defendant

A bill to tighten California’s rules on mental health diversion — a process that allows certain criminal defendants to avoid prison for arrests linked to mental illness — is now on the verge of being signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Assembly Bill 46, authored by Stephanie Nguyen (D-Elk Grove), gives judges much wider discretion to decide whether a defendant should be eligible for diversion. Under the current law, judges must presume mental illness was a factor if a defendant with a legitimate diagnosis seeks diversion. In order to defeat a diversion request, the burden is on prosecutors to prove mental health issues were not a factor in the alleged crime.

The new measure — which moved through the state Senate with no opposition last month and is expected to clear the reconciliation process in the Assembly this week — also gives judges more latitude to block diversion if a defendant poses “a risk of danger to public safety,” as opposed to the higher “unreasonable risk” standard that was passed in 2018. Defendants charged with attempted murder will no longer be eligible for diversion under the new bill.

Proponents of more inclusive diversion policies argue that many people with mental health issues are locked up in California prisons and jails, where they are unable to receive the help they need.

The pending bill’s supporters say its changes are designed to address cases like that of Gilberto Guttierrez, a Los Angeles County man who has been accused of attacking his wife four times over the last 12 years.

In 2014, a misdemeanor domestic violence allegation landed Guttierrez on probation. Three years later, Guttierrez was ordered to take anger management classes after prosecutors brought felony domestic violence charges against him. Last February, prosecutors allege, he carried out a “brutal attack” on his wife with a glass bottle, leaving her with “extensive injuries,” according to a motion filed in his current criminal case. That time, the court filings show, Guttierrez threatened to kill her.

Despite objections from prosecutors and L.A. County probation officials, a judge granted a request to give Guttierrez mental health diversion last July.

A month later, prosecutors allege, he beat his wife until she fell into a coma.

When it passed in 2018, the original mental health diversion law was heralded as a needed off-ramp for defendants suffering from serious psychological issues — offering treatment to those who need it rather than a prison cell. But with voters statewide souring on progressive criminal justice reforms, lawmakers have sought to make it harder for defendants to qualify.

“AB 46 preserves diversion as an important pathway to care while ensuring judges have a clearer and more workable standard when serious public safety concerns are present,” Nguyen said in a statement last month.

Under the existing rules, defendants who successfully argue for pretrial mental health diversion spend two years undergoing a court-appointed treatment plan instead of facing a conviction. Prosecutors must prove the defendant is likely to commit a serious violent crime, a so-called “super strike,” again in order to block diversion.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, one of many prosecutors statewide who supported Nguyen’s bill, said that has been a nearly impossible standard to overcome.

“Guttierrez being your example: Judge, if you release him, he’s going to probably beat his wife up again, and if he does this time, he could kill her. But for the grace of God, he hasn’t killed her up until now,” Hochman said.

He added that due to the judge’s decision to grant diversion in Guttierrez’s case, “you have three little kids who likely won’t have their mom for the rest of their life.”

A spokesperson for Newsom did not respond to a request for comment about his plans for the legislation.

A 2020 Rand Corporation study found 61% of the nearly 5,500 mentally ill inmates housed in Los Angeles County at that time were “likely appropriate candidates” for diversion.

But a number of troubling incidents have led to pushback against the existing diversion law.

In a letter supporting Nguyen’s bill, the California District Attorneys Assn. rattled off a list of cases in which prosecutors say the law’s shortcomings had deadly consequences. They pointed to a case in Sacramento where a defendant stabbed a 40-year-old man to death after he was granted diversion in a robbery case. In Santa Clara, the letter said, a woman on mental health diversion for carjacking proceeded to steal another car and slam it into an outside table at a restaurant, leaving one person dead and others injured.

Nikhil Ramnaney, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney in Southern California, said thousands of people benefit from mental health diversion every year without reoffending and chastised the bill’s supporters for cherry-picking horrible — but rare — cases to muster support for their proposal.

“This is their most effective strategy because it works. Pick up the most visceral, outrageous anecdotes and then repeat them and amplify them as much as possible,” he said. “That’s how we get bad policy.”

Defense attorney Alexandra Kazarian said California politicians are repeating age-old mistakes of trying to arrest their way out of a mental health crisis.

“Without this option, you throw them into prison for a couple of years, they get out, and nothing changes. I’ve seen real change in my clients who have been granted these and who have just been on horrific mental health breaks and who, two years later, fully have their lives together,” she said. “You’re always going to be able to find an outlier. You’re always going to be able to find somebody who ruins what is a great project or program.”

Hochman said the modified mental health diversion law is a “rebalancing” of the scales in California after years of attempts to lower the state’s overcrowded jail populations affected public safety.

