Judge David W. Stuart of LAC Superior Court let former DA Jackie Lacey access a pretrial intervention program for resolving charges that her husband David Lacey pointed a handgun at some unarmed demonstrators outside his residence.
David Lacey got three charges for an assault crime in August 2020, around 5 months after pointing the gun at those protestors. Those three people rang Lacey’s doorbell early in the morning to protest against Jackie Lacey.
Under the judge-approved agreement terms, the legal system would dismiss the case against David Lacey if he does community service for 100 hours as well as attends gun safety and anger management classes. Lacey is not legally permitted to possess a firearm up to the completion of that 18-month-long agreement.
Stuart described Lacey as a person who otherwise led a productive and exemplary life. The judge also found the program appropriate since Lacey lacks a criminal record, plus his accused offense resulted from a politically charged and unique situation that might not reoccur.
Had Lacey been convicted, every single assault count against him would have carried up to a one-year sentence in LAC jail. The Office of the Attorney General, California, handled Lacey’s criminal case because his wife was working as LAC’s top prosecutor when the incident took place.
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’s co-founder Melina Abdullah decried it as an excessively lenient arrangement, and she requested judge Stuart to outlaw Lacey from firearm possession. Abdullah was among the three protestors whom Lacey held at gunpoint last year.
Abdullah also stated that the system was treating Lacey delicately, and she argued that a defendant with no political clout might have had felony charges.
As for Abdullah, that treatment means that the threat Lacey posed to her life does not mean anything.
Lacey’s defense lawyer Samuel Tyre did not feel that the accused has done anything wrong. Anyhow, the attorney said that the agreement let his client avoid the possibility of a state jury not agreeing with their position.
Terming the arrangement fair and appropriate, Tyre said that Lacey has not been almost arrested prior to this case.
Abdullah’s lawyer Carl Douglas was relieved to know that the accused would not get his weapon’s possession again in the near future.
As for Douglas, the possible situation of Lacey being permitted to possess the weapon in the probationary time would be an unthinkable one. Therefore, Douglas was happy to know that Stuart balanced the legal equities for the safety of the community.
Jackie Lacey repeatedly failed to have a meeting with African-American activists, who challenged her track record of seldom suing law enforcement personnel in connection with the shootings of unarmed people. So, in March 2020, Abdullah was the lead of around 30 demonstrators who were angry at Lacey for the above-mentioned. The protestors were outside the Lacey family’s Granada Hills residence chanting and drumming when Abdullah, Dahlia Ferlito and Justin Marks approached their front door.
In a video from the scene, David Lacey answers the door while pointing a handgun towards the demonstrators. Holding the weapon’s trigger, he threatened to shoot when answering Abdullah’s question.
LA police arrived at the spot immediately after being informed of the situation. Jackie Lacey then held a press conference in which she expressed regret for David’s actions and said that the incident came after a sequence of threats against her when she pursued another term of office as the district attorney.
One of those threats was so serious that the family sought an investigation from the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD), but it did not file any charges.
The event happened just a few hours before the primary election for a contentious DA’s race. Lacey could not achieve the above 50% vote required to win that election outright, and she lost to ex-San Francisco DA George Gascón in the November 2020 general election.