A few months after finishing my first attempted murder I was sitting around another courtroom waiting for my case to be called. I watched another DA give a closing argument in a murder case. The funny thing was; the murder took place in the same alley as my attempted murder. The exact same alley! Right behind the local diner. I spoke briefly to the prosecutor, who told me that his case went down a few months before mine did. He blames the violence on a bar that empties into the alley, a notorious bar where gangsters hang out. My case, however, was more about domestic violence than drunken gangsters.
I was shocked. I felt like these two cases gave me a window into the volume and frequency of violence in the communities that we serve. It’s a very different situation from where most of us live. The alley in question is so pockmarked with bullet strikes that it resembles the Wild West.
I went back to my office and told the story to a couple of coworkers. They seemed to find it interesting, but not too interesting. The discussion turned to where to go to lunch. Before I could even jump in, the choice was unanimous: the local diner.
DA in CA 