s intentions, and we do believe them to be well-intended and based on a well-founded belief that public safety can be achieved without mass incarceration, his time as DA failed to yield positive results for LA County residents.

Instead, what we got were a litany of costly lawsuits filed against him. We got scandals like his soft treatment of child molester Hannah Tubbs, his promotion of a staffer who referred to the Los Angeles Police Department as  “barbarians” and an “occupying army,” and the light sentence of a teenager who callously ran over a mother and her infant in Venice.

We didn’t get a shining example of criminal justice reform in practice. We certainly didn’t get a system worth replicating elsewhere. We got a mess.

Enter Nathan Hochman, who, unlike Gascón, has both worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney. He served as a U.S. assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, as an assistant United States attorney in the 1990s, and most recently as a member of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. Needless to say, he has the experience necessary to credibly take on this role.

Hochman touts a middle ground approach when it comes to handling cases and vows to direct individualized approaches to every case, rather than imposing blanket policies overriding the judgment of prosecutors.

“I will work with the county to ensure proper funding for the DA’s office and law enforcement to carry out the job of incarcerating the true threats to our public safety and offering community service or diversion programs for non-violent, non-serious criminals who qualify for them,” he told us earlier this year.

Contrary to what one might expect, Hochman has also repeatedly credited Gascón and the progressive prosecutor movement for drawing attention to legitimate problems in the justice system. He just thinks their methods for addressing those problems are often flawed.

Hochman’s appeal to the middle is ultimately hard to quibble with, even if we disagree with some of the details. Hochman is likely to consider, for example, pursuing the death penalty in cases which he thinks merit it. This would be his right, of course. But such a sentence is effectively just a really expensive life sentence in a state that hasn’t executed anyone in decades.

We also encourage him to be judicious in seeking sentence enhancements, which have historically resulted in people spending more time behind bars than is just or necessary for public safety. Just as he rails against Gascón’s blanket policies, he should not pursue blanket policies for the sake of appearing tough-on-crime. We must be smart on crime.

We were taken aback in a recent interview in which he downplayed the potential problems or risks of plea bargains becoming a dominant feature of the justice system. But he must certainly know of practices like piling on charges and overreaching for more serious charges, as well as the overwhelming leverage a prosecutor will often have over often impoverished defendants.

The goal of the criminal justice system should be justice. We encourage Hochman to take seriously his vow to take an individualized approach to cases, and urge him to not just chase high conviction rates and stiffer sentences as just ends in and of themselves.

Ultimately, we think Hochman is capable of pursuing justice in a thoughtful and reasonable manner. We commend Gascón for his righteous crusade for reform, but he couldn’t do what he thought he could do. It’s time for new leadership in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office.

Elect Nathan Hochman.