Why are Prosecutors at the Larson Justice Center so Harsh?
Riverside County’s District Attorney’s Office has increasingly found itself at the center of heated debates over the role of prosecutors in shaping justice — and injustice — across California. From the severity of sentencing practices and political entanglements to questions surrounding prosecutorial ethics and misconduct allegations, the actions and policies of the Riverside County District Attorney have drawn scrutiny from both legal experts and community advocates.
Concerns over racial disparities in charging decisions, sentencing outcomes, and pretrial bail further underscore the broader systemic issues playing out locally. Meanwhile, conviction rates and plea deal trends reveal a complex portrait of prosecutorial priorities that often diverge sharply from those of neighboring counties and statewide averages.
As public attention grows, recent controversies, reform proposals, and high-profile endorsements have only intensified the spotlight on Riverside County's top prosecutor. In this post, we take a comprehensive look at the factors fueling this scrutiny — comparing local practices with broader state trends and examining what these dynamics mean for the future of justice in the Inland Empire.
Sentencing Harshness and Policies
Death Penalty Pursuit: Riverside County emerged as a leading death-penalty jurisdiction in the mid-2010s, bucking state and national trends. In the five years from 2011 to 2016, Riverside sent 22 people to death row – the same number as Los Angeles County, despite LA having six times more murders. In 2015 alone, Riverside handed down 8 death sentences, accounting for 16% of all U.S. death verdicts that year. This made Riverside “the death penalty center” of America by rate: it imposed death sentences at nine times the rate of the California average per homicide. Current DA Mike Hestrin has unabashedly defended seeking capital punishment, saying its use “should reflect local sentiment” and that Riverside is a “law and order” county where juries overwhelmingly support it in heinous cases. Hestrin cites egregious crimes – for example, a murderer who shot his girlfriend and set her on fire – as deserving of the ultimate penalty. He acknowledges being “pro-death penalty” but insists he reserves it for “those cases that absolutely need it”. Notably, Hestrin has argued that the surge of death sentences in his first year (2015) was largely driven by charging decisions made under Zellerbach’s administration. Indeed, public defenders observe Hestrin’s approach to capital charges has become “more measured than [that of] past district attorneys”, leading to far fewer new death penalty filings in recent years. By 2018, Riverside had zero death sentences imposed that year (down from leading the nation in 2017), mirroring a statewide decline. Even so, from 2015–2019 Riverside still accounted for over one-third of all California death sentences despite being only ~6% of the state’s population. Hestrin has been a vocal supporter of capital punishment beyond the courtroom as well – he championed a 2016 ballot measure to speed up executions and publicly criticized the governor’s 2019 moratorium on executions.
Maximum Penalties and Enhancements: Outside of capital cases, Riverside prosecutors are known for seeking maximum penalties through liberal use of sentencing enhancements and strict charging. The office’s own policies instruct deputies to “allege in charging documents all appropriate allegations”, including every possible enhancement (such as prior convictions, gang affiliations, probation violations, etc.). In practice, about 30% of all Riverside cases from 2017–2020 had at least one enhancement added. Over that period, the DA’s office filed nearly 150,000 enhancements in total. Local justice reform advocates say, “Riverside goes for any enhancements they can get – all the enhancements they can get”, signaling a focus on stacking charges to increase potential sentences. The most common enhancement used was for violation of probation, applied in over 8% of cases. Critics note this often punishes technical infractions (like missing a court date or fee payment) that don’t threaten public safety. Until a recent change in law, Riverside also routinely added 1-year jail priors (Penal Code §667.5(b)) to re-punish past offenders – filing that enhancement thousands of times annually up to 2020. Even after the state banned this practice (effective Jan 2020), the DA still filed a handful of such allegations in 2020, indicating an ingrained habit of “maxing out” sentences.
Three-Strikes and Life Terms: The aggressive use of California’s Three Strikes law is another facet of Riverside’s harsh sentencing posture. Data show Black defendants in Riverside are more than twice as likely as white defendants to have a prior “strike” enhancement added (7% of Black defendants’ cases receive a strike prior enhancement vs only 3.4% for whites). This suggests the office does not hesitate to invoke Three Strikes to seek longer prison terms, a practice that disproportionately impacts communities of color (discussed more below). Additionally, Riverside historically transferred many juveniles to adult court (which can expose them to longer sentences). Before reforms, Riverside direct-filed youth into adult court at 2.6 times the rate of the rest of California. In 2016, for example, Latinx youth in Riverside were 8.6 times more likely than white youths to be tried as adults (Black youth 4.3 times more likely), reflecting a highly punitive approach to juvenile offenders under prior policies. (Recently state laws like Prop 57 have since curbed direct filing of juveniles statewide.)
