juvenile

More than a year after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced indictments against 30 probation officers accused of coordinating or allowing so-called “gladiator fights” between youths inside L.A. County juvenile halls, almost half of the criminal cases are falling apart.

In recent weeks, state prosecutors dismissed charges against at least 10 of the 30 officers from the initial indictment, according to court documents and interviews with defense attorneys. An additional four officers entered into plea deals Tuesday that will end with their cases dropped after completing community service.

Attorneys for the officers and probation union officials said the prosecutions were an overreaction to a video — first published by The Times in 2024 — that showed officers standing by as several youths pummeled a fellow inmate at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

“I believe the case was a reactionary case that was overcharged,” said attorney Adam Koppekin, who represents an officer whose case was dismissed. “They swept in a bunch of truly innocent probation officers who were following directives and doing their jobs.”

Two officers at the center of the Los Padrinos fight video — identified in court filings as Taneha Brooks and Shawn Smyles — remain charged with multiple counts of child abuse and conspiracy to commit willful cruelty against children. In the security video, the two officers can be seen laughing and shaking hands with the assailants. The 17-year-old who was attacked in the video suffered a broken nose and a concussion, according to a summary of his grand jury testimony contained in a motion filed in the case.

Brooks has repeatedly declined to speak to Times reporters. She showed up in court Tuesday in support of the other officers. E-mails to her attorney and a lawyer representing Smyles were not immediately returned.

Taneha Brooks, an L.A. County probation officer listed as the top defendant in the “Gladiator Fight” case, leaves the Clara Foltzridge Criminal Justice Center on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA. Brooks has been accused of orchestrating and allowing many of the fights between juveniles in L.A. County detention centers that sparked the California Department of Justice’s investigation. Her case will be heard in May.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Bonta said when announcing charges last year that his office had identified 69 other fight incidents involving nearly 150 youths between the ages of 12 and 18. The 30 officers were indicted on 71 counts of conspiracy, battery and child abuse.

But many of those other fights were different from the 2023 video in that they lasted only seconds, involved minimal injuries and ended after probation officers intervened, according to defense motions and video reviewed by The Times.

The Times confirmed that state prosecutors dismissed charges against 10 officers in recent weeks through interviews with attorneys and two law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Court documents reviewed by The Times showed that some of the cases were dismissed “in the interest of justice” after motions filed by the state attorney general’s office. Records of those officers’ arrests were then ordered sealed, the documents show.

In a statement Tuesday, the attorney general’s office said it adjusts its treatment of defendants “based on our continued consideration of all evidence developed before, during and after criminal charges were initiated.”

“Some defendants were appropriately dismissed from the case based on the law as applied to their factual circumstances,” the statement said.

Amid the dismissals and plea deals, Bonta’s critics questioned his fitness to take over the probation department to enforce needed reforms, a move the attorney general has been seeking court permission to make since last year.

“What we are seeing raises real questions about a rush to judgment, one that has already had the effect of maligning an entire profession without the facts being fully vetted,” Curtis Chambers, president of the union that represents rank-and-file probation officers, said in a statement. “When cases begin to fall apart after being advanced so publicly, it is fair to ask whether the process itself was flawed from the outset.”

Motions to dismiss charges in the case paint some of the officers as rookies deferring to their superiors. Defense attorneys for others questioned why state prosecutors charged officers who failed to intervene in fights that were in effect over before they began.

The Times reviewed video of one incident that showed a fistfight between two youths that lasted 20 seconds. In the brief dust-up, the teens throw a series of wild hooks at each other with few of the punches actually making contact. The officer charged in that incident briefly paused before joining a crowd of other officers who pulled the two apart. That officer, whose case has since been dismissed, was charged with two counts of willful cruelty to a child.

The indictments — along with a civil lawsuit and grand jury testimony referenced in motions to dismiss the charges — portray Brooks and Smyles as the main drivers of the fights.

They told other officers who were present, all of them rookies in the juvenile halls, “not to say anything, write down anything, and just watch when youth fights occurred,” according to the charges.

One juvenile told grand jurors he was “incentivized to fight” by Brooks and claimed both officers “rewarded him for fighting by giving him extra snacks,” according to a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of one officer.

According to the court filing, the juvenile told the grand jury that Brooks awarded special jobs to kids she favored.

“He testified Ms. Brooks would pick the ‘KP’ or kitchen patrol person based upon that person’s fighting prowess,” the motion said.

A Times investigation last year found the practice of probation officers rewarding teens who beat up other youths in custody was a problem that predated the “Gladiator Fight” scandal, with one attorney calling it an “open secret.”

Jonathan Evans, who represents Officer Isaiah Goodie, said his client was specifically told by Brooks and Smyles not to break up fights.

“They were seeing that these kids from different neighborhoods were going to fight anyway and they were finding a way to get it out of their system,” Evans said of the senior officers’ training of his client.

Two law enforcement officials told The Times that Brooks and Smyles had been investigated for allowing fights to happen years earlier while assigned to Central Juvenile Hall. It was unclear what, if any, discipline they faced.