“In the end, I’m not looking for pendulum swings,” he said. “I think we did have a pendulum swing when these laws were being passed and people weren’t really discussing, or at least understanding, the public safety impact of laws that seem on their surface to be very — I wouldn’t even use the word ‘progressive,’ but very helpful to people who are suffering.”

The sentencing of Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg to 14 years in federal prison on Monday brings the NBA a step closer to concluding its nine-month investigation into the Clippers allegedly circumventing the salary cap.

Sanberg pleaded guilty in October to federal charges of conspiring to bilk investors out of $248 million for portraying the now-defunct Aspiration as a “socially-conscious and sustainable banking services and investment products” firm.

The NBA has declined to comment on the status of the probe centered on $60 million invested in Aspiration by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and the $28-million contract Clippers star Kawhi Leonard signed with Aspiration for endorsement and marketing work that he never delivered.

Players are allowed to have separate endorsement and other business deals, but at issue is whether the Clippers participated in arranging the side deal beyond simply introducing Aspiration executives to Leonard. Doing so would be a violation of Article 13 of the NBA collective bargaining agreement, punishable by a $4.5-million fine, the loss of a first-round draft pick and the voiding of Leonard’s contract.

The NBA draft takes place June 23-24 and the Clippers have three picks, including the fifth overall selection. The league is not expected to release its findings until after the NBA Finals, which begin Wednesday between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs.

Clippers officials haven’t commented on the investigation. But Leonard, who has one year left on a three-year, $149.5-million contract that will pay him $50.3 million next season, told The Athletic after the Clippers’ season-ending game April 15 that “I think we’re going to be in the clear. I’m not stressing.”

Otherwise, among the few public comments about the investigation were letters submitted to federal court judge Stephen V. Wilson ahead of Sanberg’s sentencing by Ballmer and the law firm conducting the probe on behalf of the NBA.

The letter from Dave Anders of Wachtell Lipton stated that Sanberg provided documentation and information helpful to the NBA investigation during two in-person interviews.

“In all our dealings with Mr. Sanberg, both directly and through his counsel, he provided information that was consistent with our review of contemporaneous documents and other evidence,” Anders wrote. “Mr. Sanberg’s cooperation substantially assisted our investigation, including our ability to develop a more complete understanding of key events.”

Ballmer countered by asking Wilson for a stiff sentence in a five-page Victim Impact Statement posted on social media by his lawyer, David N. Kelley.

“Sanberg continues to exploit his fraud of Mr. Ballmer for his benefit, providing information to the NBA in return for a sentencing letter that the league submitted on his behalf,” Kelley wrote. “The reliability of Sanberg’s information is suspect given that he has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, and the government has made its own determination that he is not credible.”

Before handing down the sentence, Wilson made it clear that Sanberg’s credibility was questionable.

“He portrays himself as a do-gooder who was in business to help the world, but he did personally gain from his fraud,” Wilson said, later adding, “I would put the grade of his fraud at the zenith.”

Ballmer, a former longtime CEO of Microsoft who has owned the Clippers since 2014, accused Sanberg of targeting him for his well-known interest in environmental sustainability and exaggerating their relationship to convince others to invest in the fraudulent company. He said he met Sanberg only once.

Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration in September 2021. A month later, the Clippers announced a $300-million sponsorship deal with the company. Ballmer nearly granted Aspiration naming rights to the team’s new $2-billion venue as well, but instead chose financial services firm Intuit. Ballmer made an additional $10-million investment in Aspiration on March 9, 2023.

Ballmer was added in November as a defendant in a civil lawsuit against Sanberg and several others associated with Aspiration. Ballmer and the other defendants are accused by 11 investors in Aspiration of fraud and aiding and abetting fraud, with the plaintiffs seeking at least $50 million in damages.

Kelley contended that Ballmer was added as a defendant because of his “visibility and resources,” and portrayed the Clippers owner as a victim, saying “Mr. Ballmer’s losses are not measured solely, or even primarily, on a balance sheet. They are measured in the reputational damage that will take years to remediate, and in the chilling effect on future endeavors intended to do good.”

The lone public comment about the investigation from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver came during All-Star Weekend in February at the Intuit Dome when he described the issue as “enormously complex.”

“You have a company in bankruptcy, you have thousands of documents, multiple witnesses that needed to be interviewed,” Silver said.

