Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s reform-minded view of juvenile justice seemed tailor-made for someone like Denmon Lee.
At age 16, Lee took part in the robbery of a gas station in the Antelope Valley that led to the death of former Marine John Lu. Court records show Lee, who knew the victim, planned the 2018 robbery and provided weapons for his accomplices. Lee was not the shooter, but was charged with murder.
But when Gascón took office two years later and Lee’s case went to trial, he barred prosecutors from trying minors as adults. Lee was convicted and ordered to be held in the Sylmar County Secure Youth Treatment Facility until he turned 25.
Authorities said Lee “responded extremely well” to incarceration programming. Within a year, probation officers moved him from the maximum-security Sylmar facility to a rehabilitation-focused facility in Malibu. After he was transferred to the rehabilitation facility last June, Lee enrolled in community college and found a job with a local nonprofit.
Then in April, he was arrested and charged with playing a key role in another murder.
The case has given Gascón’s critics an opportunity to directly link the progressive district attorney’s policies to violent crime, some of which have argued that the crime could have been prevented if Lee had received a harsher sentence in adult court. Gascón’s opponent in November, Rep. Nathan Hochman, has spent much of his time calling out high-profile crimes that he claims are indicative of the incumbent’s policies.
Some juvenile justice experts say Lee’s case is an anomaly and doesn’t necessarily negate the research that supports Gascón’s approach. But Lee’s alleged involvement in the murder of 28-year-old Eric Ruffins earlier this year has outraged the victim and given the district attorney’s political opponents new ammunition.
“Gascon is a victim of the crimes he committed,” said Cathy Cady, a victims’ rights attorney representing Lu’s widow. [Lee] “If tried in adult court, he would have received a life sentence, but he was released and committed another horrific murder,” said Cady, who has been one of the leaders of the campaign to impeach Gascón in recent years.
Some criminologists and a New York Times analysis of court data have cast doubt on attempts to attribute fluctuations in crime rates solely to Governor Gascón’s policies, and Governor Lee’s response to the first murder case is not all that far removed from the way California’s criminal justice system treats teenagers.
As a result of multiple changes to state law aimed at keeping teenagers out of adult prisons, only 12 juvenile cases were transferred to adult court in 2022, the last year for which such data is publicly available. In 2016, the last year prosecutors could directly file adult charges against teenagers, 340 youths were tried as adults statewide, records show.
“When people leave prison, they’re often more dangerous than when they went in,” said Sean Garcia-Reyes, co-executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center in Fullerton. “We need to look at what the data says about how effective different types of punishments are in reducing recidivism.”
John Lu, a 61-year-old former Marine, was killed during a robbery at an Antelope Valley gas station in 2018. Prosecutors considered Denmon Lee, who was 16 at the time, to be a “principal participant.”
(Kathleen Cady)
Gascón’s opposition to trying minors as adults has been one of his most controversial policies. His decision not to prosecute 26-year-old Hannah Tubbs, who was 17 at the time, as an adult for child sexual assault in 2022 was widely criticized. In response, Gascón reversed the policy and created a mechanism to require prosecutors to transfer cases to adult court after rigorous review.
But Lee’s first case was resolved while the Gascon ban was still in effect.
According to testimony at the appeals court trial, Lee walked into VP Fuels and Drive-Thru Dairy in Lancaster and asked cashier Lou for a cigarette on Feb. 19, 2018. The request was intended as a distraction so co-defendant Deonta “Fatboy” Johnson could approach Lou with a gun and demand that he open the register, court records show.
After a brief gunfight, Johnson shot Leu, 61, three times. Detectives said Leu walked away from the scene “smiling” and later recounted details of the crime to his girlfriend, claiming the gun “had a body on it,” according to court testimony.
Lee was arrested in March of that year and charged with murder. A hearing to transfer him to adult court began in April 2020, but Lee changed attorneys and the hearing was postponed until Gascón was in office, records show.
