Inside appalling plot to stack California courts with ultra liberal judges who don’t believe in prisons

In 1970, a 17-year-old black militant pulled a gun from beneath his coat at the Marin County Hall of Justice. He took control of Courtroom 3, distributing weapons bought by Angela Davis to three inmates, including one on trial for assaulting a prison guard. They took the judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage. An hour later, the judge and three of the perpetrators were dead.

The vigilantes failed to break the legal system. 

Today, a new crop of radicals in California is pursuing that goal by other means. These activists hope to infiltrate the judiciary and use the levers of power to upend American justice.

Los Angeles County is the seat of the revolution. Across two recent election cycles, hard-left activists spent nearly $1 million on a slate of judicial candidates, electing three judges committed to remaking the county’s criminal-justice system. For the ideologues behind the campaign, this the opening move in what they hope will be a national takeover of the judiciary.

One architect of the takeover is La Defensa, a “femme-led” advocacy organization whose founders want to end incarceration in Los Angeles County. The group says that it “belong[s] to” several “communities,” namely “Chicanx, queer, immigrant, undocumented, working class people with incarcerated loved ones.”

La Defensa was founded in 2020 by current LA council member Eunisses Hernandez and Ivette Alé-Ferlito, both of whom want to abolish prisons.

“Electing progressive judges serves as a harm-reduction measure that disrupts power, it can only be effective as part of a broader abolitionist strategy,” Alé-Ferlito wrote in 2023. “It will take collective action to end incarceration in all its forms.”

The group is becoming a powerhouse. Its political arm, Justice PAC, has received high-dollar donations from Liz Simons, heiress to Renaissance Technology founder Jim Simons’s fortune, and Patty Quillin, the wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. La Defensa is linked to the Soros-funded Tides Advocacy network.

Many judges are former prosecutors who believe in punishing criminals. La Defensa wants to change that. As part of its “Defenders of Justice” slate, the group funded the judicial campaigns of six former defense attorneys and one civil rights lawyer across the 2022 and 2024 election cycles. Multiple candidates on the slate seemed to sympathize more with criminals than with their victims.

La Defensa’s PAC spent at least $910,000 on judicial candidates from 2022 through 2024. Their donations helped elect three former public defenders: George Turner Jr., Ericka Wiley and Holly Hancock. The new judges’ backgrounds and ideologies open a window onto La Defensa’s vision for the future of LA County’s justice system and beyond.

Turner is a committed radical. He studied race, class, and gender as an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles, before attending UCLA’s law school, where he studied under some of the founders of critical race theory, including Kimberlé Crenshaw. After graduating, he served as a public defender in Los Angeles County. He named his three sons after his “favorite revolutionaries,” including slave-rebellion leader Nat Turner, black nationalist Malcolm X and Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Turner’s educational background and years defending accused criminals have apparently convinced him that America’s criminal-justice system is racist. He’s even come up with a novel analogy for a courtroom.

“It’s kind of like a slave ship,” Turner said on a podcast in 2020. “I see black men brought in in chains every day in a big wooden box and someone decides whether or not they’re going to be free or not. And it’s my job to do what I can to try to get them out.”

He and other candidates on the “Defenders” slate believe that crime is often caused by factors like poverty. The idea: If you provide housing, jobs and other services, crime will plummet.

“Circumstances are the reason why [most people] come before the court,” Turner said. “Putting folks in cages, it just doesn’t work.”

In keeping with that view, Turner centered his campaign on the fight against “mass incarceration.” He pledged to focus on applying laws “aimed at decreasing the number of those incarcerated” to “help create a more just and equitable society.”

Turner appealed to a broad coalition of left-wing voters. He was endorsed by supposedly mainstream groups like the LA County Democratic Party, the Public Defenders Union Local 148, California Progressive Alliance and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. He also won support from the Los Angeles County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which said it backed Turner over “ghouls who built their careers throwing people in jail.”

Another “Defenders” judge is Ericka Wiley. She spent more than two decades as a Los Angeles County deputy public defender, handling cases ranging from traffic infractions to capital murder. Wiley ran for judge after attending La Defensa’s judicial leadership academy, which taught candidates how to campaign, raise money and reach voters.

She is aligned with La Defensa’s anti-carceral agenda. She has suggested that the violent crime problem in Los Angeles is “exaggerat[ed]” and called for the dismantling of “systems that . . . support mass incarceration.”

Holly Hancock, a former flight attendant turned public defender, won her judicial election in 2022. She thinks “diversity” will fix supposed problems with the criminal-justice system.

“Los Angeles County deserves diversity . . . diversity of race, diversity of ethnicity, diversity of gender, gender fluidity,” she said at a campaign event. “Background determines behavior.”

On a podcast in 2022, Hancock outlined her vision to “deconstruct” the justice system. She endorsed “sound healing” and healing circles that bring criminals and victims together to discuss crime. “I just want to get on the bench so . . . I can try all these crazy things,” she said.

We reached out to La Defensa, Eunisses Hernandez, and the three judges named in this story. La Defensa and Hernandez did not respond, and the judges declined to comment.

The three judges are variously assigned to children, family, small claims,and unlawful detainermatters, and likely aren’t dealing much with hardened criminals. But for La Defensa, this is only a start.

Alé-Ferlito believes Los Angeles is laying the groundwork for a national takeover. La Defensa endorsed a candidate for LA city attorney. Eventually, it seeks to overturn America’s entire 237-year-old judicial system.

“We’re actually clearing the path for judicial transformation,” she said, “all the way up to the Supreme Court.” 

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution. Austen Hufford is a senior investigative reporter at City Journal.

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