Yolo DA accuses ACLU

Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig hates criminals and crime. He’s also no fan of the American Civil Liberties Union and launched an unusual attack on the 92-year-old civil-rights organization last week.

In a guest comment published in Woodland’s Daily Democrat, Reisig complained that “the American Civil Liberties Union and its allies have waged a relentless attack on public safety for decades.”

The point of the op-ed (co-written by Guadalupe Diaz) seemed to be to defend California’s death penalty against a new ballot measure—Proposition 34—that if approved by voters this fall would end executions in the state.

But Reisig seemed equally concerned with getting in some digs at the ACLU.

“The ACLU and its agents are responsible for endless delays in the criminal justice system, frivolous appeals and a mountain of misinformation. And now, they claim the death penalty is irrevocably broken and costly and should be repealed.” (There’s no law against hyperbole, it seems.)

Someone else who claims the death penalty is broken: The guy who wrote it. Former prosecutor and Sacramento attorney Donald Heller has since become a vocal opponent of killings by the state and a supporter of Prop. 34.