Plea Bargaining Practices: In line with its tough stance, the DA’s office has sometimes leveraged plea deals to secure harsh outcomes. Advocates report that young defendants are at times offered quick release in exchange for pleading guilty to a strike offense, which immediately puts them one step away from a life sentence. Many youths accept such deals to avoid immediate jail time, but as one report noted, this practice “stacks the deck” against over-policed groups by tagging them with strike priors that can later yield much heavier sentences. The office has also been willing to charge gang enhancements (which add 2 years to life in prison) frequently – 1,151 gang enhancements in 356 cases over 2017–2020 – despite statewide scrutiny on this tool for inflating sentences. More than 93% of gang enhancement cases in Riverside during that period were charged against Black or Latinx individuals. Overall, these policies paint a picture of an office that, over the last decade, often pursues the most severe penalties available, whether via death sentences, habitual offender laws, or piling on enhancements to extend incarceration.
Prosecutorial Ethics and Misconduct Allegations
The Riverside County DA’s Office has faced notable ethical controversies and criticism for its prosecutorial conduct in the past 10 years. These include high-profile incidents of misconduct in cases, public rebukes by courts, and scandalous behavior by officials:
Withholding Exculpatory Evidence: One of the most egregious cases involved People v. Parker (2010 murder of Brandon Stevenson). Prosecutors discovered recorded confessions by another man that pointed to the defendant Roger Parker’s innocence, yet a supervising prosecutor ordered that the evidence be suppressed. The deputy DA who found the tapes, Christopher Ross, was instructed “not to disclose the phone calls” and then was removed from the case. As a result, Parker remained jailed for six months longer (a total of four years in custody) before the murder charge was finally dropped in 2014. Parker only learned of the withheld evidence years later and sued the DA’s office, alleging a Brady violation (failure to turn over exculpatory evidence). While the Ninth Circuit ultimately ruled Brady alone didn’t give him a civil claim, the appellate court noted the serious misconduct and left open the possibility of relief under other legal theories. This case, stemming from Paul Zellerbach’s tenure, exemplified what observers call a “well-documented practice of…withholding exculpatory evidence” in some Riverside prosecutions.
Prosecutorial Lying: In another infamous matter, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals excoriated Riverside prosecutors for dishonesty in a murder trial. In the Johnny Baca case, a U.S. 9th Circuit panel found that a Riverside County prosecutor lied on the witness stand to bolster false testimony from a jailhouse informant. The state courts had upheld Baca’s conviction despite these falsehoods, but the federal judges were outraged, calling it part of an “epidemic” of prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Alex Kozinski and colleagues lambasted the handling of the case in a 2015 hearing that went viral in legal circles. The Ninth Circuit’s very public rebuke underscored criticisms that Riverside prosecutors at times bent the rules to win cases – with state courts often turning a blind eye until federal review intervened.
Campaign and Office Misconduct: The integrity of the DA’s office leadership itself came under question in 2014 when incumbent DA Paul Zellerbach was caught abusing his office for political gain. In the midst of the election campaign against Mike Hestrin, Zellerbach (while on duty) was observed taking down his opponent’s campaign signs, an act for which he later pled guilty to a misdemeanor. The scandal derailed Zellerbach’s re-election bid – the race shifted focus from policy to character – and he was defeated by Hestrin. This incident stands out as a blatant ethical lapse at the top of the office. Separately, Zellerbach’s hiring practices raised eyebrows: he was reported to have tried bringing aboard a political supporter accused of prior unethical conduct, contributing to internal turmoil. Hestrin, upon taking office, vowed to restore professionalism. However, critics claim a “win-at-all-costs” culture persisted. In 2018, Hestrin’s challenger (a former public defender) accused the office of a “toxic…culture” fixated on convictions over justice. She and others pointed to practices like those above – alleged evidence suppression, overcharging, and rare accountability for misconduct – as proof that ethical reform was needed.
