When justice goes MIA: An officer's fight for her Marsy's Law rights

Two days before Christmas, 2022 Officer Erin Logoluso, a 12-year veteran with the Pismo Beach Police Department, answered a burglary call. When she confronted the suspect, according to a recent court filing, "he immediately put her in a chokehold and smeared feces on her face." Then he "violently beat the officer, pulled out her hair, scratched her face with feces." The beating, among other life-threatening injuries, left her with a traumatic brain injury. The career she loved was ended by this violence.

The criminal was prosecuted. Thanks to the voters of California in 2008, Erin was surrounded by the protections of Marsy's Law, an amendment establishing constitutional rights for crime victims. Among her Marsy's Law rights, Erin had the rights "to justice," "to be treated with fairness," "to confer with" the prosecutor about a possible plea agreement, and "to be heard, upon request, at any proceeding, ... involving a plea." And she had the right to enforce these rights, and the court had a duty to "act promptly."

Pretty straightforward.

Except not so in a Division of the Superior Court in San Luis Obispo County. There, without notice to Erin and without being given her right to object, Erin's attacker was allowed to enter a plea and receive a sentence of probation with 364 days in the county jail. The judge even said Erin had no power to enforce her rights, despite the express grant of that right as a matter of black letter constitutional law.

The criminal had savagely beaten her, robbed her of her life as an officer of the law, and then the court deepened the trauma, rubbing her face in the utter injustice of it all. No right to justice, no right to fairness, no right to object to the plea before it was accepted. No right to enforce her rights. She was silenced and ignored.

As the principal author of Marsy's Law, I can affirm that this is the very kind of injustice that Marsy's Law was adopted to remedy. The judge committed clear error. The words could not be clearer. But the victim's constitutional rights are mere words on paper when the trial court judge ignores them. Without a champion they do not have the power to change the culture of the criminal justice system.

Thank goodness for District Attorney Dan Dow. He has taken up Erin's cause and asked the California Court of Appeal to reject this grave injustice and tell the Superior Court to start over, this time respecting Erin's rights. DA Dow has filed a Petition for a Writ of Mandate which asks the Appellate Court to order the trial judge "to vacate the imposition of sentence and acceptance of the plea and provide the victim of the crime an opportunity to offer timely input as to the propriety of the plea agreement." Nothing less than simply her constitutional rights. In the alternative, DA Dow asks the appellate judges to order the trial judge to answer why this shouldn't be done.

This is exactly the kind of advocacy on behalf of crime victims that will set the standard for the state. DA Dow has made a powerful argument whose roots run deep in the history of our country. In 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, "The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury." (5 U.S. at 163.)

DA Dow is invoking one of the most bedrock principles of American Law. There is a remedy for the violation of a right. Here there is no doubt that Officer Erin Logoluso's Marsy's Law rights were violated. In seeking a remedy for her DA Dow stands in the best tradition of our law and our history. He has written an elegant and compelling argument defending Erin's right to justice.

The Court of Appeal should take up his case and grant the relief he seeks.