The investigation was triggered by reports from podcaster Pablo Torre that Leonard’s sponsorship deal with Aspiration was to circumvent the salary cap. Torre and the staff of “Pablo Torre Finds Out” won a Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting for their efforts.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice has acknowledged removing from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and insurrection, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”

The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to reimagine the history of the assault on the U.S. Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of President Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes during the Capitol assault, including those convicted of sedition and of attacking officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and crutch. More than 100 police officers were injured, many of them seriously, and five died as a consequence.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776-billion fund meant to compensate Trump allies who claim they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted. Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has not ruled out that Jan. 6 rioters convicted of violence will be eligible for payouts, prompting bipartisan anger in Congress.

After a journalist on Friday observed on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” removing news releases on its website that were related to the Jan. 6 attack, including about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and also faced separate state charges of soliciting a minor, the department responded through its “rapid response” account that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.”

“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,” the post said. “This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”

Among the releases removed from the site were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups, some of which resulted in convictions and long prison sentences.

The Justice Department, in an unopposed motion last month, asked a federal appeals court to vacate those seditious conspiracy convictions, a request that was granted Thursday. The department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members.

Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 and was indicted on felony charges related to his actions. Those charges were dismissed after his 2024 election victory.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

As many as a dozen letters — including one from the NBA — were submitted by the attorney for Aspiration Partners co-founder Joe Sanberg ahead of his sentencing Monday in an effort to persuade the judge to trim the 17 years prosecutors have requested for each of the two counts of fraud.

Sanberg pleaded guilty in October to the federal charges of conspiring to bilk investors out of $248 million for portraying the now-defunct Aspiration as a “socially-conscious and sustainable banking services and investment products” firm.

Another letter was also submitted, however, and it wasn’t intended to assist Sanberg.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer’s attorney David N. Kelley of O’Melveny and Myers wrote that Ballmer was defrauded of a $60-million investment in Aspiration and that the harm to his reputation is “immeasurable.”

The five-page Victim Impact Statement concludes: “Mr. Ballmer’s losses are not measured solely, or even primarily, on a balance sheet. They are measured in the reputational damage that will take years to remediate, and in the chilling effect on future endeavors intended to do good at scale.

“We ask the court to impose a sentence that accounts for those harms, promotes respect for the law, and deters those who would seek to appropriate the reputations of others to advance fraudulent aims.”

The letter states that the Clippers lost out on a $300 million sponsorship agreement with Sanberg in exchange for the team to wear Aspiration jerseys patches. Also lost was about $20 million the Clippers paid for carbon offset purchases and the $60 million Ballmer invested in the company.

Ballmer, a former long-time CEO of Microsoft, accused Sanberg of targeting him for his well-known interest in environmental sustainability and exaggerating their relationship to convince others to invest in the fraudulent company. In the letter, Ballmer says he met Sanberg only once.

Ballmer was added in November as a defendant in an existing civil lawsuit against Sanberg and several others associated with Aspiration. Ballmer and the other defendants are accused by 11 investors in Aspiration of fraud and aiding and abetting fraud, with the plaintiffs seeking at least $50 million in damages.

The letter dismisses the allegations in the lawsuit as “nonsense,” stating Ballmer was added as a defendant because of his “visibility and resources,” and reiterates that Ballmer himself is a victim of fraud. The action has damaged his reputation, the letter states, “and has further linked Mr. Ballmer to Sanberg’s fraud in the eyes of the public.”

The letter to the court, however, makes no mention of the $28-million contract Clippers star Kawhi Leonard signed with Aspiration for endorsement and marketing work. Players are allowed to have separate endorsement and other business deals, but at issue is whether the Clippers participated in arranging the side deal beyond simply introducing Aspiration executives to Leonard.

Leonard has addressed the accusations only once, denying wrongdoing and saying, “I understand the full contract and services that I had to do. Like I said, I don’t deal with conspiracies or the click-bait analysts or journalism that’s going on.”

The arrangement could be considered circumventing the NBA salary cap, a serious violation of league rules. Ballmer steadfastly denies arranging the deal between Aspiration and Leonard, who by all accounts performed no duties for Aspiration.

The NBA is investigating the complicated relationships between Ballmer, Leonard and Aspiration. One of the letters submitted by Sanberg’s attorney to the judge is from the law firm conducting the probe, and it states that the disgraced executive provided documentation and information helpful to the NBA investigation during two in-person interviews.

“In all our dealings with Mr. Sanberg, both directly and through his counsel, he provided information that was consistent with our review of contemporaneous documents and other evidence,” wrote Dave Anders of Wachtell Lipton. “Mr. Sanberg’s cooperation substantially assisted our investigation, including our ability to develop a more complete understanding of key events.”

Eventually the ledger will include the results of the NBA investigation into the allegations against Ballmer and Leonard. And that finding might impact the reputation of both more than Sanberg’s fraudulent dealings.