Lack of Police Accountability: Another ethical criticism is the near-absence of prosecutions of law enforcement officers for on-duty misconduct or shootings. Despite several high-profile incidents and multi-million-dollar civil settlements over police killings or abuses in Riverside County, the DA’s office almost never files charges against officers. This pattern is not unique to Riverside, but watchdog reports note it as a concerning trend. The ACLU found that even where egregious force cases cost the county financially, officers faced no criminal consequences, reflecting prosecutors’ close ties to police. (It’s worth noting Hestrin enjoys strong police union support – see Endorsements below – which some say creates reluctance to prosecute officers.) In sum, while the vast majority of Riverside prosecutors perform ethically, these notable cases and patterns have drawn condemnation from judges, media, and reform advocates, tarnishing the office’s reputation for fair play.
Racial Disparities in Charging, Sentencing, and Bail
Riverside County’s justice outcomes show significant racial disparities at multiple stages. A comprehensive ACLU analysis (using 2017–2020 data) concluded that “outmoded [DA] policies” in Riverside have contributed to “vast racial disparities in charging” and other decisions. Key findings include:
Disproportionate Charging: Black residents are substantially overrepresented among those charged by the DA. While only about 7.3% of Riverside County’s population is Black, 13.9% of adults charged by the DA from 2017–2020 were Black. This charging rate (roughly double their population share) suggests possible racial bias in who gets prosecuted or in what charges are pursued. By comparison, Orange County (a neighboring jurisdiction) charged Black people at about 2.7 times their population rate in 2018 – indicating that racial overrepresentation is a statewide issue, though Riverside’s numbers are also stark. Latino individuals make up a large portion of Riverside’s justice-involved population as well, but parsing disparity for Latinx is complex since Latino/Hispanic is often recorded as an ethnicity overlapping with race. The data nonetheless signals that communities of color face prosecution at disproportionate rates in the county.
Sentencing Enhancements and Strikes: Racial gaps appear in how cases are prosecuted post charge, too. As noted, Black defendants’ cases are twice as likely to include a prior-strike enhancement compared to white defendants’ cases (7% vs ~3.4%). This means Black people more often face the possibility of a “third strike” life sentence for a new offense. Latinx defendants also see strike allegations somewhat above the white rate (3.9% vs 3.4%). Overall, about one third of all cases against Latinx people included at least one enhancement (31.8%), slightly higher than for Black defendants (29.5%) and clearly above the rate for white defendants (28.1%). Gang enhancements in particular exemplify disparity: statewide, over 90% of inmates serving gang enhanced sentences are Black or Latino, and in Riverside 93% of gang enhancement charges were filed against Black or Latinx individuals. These figures suggest that punitive add-ons are levied most heavily on people of color, compounding underlying policing disparities.
Bail and Pretrial Detention: Riverside County’s pretrial practices have also produced racial inequities. A study found that statewide (2011–2015), pretrial release rates differed by race – about 49% of white arrestees were released pretrial versus only 34% of Black arrestees. Locally, one metric of disparity is the frequency of extremely high bail amounts (>$100,000). From 2017–2020 in Riverside, 22.7% of Black felony defendants had bail set over $100k, compared to 17.1% for Latinx and 13.5% for white felony defendants. In other words, Black individuals accused of felonies were roughly 70% more likely than whites to face a prohibitively high bail, increasing the odds they stay jailed before trial. Even for lower-level offenses, the pattern held: about 3.1% of low-level cases involving Black defendants had bail >$100k, versus 1.5% for Latinx and 1.1% for white defendants. The result is that more people of color sit in jail pretrial simply due to inability to post bail, even when charged with similar crimes. Indeed, during the 2020 COVID emergency, when California implemented $0 bail for minor offenses, Riverside’s jail population initially dropped – but far less than other counties (only a 20% decline vs 30% statewide). This suggests Riverside was slower to release pretrial detainees, who disproportionately are poor and minority, and quickly returned to high incarceration levels.
