Resentencing Injustice
I am at my wit’s end with the injustice regarding my son’s Prop. 47 resentencing. He originally was given a six-year felony sentence for possession, plus two years for taking drugs into jail, which is a felony. When Prop. 47 passed, we were hopeful his time would be reduced. But his attorney on the matter was not interested in helping us, nor were the public defenders.
I hired an attorney I found on the Internet who said my son qualified. That attorney’s office initially wanted $500, but the attorney who took the case said he would want $2,000 because the complex sentencing rules meant there would be extra negotiations and court appearances. The petition was filed, and there were multiple court appearances at which the court misplaced or misfiled my son’s order to bring him to court from prison and to allow the vacationing DA that had a personal interest in the cases appear. The attorney advocating for my son had to hand-carry the order to bring my son up from prison from the clerk to the judge, then from the judge to the transport officer
When my son finally was transported from prison, he was left in a Los Angeles County jail for four days. He is serving his time classified as an inmate in protective custody. He was left for four days in a holding cell in general population with no bed. The general population inmates were made aware of his imposed status, and he had to deal with being under constant attack by inmates for four days, one of them his birthday) He was eventually transported to Santa Barbara County Jail for resentencing after Judge Dandona delayed the hearing for months. My son was beaten and brutalized and literally tortured with sleep deprivation in L.A. County, and our attorney played delivery boy for the court for three days and appeared three times; we were all in court so they could “negotiate” in chambers.
Since the sentence changing the six-year felony possession to a year misdemeanor would mean he would have to be resentenced on the other felony charge, the DA wants to bump the other charge from two to eight years. The judge is acting as a bystander and expects us to come to some mutual resolution with the DA.
The only option the DA was willing to consider was Delancey Street Residential treatment center. My son was denied acceptance there when he was originally sentenced because he wasn’t a hardened enough criminal “yet.”
His case is in court again this Thursday, June 11, in Department 6, Judge Dandona. My son is in Santa Barbara jail waiting for an interview from someone from Delancey Street.
Is this how all of California is handling the Prop. 47 cases? Is this the intended result of Prop. 47? Am I unjustified in being outraged how this is being handled?
