Chairman’s Message

FRED ROWBOTHAM
Chairman

Your PORAC Legal Defense Fund trustees and staff have been hard at work addressing many items that have come up recently, and others that have only now become more fully developed.

One of the more pressing issues pertains to Proposition 66, the death penalty reform initiative that PORAC spent a considerable amount of money and time on to get passed by the voters. The anti-death-penalty folks have stymied the proposition by use of the legal process. The LDF trustees directed that an amicus brief be completed and filed with the California Supreme Court on behalf of PORAC in support of the legality of Proposition 66. David Mastagni Sr. of Mastagni Holstedt, APC, was the point person selected by the trustees to handle the matter, and he personally oversaw the project to its completion. The brief that was filed can be located at: goo.gl/KuJffs. We await the Court’s decision on that matter.

Another pressing issue pertains to the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (RIPA). RIPA Board meetings are in full swing. President Durant sits as a board member with this group. As they work toward crafting the rules we will all have to follow in the coming years, LDF Administrator Ed Fishman and panel attorney Mike Rains of Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver have spent countless hours identifying the standout issues and how best to address them, in concert with Randy Perry. Some of those issues we may be able to address at the committee level through our representative on the board. However, it is growing increasingly likely that some of our main concerns will require a legislative solution. Our team continues to work toward the best possible outcome for our membership.

On another front, you may know that the National Border Patrol Council makes up our largest LDF membership group. PORAC LDF is representing the NBPC in a case that is our first ever to reach the Supreme Court of the United States. In this case, a border patrol agent, who was on the U.S. side of the border and being pelted with grapefruit-sized rocks, shot and killed a Mexican citizen who was on the Mexican side of the border. This case raises a very interesting legal question: Does a noncitizen, not on U.S. soil, have protections under the United States Constitution? In our case, it is being asserted that the agent violated the noncitizen’s civil rights, despite the fact that they were not in our country. This, at least in my mind, draws parallels to another high-profile case quickly making its way through the courts: civil rights for noncitizens who are not even in the country. Like most law enforcement use-of-force cases, this incident has both a civil and criminal component proceeding though the system, but they both seem to hinge on this same issue. Oral argument before the SCOTUS is scheduled for February 21. If you would like to follow the case, it is Hernandez v. Mesa, U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 15-118.

These are challenging times we are living in, and PORAC and LDF continue to stand behind all of our members in facing these challenges head on.