Juvenile Justice Disparities: As mentioned, Riverside had been transferring youths to adult court at 2.5 times the state average. This harsh practice hit young people of color hardest. Before California ended direct filing of juveniles, Latinx minors were 8.6× more likely than white minors to be tried as adults in Riverside, and Black minors 4.3× more likely. Such disparities reflect deeper systemic biases – over-policing in certain neighborhoods and tough charging decisions – that funnel nonwhite youth into more punitive adult proceedings. Although laws like Prop 57 (2016) curtailed this by requiring a judge’s approval to try a juvenile as an adult, Riverside initially resisted full implementation. Public defenders had to fight to retroactively apply Prop 57 to cases that Zellerbach’s office had already filed directly in adult court in 2016. An appellate court disagreed with the DA’s narrow view and allowed those youths a chance at juvenile court hearings, indicating the office’s initial reluctance to back off aggressive youth prosecution.
In summary, people of color face harsher treatment at each stage in Riverside County – from higher likelihood of being charged, to more severe add-on charges and higher bail, to greater chance of extreme outcomes like adult prosecution for juveniles or capital punishment. Notably, a recent Racial Justice Act challenge cited statistics that nearly one-third of Riverside’s current capital defendants are Black (though only ~6% of residents are). And from 2015–2019, over 75% of those sent to death row from Riverside were people of color. These patterns have prompted calls for reforms such as “blind charging” (where prosecutors would not see a suspect’s race during initial charge decisions) to reduce implicit bias. The DA’s office under Hestrin has publicly stated it prosecutes conduct, not people, but the statistical outcomes show persistent racial imbalances that advocacy groups like the ACLU argue must be systematically addressed.
Conviction Rates and Plea Deal Trends
Both Mike Hestrin and Paul Zellerbach placed a premium on high conviction rates, a common metric for prosecutorial “success.” Hestrin has repeatedly touted that under his leadership the office achieved a 94% felony conviction rate – which he claimed was the highest in California. This figure is likely to include convictions obtained via guilty pleas as well as trial verdicts. (By comparison, many large counties report felony conviction rates in the 80–90% range.) Indeed, Hestrin’s 2014 campaign platform explicitly promised to improve conviction stats, suggesting that quantitative outputs like conviction rates were prioritized. In practice, Riverside’s rate did rise to the mid-90s%, a point Hestrin highlighted during his 2018 re-election to argue his approach was “working”.
However, such high conviction percentages are typically driven by extensive plea bargaining. Statewide, the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by pleas rather than trials – over 80% of California felony cases end in guilty pleas (with only a few percent going to jury trial verdicts) . Riverside is no exception. The DA’s focus on securing convictions may translate to fewer cases dismissed and fewer acquittals, achieved by negotiating plea deals in most cases. Plea deal trends in Riverside have mirrored “tough on crime” priorities: for example, defense attorneys report that prosecutors sometimes insist on plea agreements that include a strike offense (as noted earlier) or other conditions that can inflate a defendant’s future sentencing exposure. This has raised concerns that not all plea bargaining is driven by justice – some is driven by a desire to rack up convictions and maintain leverage over defendants. In 2018, Hestrin’s challenger Lara Gressley argued the office was “overly focused on convictions” at the expense of rehabilitation, indicating that line prosecutors might be discouraged from dismissing marginal cases or offering very lenient pleas.
That said, there have been shifts in plea and charging practices in response to reform laws. For instance, after California’s Proposition 47 (2014) reclassified many low-level felonies to misdemeanors, Riverside’s total felony filings dropped (as they did statewide). Hestrin has attributed a 46% reduction in juvenile filings during his first term in part to proactive crime prevention programs. And under pressure of new mandates, the office has expanded “collaborative courts” (e.g. drug court, mental health court) which often use deferred entry of judgment or plea diversion to resolve cases without convictions. Still, critics note Riverside prosecutors often decline to exercise discretion to drop minor charges. An ACLU study found about 57% of charges filed by Riverside in recent years were low-level offenses that could have been diverted or not charged at all. This was only slightly better than Orange County (64% low-level). In practical terms, it means many plea deals involve very minor crimes that arguably didn’t need prosecution in the first place (e.g. simple drug possession, petty theft). Pursuing such cases boosts conviction totals (padding the “stats and headlines,” as one critic put it) but may have little public safety benefit.
