Several federal prosecutors, including the head of public corruption and the civil rights section, have submitted their resignations after a guilt agreement offered by the new United States prosecutor in Los Angeles to a Sheriffy who had strength.
Two sources confirmed to the Times that the United States lawyers Eli A. Alcaraz, Brian R. Faerstein and the head of the Cassie Palmer section renounced the office on an air “after the trial” presented on Thursday in the case of Tevor or the county of the county of the Peimienta assault and spraying A woman outside the Lancaster supermarket.
Upon arriving on Saturday afternoon, Ferstein said he had no comments. None of the other prosecutors said they resigned from consultations. The sources confirmed by the resignations requested anonymity because they feared reprisals. A spokesman for the United States prosecutor’s office declined to comment.
Kirk, who has bone “relieved duty” by the department of the Sheriff, was declared guilty in February of a serious crime of deprivation of rights under the color of the law and faced up to 10 years in prison. According to the guilt agreement presented on Thursday, which still requires the approval of a judge, it would serve a maximum of one year in prison. The government agreed to recommend a year of probation.
In June 2023, Kirk, responding to a robbery reported when he threw a woman to the ground and the pepper sprinkled her on the face while she filmed him outside a Winco de Lancaster. While the woman coincided with the description of a suspicious woman Kirk had received from a dispatcher, she was not armed or committed a crime at the time she faced her for the first time, according to the judicial records.
According to the new agreement, Kirk Wolde declared himself guilty of a violation of the minor crime less included in the deprivation of rights under the color of the law.
If the judge approves the declaration, according to the agreement, the United States prosecutor’s office “would move to attack” the determination of the jury that Kirk injured the victim.
Alcaraz, Palmer, Ferstein and another prosecutor, Michael J. Morse, all withdrew from the case on Friday, according to judicial presentations. The only assistant prosecutor in the United States signed by the guilt, Robert J. Keenan, did not participate previously in the case.
Bill essayli, We designate ourselves toTtorney for Los Angeles last month By President Trump, he also appears in the agreement.
Kirk’s lawyer, Tom Yu, declined to comment on Friday night. Previously, he described Kirk as a “hero, not a criminal” and said the video showed that he acted within the law to “stop a suspect of combative robbery.”
The Essayli movement to sacrifice a spontaneous abortion supplication to a defendant who had already been convicted was extremely unorthodox, according to Carley Palmer, a former supervisor in the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles, who is now a Halpern May partner.
“It is not unprecedented, but it is extraordinary, to try to make a jury verdict withdraw and replaced by a guilt agreement to a minor crime. The government invests extraordinary resources to bring a case like that to trial,” he said. “You have the agency’s investigation, you have every time of men or women … Then you have a jury that says you have it well beyond a reasonable doubt.”
To justify the search for a pleas agreement after conviction, prosecutors should have found evidence that the defendant was innocent or that there was serious misconduct by the trial team, according to Palmer.
Last month, the American district judge Stephen V. Wilson denied a motion of YU for an incorporation. Wilson ruled that the images of the incident were sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Kirk had used “objectively unreasonable force.”
“JH did not have a weapon, he did not attacked the defendant, he did not try to flee and a crime was not activated,” Wilson wrote, identifying the woman involved by the initials.
The judge also pointed out in his ruling that while Kirk acted aggressively towards the woman from the beginning, his partner managed to lead the judgment of the other suspect of robbery without using force.
There are notable differentials in the way in which the new guilt agreement describes what Kirk did, compared to a press release problem from the United States prosecutor’s office in February when the jury returned a guilt verdict.
The agreement makes references to the woman who has “resisted” Kirk’s attempt to stop her and describes her as “hit” on the deputy’s arm.
In his ruling last month, Wilson determined that this could have been seen as the victim who reacted the reflexive to Kirk’s actions, and pointed out that it is not clear if he even hits Kirk.
The plea agreement does not refer to the women’s wounds, while the February statement says that “it was treated by the head of the head of forceful force and lesions in the head, arms and road.”
The lawyer Caree Harper, who represents the woman with a civil lawsuit that reached an agreement earlier this year, said that the new guilt agreement is “changing the facts” and is not backed by video images of the incident.
“They are taking the creative freedom with the facts and deciding to give a jury of the companions of the middle finger of Trevor Kirk and should not be tolerated,” he told the Times. If Wilson approves the agreement, said Harper, he hopes that civil rights groups will launch protests and will urge state prosecutors or county to address the case.
Harper said that degrading Kirk’s position of a serious crime could allow him to continue working as an agent of the law. He will also retain his right to have a firearm without a sentence for serious crime.
“It should definitely not be able to use a badge again, anywhere in any state,” he said.
According to Robert Bonner, a former federal judge who now presides over the Civil Supervision Commission of the County, a pleas agreement after the conviction is an extreme rarity. Allowing supplications after the trial, said Bonner, could undermine the ability of prosecutors to negotiate in the future.
“If you did this routinely, you could never get guilty treatment,” he said.
Just although federal prosecutors and defense have agreed to the agreement, Bonner said, the judge is not that he cannot not adhere to him.
“I could reject all the guilt agreement, or you can accept the guilt agreement and say that I am not going to give a one year probation, I will give six months of custody or another period of time up to a year in prison,” he said.
Wilson last month refused to delay the judgment hearing of May 19 of Kirk, after prosecutors told him that Issayli wanted more time to review the case.
Support for Kirk began to gain strength on social networks after his accusation last September. In January, Nick Wilson, founder of a defense group of the first responders and spokesman of the Sheriff’s professional association of Los Angeles, wrote a letter for Trump to intervene before the case was to trial. The former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has become increasingly popular in the right -wing circles online, has also defended the case of Kirk, publishing an Instagram video of himself and Wilson comforting the deputy in Courthhouse after the trial.
Wilson, the Sheriff’s professional association spokesman, said Friday that he was “encouraged by the recent development in the case of Deputy Trevor Kirk and will continue to monitor the next sentence closely.”
“While this case should never have prosecuted the legs in the first place, we are deeply grateful that the Department of Justice Tok is a second impartial look at the facts and merits,” he said in an email. “This action sends a powerful message, not only in the case of Trevor, but to the agents of the law throughout the State and the nation that also feel abandoned or politicians aimed at the current climate.”
A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department did not immediately comment on the developments in the case of Kirk.
The wave of resignations occurs in the midst of another recent controversy in the federal prosecutor’s office. In March, a White House official fired Adam Schleifer as assistant to the United States prosecutor, in an email of a line informing him that the dismissal was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.”
Schleifer recently challenged his dismissal, calling him “illegal” and claiming that he was motivated in part for his prosecution of Andrew Wiederhorn, the former president and executive director of Fat Brands, which possesses the chains of Fatburger and Johnny Rockets restaurants. Schleifer had also published negative comments on Trump’s duration for a period in which he left his job as a prosecutor to run for a position as a Democrat.
According to Meghann Cuniff, a reporter for independent legal matters, the Department of Justice is reviewing A separate case that involves Alexander SmirnovA former FBI informant who declared himself guilty of lying on a false bribery scheme involving President Biden and his son Hunter. A federal judge sentenced Smirno to six years in prison.
The agitation in the federal prosecutor of Los Angeles is still massive resignations in the office of the United States prosecutor in Manhattan earlier this year, when several prosecutors resigned after those appointed by the Trump administration pressed Machor.