Kady, who opposed a plan to try Lee as a minor, said in court documents that while in custody as a minor, Lee had access to a cell phone and “sent threatening videos to an ex-girlfriend and threatened to shoot her.”
“This bitch I call baby mama, she snitched on a guy,” Lee rapped, according to court documents. “When I get hold of her, I’m gonna shoot her between the eyes.”
Kady said she tried unsuccessfully to block the case from being moved to juvenile court, and prosecutors did not move forward with a charge of witness tampering related to the video.
A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment on the tampering allegations or the video. In a statement, the office said Lee’s case should have remained in juvenile court despite Gascón’s policy because he was not the shooter and had no prior record of violence.
“His past delinquent history and other factors influencing transfer decisions strongly support the likelihood that he will be rehabilitated in the juvenile justice system,” the statement read. “It was not reasonably likely that the juvenile court would transfer him to adult court.”
The district attorney’s office said it has approved 20 transfer motions since establishing a committee that allows prosecutors to ask for some minors to be tried as adults, but only one has ultimately received judicial approval.
In 2022, the California Legislature also raised the bar for teenagers to be tried as adults, requiring prosecutors to prove “by clear and convincing evidence” that a teenager cannot be rehabilitated in a juvenile facility.
Jerrod Gunsberg, a veteran criminal lawyer in Los Angeles who frequently represents minors, said even before the law was changed, it was highly unlikely that a judge would have tried Lee as an adult.
“Given that this was a young man who had no history of violent conduct prior to this incident, who was not the shooter, who may have been planning a robbery that ended tragically, I don’t think this is a case that should have been transferred to adult court, even in 2018,” Gunsberg said.
For the better part of two years, the decision to keep Lee out of adult court appeared to be going as intended.
The probation department declined to answer The Times’ detailed list of questions, and Lee’s probation report is not a public record, but the district attorney’s office said Lee performed so well when he was transferred from the maximum-security Sylmar facility in March 2023 that probation officers recommended he be transferred to a different, less restrictive “step-up facility.”
Prosecutors and Mr. Lu’s widow supported the move. After five years in custody, Mr. Li will be released to a de facto rehabilitation facility, where he will still abide by a curfew and be on probation but will have more freedoms than he has had since his 2018 arrest.
According to the district attorney’s office, Lee enrolled in Mission Hills Community College and began working part-time for Mass Liberation, a nonprofit in Torrance. The school and the nonprofit did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
In the Ruffins murder, the second murder Lee is charged with, the victim was shot and killed around 5 p.m. on Jan. 19 in the 15600 block of Atlantic Avenue in an unincorporated area near Compton, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Records show an arrest warrant was issued in April naming Lee as an accomplice. A few weeks later, Lee and Dewayne Cathey were indicted on charges of murdering Ruffins.
The sheriff’s department declined to comment further about the shooting. Emails and calls to Lee’s lawyer were not returned. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office confirmed that Lee was being charged as an “aid and abettor” and is not accused of shooting Ruffins, but declined to provide further details.
Upon learning of the latest allegations against Lee, Cady expressed frustration with Governor Gascón’s repeated justification of juvenile policies by citing research showing that adolescent brain development is not complete until age 25.
“In theory, their brains aren’t supposed to develop until they’re 26,” she says, “but they’re released before that.”
Mr Lew’s widow, Michelle Brace, said she felt betrayed by Mr Lee’s actions near Compton.
“Mr. Denmon, you were gifted and you squandered it. Against your family’s wishes, I had hoped that you would change and help your community. I will always pray for you and your safety. I am heartbroken to hear that you are back in trouble,” she said in court earlier this month. “You apologized for killing my husband and gave me hope. I have forgiven you but now I feel like a fool.”
Blais said in an interview that while he supports Lee’s progress in juvenile detention, he has long been frustrated by Gascón’s initial refusal to try him as an adult.
“He had no idea what he was doing with his instructions and what lives it was going to destroy,” Blais said. Blais plans to leave California, but not until the November election. “I’m not moving until George Gascón is out of office,” he said.