Conviction Integrity and Appeals: On a positive note, Riverside’s DA has established a Conviction Review Committee to investigate innocence claims and wrongful convictions. This unit, which predates Hestrin, has been used to review cases for potential exoneration – a practice reflecting modern prosecutorial ethics. The office also must contend with appeals; while its overall conviction rate is high, some notable convictions have been overturned (often due to misconduct as discussed). Such reversals are not captured in the raw conviction rate but affect the office’s record. For instance, the aforementioned Baca murder conviction was eventually vacated amid allegations of falsified testimony. Likewise, in capital cases, numerous Riverside death sentences from the past decade remain tied up on appeal or were reversed for errors, though new death judgments have slowed.
In sum, Riverside’s conviction rate achievements outpace many peer counties, reflecting a hard-driving approach to prosecutions and plea deals. Plea bargaining is the engine of this success, but it has drawn criticism. Defense attorneys and reformers argue that emphasizing convictions can foster a “win-at-all-costs” mentality, where securing a guilty plea or verdict trumps considerations of fairness or rehabilitation. Hestrin rejects that characterization, maintaining that holding offenders accountable is necessary for public safety. The tension between those views – public safety via high convictions vs. justice via case-by-case discretion – has defined much of the debate around Riverside’s prosecutorial practices.
Comparison to Other California Counties and State Averages
When examining Riverside County’s record alongside other large California counties (Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, Orange, etc.), clear differences and similarities emerge across the measured categories:
Death Penalty Usage: Riverside has been an extreme outlier. Along with a few other Southern California counties (Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Kern), Riverside accounted for a disproportionate share of America’s death sentences in the 2010s . In fact, in 2017 Riverside led the entire nation in death sentences, and it was #1 again in 2015. By contrast, counties like San Diego and Santa Clara issued very few or zero death sentences in that period, mirroring a statewide decline. Even Los Angeles – with five times Riverside’s population – typically had comparable or slightly fewer new death sentences than Riverside until recent years. The Fair Punishment Project identified Riverside as one of America’s “outlier” counties still aggressively pursuing capital punishment, alongside a handful of others (including Orange and Kern in California). That report linked these counties’ high death-sentencing to “overzealous prosecutors”, misconduct, and racial bias. Since 2019, however, Riverside’s death penalty pace has slowed dramatically, while a county like Los Angeles under a new DA (George Gascón) has formally halted all death penalty efforts. In short, Riverside stood out as California’s death penalty capital in the Hestrin/ Zellerbach era, even as most counties moved away from capital prosecutions.
Sentencing and Charging Severity: Compared to its peers, Riverside has been known for a tougher charging posture, though Orange and San Bernardino Counties have been similar in many respects. For example, Riverside’s practice of charging low-level offenses ~57% of the time (instead of diverting them) was slightly less punitive than Orange County’s ~64% but still indicates more aggressive charging than progressive jurisdictions (San Francisco, by contrast, moved to decline a range of low-level crimes in recent years) . In use of enhancements, Riverside’s volume (150k enhancements in 4 years) and “charge-everything” policy are comparable to traditionally hardline counties like Orange or Kern, whereas counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles (under Gascón) have adopted policies to curb most sentencing enhancements. A concrete point: gang enhancements – Riverside charged 1,151 in four years, whereas a reform-oriented DA like Gascón moved to drop gang enhancements in pending cases in LA. Riverside’s stance on Three Strikes also contrasts with some others; e.g. San Francisco’s DA pledged not to pursue third strikes for petty crimes, something not seen in Riverside where strike priors are routinely filed. Juvenile prosecutions in Riverside were higher than the state average (2.5×), whereas a county like Santa Clara or San Francisco was much lower. Only Orange County exceeded Riverside in direct filing minors to adult court prior to 2016 (Orange transferred youths at twice the state rate as well). Overall, Riverside, Orange, and San Bernardino have hewed to a more traditional hardline approach, while Los Angeles (recently) and some Bay Area counties have embraced moderation or reforms.
