A veteran L-A County prosecutor awarded $1.5 million by a jury after she experienced retaliation for complaining about former District Attorney George Gascon’s reform directives has reached a tentative settlement of a second suit in which she alleged she was wrongfully denied a 1.5% bonus, attorneys told a judge Friday.
In the March 2023 Los Angeles Superior Court verdict in favor of plaintiff Deputy District Attorney Shawn Randolph, the jury split the award at $750,000 each for Randolph’s past and future emotional distress.
In her second suit brought three months later, Randolph maintained her criticisms of Gascón were behind management’s decision to give her an initial “needs improvement” grading in a management and appraisal performance plan review in September 2022. Randolph had never before received such a low rating and she was not given written or verbal warnings that her performance had been anything other than exemplary, according to the second suit.
During a final status conference Friday in the second suit, the lawyers informed Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis of the conditional accord, but no terms were divulged. It was not immediately clear if final approval is up to the Board of Supervisors.
In their previous court papers, county attorneys denied Randolph’s second suit allegations and cited multiple defenses, including that the plaintiff’s claims were barred by both the statute of limitations and the county’s immunity.
Randolph filed a grievance over the rating and a month after the verdict in the first lawsuit, another management member changed it to “met expectations,” which still denies the plaintiff a 1.5% bonus, and not the “exceeds expectation” classification she believes she deserves and which would grant her the additional money, the second suit stated.
Both Gascón and former District Attorney Jackie Lacey testified during the trial on the first suit, which was filed in October 2021. In it, Randolph stated that she previously was the head prosecutor in charge of the District Attorney’s Office’s Juvenile Division, where she supervised about 50 lawyers and 50 civilian workers.
But according to Randolph’s first suit, upon being sworn into office on Dec. 7, 2020, Gascón released numerous directives, including a policy that, among other things, mandated that Randolph use alternative theories of prosecution that minimized a juvenile’s criminal conduct, no matter how violent the offenses.
If a 16- or 17-year-old juvenile robbed a victim by putting a gun to the victim’s head, Randolph could not prosecute the juvenile for robbery because that is a strike offense, the suit stated. Randolph was directed to instead file against the juvenile for a lesser crime such as assault by using force that is likely to cause great bodily injury, according to the first suit.
The ability of a prosecutor to file a strike offense such as robbery has a deterrent effect because if the juvenile commits another serious or violent felony as an adult, his or her sentence can be doubled, the first suit stated.
The directive also mandated that Randolph could not file any enhancements for egregious violent conduct, according to the first suit.
Randolph repeatedly disclosed to her superiors that juvenile petitions made under Gascon’s policy were not truthful and that filing such petitions before a court violates the ethical and statutory duties of a prosecutor, the first suit stated.
Randolph additionally complained that under Gascón’s directive, violent juvenile murderers could not be tried as adults and that Gascón violated the law by refusing to permit the victims’ families any input into the decision not to try them as adults, the suit stated.
In February 2021, Randolph was transferred to the parole division, a “dead-end position for a head deputy,” and denied transfers to head the District Attorney’s branch offices in Torrance and Long Beach Superior Courts even though she was the most qualified applicant for each position, the suit stated.
Judge Terry Green, who presided over the trial of the first case and is now retired, in June 2023 awarded Randolph $810,370 in attorneys’ fees out of $1.3 million she sought from the first case.