One of the cases that will be dismissed after a plea agreement involved a high-ranking officer, 54-year-old Ramses Patron. He was charged with child abuse for failing to stop a fight that lasted less than 10 seconds, according to a motion to dismiss. His attorney, Tom Yu, argued that the state had wrongly accused many officers of planning fights that either occurred spontaneously or were arranged by Brooks and Smyles.

Patron must serve 40 hours of community service and then his case will be dismissed. Yu said his client has served the Probation Department for 30 years with a “spotless record” and the indictment upended his life.

“There’s no words to describe what my client and his family went through,” Yu said.

Indicted probation officer Ramses Patron, center, stands with his attorney Tom Yu, right, pleading no contest in the “Gladiator Fights” case.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Advocates for the officers whose cases were dismissed said they had suffered serious harm to their finances and reputations, with each placed on leave without pay for more than a year.

“County employees are entitled to due process. To the extent that charges are reduced or dismissed, employees may have the right to seek reinstatement or back pay,” said Vicky Waters, communications director for the Probation Department.

Several defense attorneys credited the state prosecutors for scrutinizing the charges more thoroughly and ultimately deciding that some of the cases did not pass the smell test.

“Everybody would love an apology letter,” said defense attorney Bart Kasperowicz. “They did this giant witch hunt sweep and effectively changed the lives of 30 people and all the people that depend on them.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a life term in prison without parole for a defendant who was 15 when he fatally stabbed his grandfather in Mississippi, ruling that a sentencing judge need not decide that the young person was “permanently incorrigible.”

The 6-3 decision retreats somewhat from a pair of earlier rulings, which said that such life sentences for minors convicted of murder should be extremely rare and limited to cases in which there was no reason to hope the young person could be rehabilitated.

California and 24 other states have abolished life terms with no hope for parole for offenders under 18. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said such prison terms remain shockingly common in parts of the Deep South, particularly for young people of color.

As of last year, “Louisiana had imposed LWOP [Life Without Parole] on an astonishing 57% of eligible juvenile offenders” since 2012, when the court called for restricting such sentences, she said. In 2016, the court gave these inmates a chance to seek a new sentence with possible parole, but the Mississippi courts have rejected one-fourth of such appeals, she said.

“The harm of from these sentences will not fall equally,” Sotomayor added. “The racial disparities in juvenile LWOP sentencing are stark: 70% of all youth sentenced to LWOP are children of color,” she said, citing a study from the Juvenile Law Center.

Five years ago, the court gave new hope to the more than 2,000 inmates who had been sentenced to life terms for crimes they committed as minors. The justices said they had a right to seek a new sentencing hearing and possible parole in the future. But the court’s opinion did not say precisely what judges must consider in deciding such cases.

At issue Thursday was whether the defendant’s life term with no parole should be set aside unless the judges concluded he was “incorrigible” and could not be rehabilitated.

The justices divided along ideological lines, with the six conservatives in the majority and the three liberals in dissent.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, speaking for the court in Jones vs. Mississippi, said judges are required to weigh the defendant’s age as a mitigating factor before imposing a punishment for a homicide. “The court’s decision today carefully follows” the earlier rulings, which did not prohibit such life terms, he said. Kavanaugh added that the sentencing decision remains in the hands of the judge who heard the case, and the judge need not go further and decide the defendant was beyond redemption.

“Today the court guts” its earlier rulings restricting such life terms, Sotomayor said in a sharp dissent for three liberals. She noted that one of the decisions held that “a lifetime in prison is a disproportionate sentence for all but the rarest children, those whose crimes reflect ‘irreparable corruption.’”

The outcome reflects the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kennedy had repeatedly spoken out against harsh punishments for juvenile offenders, and he wrote the court’s ruling that ended capital punishment for them, as well as those that limited the circumstances for imposing life prison terms on those under 18.

Sotomayor said Thursday’s ruling means that even if a “juvenile’s crime reflects ‘unfortunate yet transient immaturity’, he can be sentenced to die in prison,” quoting a passage from Kennedy’s earlier opinion. Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.

The case before the court began in 2004 when Brett Jones, age 15, was living with his grandparents Bertis and Madge in a small town in northern Mississippi. He and his grandfather exchanged angry words when it was learned that Jones’ girlfriend was in a bedroom upstairs. The two later fought in the kitchen, and the teenager stabbed his grandfather and fled.

He was convicted of the murder and at the time, state law mandated a sentence of life in prison without parole.

The Supreme Court overturned such mandatory sentences in 2012 and ruled in 2016 inmates may seek a new and lesser sentence. But a judge decided the life term was the proper sentence for Jones, and that decision was upheld by the state courts.

In upholding the sentence, Kavanaugh said such sentencing decisions should remain in the hands of judges who can weigh all the facts. Moreover, “our holding today does not preclude the states from imposing additional sentencing limits in cases involving defendants under 18 convicted of murder,” he said. “States may categorically prohibit life without parole for all offenders under 18. Or states may require sentencers to make extra factual findings before sentencing an offender under 18 to life without parole.”