Prosecutorial Ethics and Misconduct: Unfortunately, prosecutorial misconduct issues have plagued several Southern California DA’s offices. Riverside’s incidents of Brady violations and lying witnesses echo problems in Orange County, which suffered a notorious jailhouse informant scandal in the 2010s (leading to overturned convictions and the DOJ rebuke of the Orange DA). Both Riverside and Orange were singled out by the Fair Punishment Project for high misconduct rates in death penalty cases – one study found allegations of misconduct in 84% of Riverside capital cases reviewed on direct appeal. Los Angeles’ DA’s office, being vastly larger, has had its share of misconduct findings, but it hasn’t been labeled an “epidemic” in recent years as it was in Riverside by the Ninth Circuit. Importantly, Riverside under Hestrin has a Conviction Review unit like many big counties (LA, SF, San Diego have similar units). However, Riverside has not pursued headline grabbing integrity reforms that some others did – for instance, it hasn’t instituted a blanket ban on certain police testimony or a do-not-call list of dishonest officers (San Francisco’s DA created such a list). When it comes to police accountability, most counties in California rarely charge officers; Riverside aligns with Orange and San Bernardino in essentially never prosecuting police shootings, whereas Los Angeles (under DA Gascón) and San Francisco (under former DA Chesa Boudin) broke with tradition by charging a few officers in recent years. In sum, Riverside’s ethical track record has been comparable to other traditionally conservative counties – marked by occasional scandals and little internal discipline – and stands in contrast to the reform initiatives seen in some progressive-led DA’s offices.
Racial Disparities: Sadly, racial disparities in the justice system are common across counties, but the degree varies. Riverside’s Black charging disparity (Black people ~14% of those charged vs 7% of population) is actually in line with many counties: Orange County’s was slightly worse proportionally (5.8% charged vs 2.1% population) , and Los Angeles in 2020 reported ~29% of felony defendants were Black vs 9% of county population. What stands out in Riverside is the intersection of race with the death penalty and juvenile transfers. Over a third of Riverside’s death sentences from 2015–2019 were for Black defendants, a concentration higher than in most counties. And the statistic that Latino youth were 8.6× more likely than white youth to be tried as adults in Riverside is extreme – indicating a larger racial gap than state averages. Other big counties also show disparities (Orange, for instance, disproportionately charged Latino youth as adults as well). In bail practices, Riverside’s tendency to impose high bail on Black defendants more often mirrors trends seen statewide (where poverty and race overlap to reduce pretrial release rates for minorities). Statewide reforms like the Racial Justice Act are just starting to uncover and address such disparities; Riverside has already seen some of the first RJA challenges because its numbers provided stark evidence (e.g. Black defendants making up ~30% of capital cases) . Compared to a very liberal county (say, San Francisco), Riverside has far more pronounced racial disproportionalities, partly due to its heavier enforcement approach. Compared to its Inland Empire neighbor San Bernardino, Riverside is similar or slightly more disparate in some metrics (SB County is roughly 9% Black population and, like Riverside, has historically charged Black individuals at higher rates and sought death sentences, though in raw numbers SB’s death sentences were fewer).
Conviction Rates and Plea Trends: Hestrin’s touted 94% felony conviction rate likely did put Riverside at the top among large counties. By contrast, past Los Angeles DAs cited conviction rates in the mid-80% range for felonies. San Diego and Orange DAs have claimed felony conviction rates around 90% in some reports, but not as high as 94%. Part of Riverside’s edge may be its high volume of plea deals on minor cases (which are easier to convert to convictions). The emphasis on convictions is a trait it shares with Orange County – the ACLU noted both offices “spend immense resources prosecuting low-level offenses” largely to pad statistics. Meanwhile, jurisdictions that embraced diversion (like San Francisco or LA under Gascón) saw conviction rates drop for low level crimes (because many such cases were never convicted at all). Another comparison is incarceration rates: Riverside’s incarceration (jail/prison) rate has traditionally been higher than more urban counties like LA or SF, and closer to Orange or San Bernardino’s rates. During COVID-19 emergency releases, Riverside reduced jail population less and rebounded faster than the state average, indicating a more incarceration-focused approach than some peers. In summary, by quantitative measures (convictions, jail population), Riverside aligns with other law-and-order counties, outperforming more reformist counties in sheer convictions while also drawing critique for prioritizing metrics over equitable outcomes.
