LA’s ‘woke’ district attorney George Gascon has been accused of throwing the book at rapper Tory Lanez in a bid to fend off attacks on his soft-on-crime approach which has seen murderers and child abusers released years early.
The Democrat DA demanded an increase on the maximum sentence available for the Canadian musician as he was jailed to 10 years on Tuesday for shooting his former lover Megan Thee Stallion in the feet.
Gascon’s office had urged a 13-year sentence, claiming any less would ‘endanger the public’, but was accused of singling out the musician to save his own embattled career.
Yet in the same state, killer Andres Cachu was freed after just five years in 2021 before being rearrested, while trans child abuser Hannah Tubbs secretly laughed about her two-year sentence in a juvenile facility for her assault on a 10-year-old girl.
Defense attorney Matthew Barhoma blasted prosecutors for the ‘disparity of seeking a 13-year sentence,’ which, he added, ‘is quite a deviation from the LA DA’s own sentencing policy’.
Controversial Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, at the Long Beach Pride 40th annual parade on Sunday (pictured) has been attacked for slashing criminals’ jail time
But there was no mercy for rapper Tony Lanez (left) as prosecutors sought the maximum sentence for his attack on former lover and fellow musician Megan Thee Stallion (right)
‘This disparity is being sought out, just because he’s Tory Lanez,’ he added.
‘The fact that he’s Tory Lanez is not a reason to seek enhancements of sentence. The prosecutor is reaching.’
Gascon made his name as DA in San Francisco where he co-authored notorious state senate bill Proposition 47 that slashed the number of crimes on the statute book.
And he repeated the move while promising to abolish bail bonds on his first day in office in December 2020, pledging the release of hundreds of people from LA County jails.
He said his prosecutors would no longer seek the death penalty, calling it ‘racist’, and pledged to stop the prosecution of juveniles as adults.
He estimated some 20,000 state prison inmates would be considered for early release but his reforms have infuriated staff, leading to at least 140 unfilled roles and a backlog of 10,000 cases.
‘The problem is, people started leaving because they became so fed up with his policies, so those of us who stayed are carrying two or three times the caseload,’ one prosecutor told the NY Post.
But it is his determination to keep young people out of the criminal justice system that has put his re-election in jeopardy and helped prompt a recall petition by victims’ rights advocates that attracted more than 715,000 signatures last year.
Gascon pleaded with judges to take triple murderer Raymond Butler (left) with his attorney off Death Row, while killer Andres Cachu (right) was out after just five years
Andres Cachu was 17 when he murdered Louis Amela, 41, during a robbery in 2015.
He was tried as an adult and sentenced to 50 years to life in prison in 2016.
But Gascon agreed to Cachu’s release after just five years in 2021, a year before he was again arrested in a car chase while high on drugs and holding a gun.
‘We are frustrated to see that he is struggling,’ The DA’s office said in a statement.
Victor Bibiano, 30, arrested in April last year for the slaying of a homeless man in Pacoima, was released from prison in 2021 after serving just eight years of a life sentence for a double murder because Gascón refused to transfer his case from juvenile to adult court.
Ands last year Gascon asked a judge to take triple murderer Raymond Butler off death row, 28 years after he shot Japanese film students Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura in the head.
‘In my career as a prosecutor, I’ve never had victims’ families actually hate us until I came into this office,’ a former deputy DA told The Post.
‘We are hated by all the victims because of lack of prosecution and low sentences because of his policies.’
Even Gascon admitted that a two-year sentence in a juvenile facility may have been too short for a then 26-year-old trans woman Hannah Tubbs who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl two weeks before her 18th birthday.
But he suspended an attorney who ‘misgendered’ the abuser, who later gloated over the leniency of the sentence in a secretly recorded jailhouse call to her father.
Tubbs, 27, who has also been accused of molesting another minor, was charged with murder in May this year in connection with a 2019 killing.
Attorneys for Lanez (left) claimed his crime warranted probation, but Gascon (right) pushed for a 13-year jail term
Yet the DA was determined to show no mercy to Lanez when the rapper went on trial in one of the most high-profile cases to reach court this year.
In her emotional testimony during trial, Megan, 28, told the jury that she and Lanez – with whom she’d been having a sexual relationship – had been to a pool party July 12, 2020 at the home of Kylie Jenner and were in his SUV in the Hollywood Hills with Kelsey Harris when an alcohol-fueled argument erupted.
Megan – real name Megan Pete – asked the driver to stop the car and she got out, which was when she said Lanez yelled ‘Dance b***h’ and fired a gun five times at her, injuring her feet so seriously that she needed surgery.
She testified in court that Lanez offered her and Harris a million dollars to keep quiet about the shooting and asked them not to report him because he was already ‘on probation.’
Hannah Tubbs laughed off her two-year sentence in a juvenile facility for a sex assault on a 10-year-old girl, but Gascon suspended prosecutor Shea Sanna for ‘misgendering’ the abuser as a man
Megan also said Lanez later apologized to her, claiming he was drunk at the time of the shooting.
Lanez was found guilty of assault with a semi-automatic firearm, shooting a firearm in a grossly negligent manner and carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle.
Speaking after sentencing on Tuesday Gascon insisted the case ‘highlighted the numerous ways that our society must do better for women’.
‘Thank you Deputy District Attorneys Kathy Ta and Alex Bott, and Victim Services Representative Cecilia Zamora who spent countless hours working to ensure justice was served.’
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