The crime that Shanice Amanda Dyer committed when she was 17 years old was so horrifying that it appeared to have been committed at random.

Appellate records in the case show she was a documented member of a faction of the Crips street gang in South Los Angeles and wanted to help avenge a killing by a rival group in August 2019. That’s what it means.

The gang’s randomly chosen targets are Alfredo Carrera, an expectant father, and his best friend Jose, an aspiring astrophysicist in a doctoral program at the University of California, Irvine, who was visiting Carrera to deliver a baby gift. -It was Antonio Flores Vazquez. A car stopped and Dyer was inside. After a brief altercation, Dyer and two other defendants fired shots at the same time, killing both men, authorities said. A third man in the street injured his back while putting his 1-year-old daughter into a car seat.

Dyer sent a text message taking responsibility for the shooting and said he was “pleased” to be in the news, according to an appeals court filing documenting evidence gleaned from Dyer’s Instagram account. .

Dyer was tried as a juvenile in the District of Los Angeles County. Atty. Georges Gascon had a strict policy at the time of not prosecuting teenagers as adults. She pleaded guilty to murder charges in 2021 and was released last February, according to probation records reviewed by the Times. Six months later, she was arrested in connection with another murder in Pomona.

Dyer’s case is one of several in which Gascón has shown leniency but been released only after being charged with another violent crime. Now, as the incumbent district attorney takes heat from his challenger in the November election for progressive policies, how to deal with the most violent juvenile offenders has become a key issue.

Gascón’s youth policy aligns with a broader movement to keep young people out of California’s adult prisons, although only about a dozen teens were tried in adult court last year—her Without the incident, Dyer remained before a juvenile court judge who could have sentenced him to life in prison for the double murder.

In the most recent case, prosecutors say they lured Joshua Streeter, 21, to a Pomona strip mall in June, where he was shot and killed. Dyer, now 22, has not been charged with pulling the trigger, but he has been charged with murder again.

She has not entered a plea and is scheduled to appear in court again next month, according to court records. Her lawyer declined to comment.

When Gascón took office in 2020, he cited research on adolescent brain development that shows people don’t fully mature until age 25 and banned prosecutors from prosecuting juveniles as adults under any circumstances. Ta.

Gascón decided midway through his term to lift bans and allow prosecutors to request transfers to adult court in some cases. The move comes after widespread backlash over the case of Hannah Tubbs, 26, who was tried in juvenile court for sexual assault she committed as a teenager.

Judicial approval is required to prosecute juveniles as adults, and the hurdles tend to be high. Two-thirds of attempts to refer teens to adult court last year failed, according to a report released by the California Attorney General’s Office.

But critics of the “progressive prosecutorial godfather” say harsher penalties for violent teenage offenders should be pursued more aggressively.

Sean Randolph, the district attorney’s former top juvenile prosecutor, has pushed back against Gascón’s policies, claiming he faced retaliation after winning a case last year and calling Dyer’s latest killing charges “predictable and preventable.” said.

Commenting on Gascon’s initial ban on pursuing adult charges, Randolph said, “Gascon released juveniles who showed homicidal tendencies long before their brains had fully developed, forcing vulnerable citizens to commit murder again.” “I ordered him to cause this,” he said.

Gascon’s current policy requires Los Angeles County prosecutors who seek to prosecute juveniles as adults to refer the case to an internal committee. The district attorney’s office said 23 such proposals have been approved, and only one was transferred by a judge to adult court.

Tiffiny Bracknell, the city’s chief spokesperson, said Dyer’s original case would not meet the criteria for transfer to adult court even if the city had allowed transfers to adult court in 2021. He said it was unlikely. Mr Bracknell said the boy had no criminal history and “the evidence points to that”. She said she was approached to commit the crime by a more influential person due to her age and position within the gang, which is used in deciding whether a minor can be transferred to the adult system. It becomes an element of

Bracknell said another teenage suspect involved in the killing was also tried as a juvenile and is “currently on probation and doing well.” Adult suspects in those killings are still awaiting trial, Bracknell said.

Motions to transfer teenagers to adult court in California are becoming increasingly difficult to win, thanks in part to the 2022 House Bill sponsored by Gascón. The bill would require prosecutors to prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that a juvenile cannot be rehabilitated in a juvenile hall before a judge approves a transfer.

Some prosecutors argue the new standard is next to impossible. In 2022, an Englewood judge ruled that a West Chester teenager accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend and her sister and setting fire to the scene still does not meet the criteria for transfer to adult court. handed down the verdict.

Nathan Hockman, a former federal prosecutor who is running to oust Gascón, said Gascón’s opponents “couldn’t have done a worse job in the Dyer case.”

“First of all, he imposed a comprehensive policy of refusing to send juveniles to criminal court under any circumstances. Mr. Hochman also said that if she was detained in a juvenile detention center and released after several years, , also rejected the recommendations of senior prosecutors who warned that he was very likely to commit murder again,” Hochman said in a statement. “What I’m trying to do is help prosecutors make the best decision possible based on two things: the facts and the law.”

Asked what strategy he would use to overcome the high burden of state transfer laws if elected, Hockman said, “We’re never going to shy away from an uphill battle,” but he doesn’t have more details. Didn’t make it clear.

For crime victims who draw a line between Mr. Gascón’s actions and street violence, changes to state laws regulating juveniles mattered little.

Alfred Carrera’s sister, Cynthia, said her family was not informed of Dyer’s release this year.

“She’s a cold-blooded murderer who was released,” Cynthia said of Dyer. “It’s pretty shocking that she was able to do it again. It comes from Los Angeles’ crime mitigation laws.”