Recent Controversies, Reforms, and Endorsements
In the last few years, Riverside’s DA’s office has been at the center of various debates and changes:
Reform Legislation Responses: DA Mike Hestrin has been a vocal opponent of certain California criminal justice reforms. He publicly decried Proposition 57 (2016), which expanded parole chances and shifted juvenile charging to judges, even though a majority of voters approved it. Hestrin (along with other conservative DAs) later supported Proposition 20 in 2020 – a failed initiative that sought to roll back parts of Prop 57 and Prop 47 – aligning with police unions in calling for tougher laws. Conversely, he strongly favored Prop 66 (2016) to speed up executions. This consistency earned him a reputation as “tough on crime to a fault” among progressive critics. Notably, when Governor Newsom announced a moratorium on executions in 2019, Hestrin publicly condemned the move, arguing it defied voters’ will. However, Hestrin’s office has complied with newer mandates like the Racial Justice Act – it has had to respond to RJA motions bringing forth Riverside’s racial statistics in death penalty cases. There is no indication Hestrin has initiated any major voluntary reforms (such as ceasing death penalty pursuits or not using gang enhancements) – to the contrary, a challenger described him as “an extremist DA” out of step with reform trends.
Public Criticisms and Endorsements: Hestrin enjoys strong backing from law enforcement groups and the traditional law-and-order establishment. Police and sheriff’s associations have endorsed him and donated generously to his campaigns. This has led outlets like Black Voice News to argue he is “beholden to police unions” and thus resistant to holding police accountable. On the other hand, victims’ advocates and many local city leaders have praised his tough stance on violent crime. In the 2022 election, Hestrin was endorsed by virtually every police chiefs’ and deputies’ union in the region, reflecting his alignment with their priorities. Meanwhile, reformist voices – e.g., the ACLU, community groups like Starting Over Inc. and Chicanxs Unidxs – have publicly criticized Hestrin’s record. They highlight the racial disparities and heavy prosecution of low-level offenses as signs that the office is “out of balance”. During the 2022 campaign, challenger Burke Strunsky (a judge and former prosecutor) stated, “We don’t need or want an extremist DA… [choosing] between being safe and being just is a false narrative”, implicitly accusing Hestrin of fearmongering and excess punitiveness. Likewise, Lara Gressley campaigned to “end the pursuit of the death penalty” and stop “mindlessly racking up statistics and headlines” in favor of strategies proven to improve safety. Though Hestrin won re-election, these critiques have put pressure on the office to embrace more transparency and fairness. In response, Hestrin has emphasized efforts like expanding mental health treatment programs and “collaborative courts” for addicts and veterans, aiming to show he is not solely conviction-focused.
Internal Developments: The DA’s office did implement some internal changes in recent years. It created new units (e.g. a fentanyl prosecution task force, an elder abuse vertical unit) to address emerging crime issues, which Hestrin touts as innovations. The Conviction Review Committee, as noted, continues to review wrongful conviction claims – for instance, it handled a case that led to the exoneration of a man wrongly convicted of murder decades ago (a case predating Hestrin, but cleared under his watch). Additionally, in late 2021, the California Attorney General opened an inquiry (along with other counties) into racial bias in jury selection by prosecutors; Riverside’s office indicated it would cooperate. As of 2025, there is also increased public record scrutiny: civil rights lawsuits like the Parker case have forced more internal emails and training materials into the open, helping advocacy groups identify needed policy changes (e.g., urging a policy of “blind charging” to reduce bias).
Looking ahead, Riverside County’s prosecutorial practices are at a crossroads between the old school tough-on-crime approach and the state’s broader shift toward justice reform. District Attorney Hestrin, backed by traditional law enforcement interests, has so far maintained a hard line on issues like the death penalty, charging enhancements, and resisting certain reforms. His immediate predecessor Zellerbach was similarly tough but left under an ethical cloud, which Hestrin avoided. The next few years will test whether public pressure – from watchdog reports, racial justice mandates, and electoral challengers – will push the Riverside DA’s Office to recalibrate its approach. For now, the public record of the past decade shows an office with remarkable conviction stats and punitive achievements, yet also marked by controversies, racial disparities, and an ongoing debate over what justice should look like in Riverside County.
Sources: This report draws on data and analyses from news outlets (Los Angeles Times, Courthouse News, Desert Sun/IE Voice), official statements, academic/think-tank studies, and civil society reports (ACLU of Southern California, Fair Punishment Project). All factual claims are supported by citations to these sources in the text above.
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“Not in it for Justice”: How California's Pretrial Detention and Bail ...
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