Calif judge tries to bar leftist colleague from resentencing cop killer, social media history shows why

In an extraordinary story out of California, one judge is trying to get a second judge removed from a resentencing case on the grounds that the second judge is biased in favor of the criminal who’s set to be resentenced.

The first judge, Patrick Connolly, is concerned about robbery suspect Justin Flint’s resentencing because he prosecuted Flint’s original case before becoming a judge, according to Fox News.

Fox News notes that Flint “was convicted in 2007 of felony murder for the death of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Maria Rosa for his role in a robbery in her Long Beach driveway.”

The problem, according to Connolly, is that the judge presiding over Flint’s case, Daniel Lowenthal, is sympathetic to criminals — which is admittedly no surprise, given that he’s the son of Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat.

Case in point: Last year Lowenthal (the judge) “declared a mistrial for a robbery suspect who argued he could not properly take notes in the courtroom because he was not getting enough sleep in jail,” according to Fox News.

And yes, this really happened.

“A Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in a case against a man facing life in prison because the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department kept him in jail cells without beds or blankets for two nights,” the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.

“There is absolutely no way, if there was a conviction, that it would stand,” Lowenthal reportedly claimed in court.

In a petition reportedly filed this week, Connolly also included alleged screenshots from Lowenthal’s Facebook showing him deriding the criminal justice system.

In one post, Lowenthal accused the police of suffering from a “paramilitary, aggressive policing culture that often results in excessive force being used.”

Look:

(Source: Fox News)

In another stunning post, he attacked the United States for imprisoning too many criminals.

“Despite comprising just 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prison population. Why? Because we criminalize many behaviors that shouldn’t be considered crimes, impose absurdly long prison sentences, don’t rehabilitate those we put in the system, and don’t adequately treat our mentally ill population,” the post reads.

“Putting a mentally ill or addicted person in a cage doesn’t rehabilitate them–it makes their problems worse. And, because they’ve now been put in the system, and have a criminal record, they are unemployable. This then becomes a revolving door phenomenon–once released, even more traumatized, unemployable, and without services, they quickly end up back in the system. And each time they return the punishment gets progressively more harsh,” it continues.

Look:

(Source: Fox News)

Lowenthal then bragged about dismissing cases against suspects he didn’t believe deserved to be punished.

“Two recent cases, in my court, illustrate this phenomenon. The first involved a middle-aged man with a long record. Drunk, he staggered in to a grocery store, took a six-pack of beer, and walked past the check out stand without paying. The clerk took the beer away from him and put it by her feet. Stumbling, he stooped down to pick it up and, in his off-balanced state, his hand slightly brushed up against the clerk’s ankle,” the post reads.

“The DA. charged the case as a robbery and issued a plea bargain offer of 10.5 years prison. I dismissed the case,” it continues.

According to Fox News, the second case he bragged about dismissing involved a mentally ill man who’d reportedly threatened two children with a machete in a public bathroom.

“Additional posts … referenced studying under the Marxist philosopher and former fugitive Angela Davis at the University of California, Santa Cruz,” Fox News reported Friday.

Connolly’s petition also “alleges that Lowenthal improperly deemed a legal brief filed in connection with the case a habeas corpus petition to have the case dismissed entirely.”

The petition specifically zeroes in on Lowenthal’s reported claim that Connolly had committed “serious misconduct” in the case by withholding evidence from Flint’s defense.

“The evidence includes a claim from another felon who said Flint was down the street at the time of the crime – however, prosecutors argued that Flint admitted to being a lookout and that lookouts don’t have to be present on scene,” Fox News noted.

From the sounds of it, Lowenthal is a typical leftist judge — one of many across the nation.

Vivek Saxena

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