'Did You Know What You Were Doing?': Ted Cruz Grills Judicial Nominee Over His Record

thank you mr chairman judge sanchez you played an instrumental role in drafting and implementing proposition 57 you were an advisor to governor brown you are an author of the bill and you helped craft and coordinate messaging in favor of the measure opponents of proposition 57 at the time warned you warned that you and other authors were not telling the truth we're not being candid about the effect of that proposition they said it would apply to violent criminals such as rapists when their victim is drugged to human sex traffickers to those who committed hate crimes and others whom the average person would not consider non-violent at the time of the drafting was your intent to make those individuals eligible for parole well thank you senator for that question as i said before uh as i mentioned earlier the law itself did not automatically release any individual it only provided parole consideration for non-violent offenders and a sentencing scheme a a system of sentencing credits for rehabilitative programs the proposition 57 in the implementing regulations did not define who was a violent or non-violent offender that was made by reference to existing california penal code and the intent of in the passage of that law was to allow those parole consideration in order to comply with the federal court order that california reduce its prison population to a constitutionally tolerable level okay so let me try again on that question let's take them one at a time let's take rapists when their victim is drugged was it your intent that a rapist who had drugged his victim should be eligible for parole well let me start by saying senator i worked for governor brown as a staff member and so i worked to effectuate his policy goals uh but so did you disagree with him on proposition 57 no would i okay well then let me ask you again you played a leading role in this if you want to disagree with it and say hey the governor was wrong and i was following order that's one thing but if you're not going to say that then then i'm going to return to my question was it your intent and let's take the first example i gave rapists who drug their victims was it your intent that that rapist should be eligible for parole governor brown's intent was in complying with a federal court order let me focus on your intent because you're the one nominated for a lifetime appointment to the court of appeals my intent was in serving the governor's policy vision and goals and the overall purpose of the law was to respond to a federal court order that had been affirmed by the u.s supreme court so let me try it again let's ask a different question how about human sex traffickers was it your intention as one of the leading drafters that human sex traffickers should be eligible for parole the intent of the law was to provide parole consideration for non-violent offenders as defined by existing california penal code do you dispute the human sex traffickers would be eligible for parole under it the if if whatever crime was defined as non-violent but under the california penal code would human sex traffickers qualify yes or no uh i believe uh sex trafficking well uh i would reference the california penal code to determine whether that was a violent or a non-violent category of crime all right how about those who've committed hate crimes as i said here today i'm i'm not uh aware in which side uh hate crimes uh fall under uh there there can be circumstances so you didn't spend a lot of time focused on that question no i what i would say is that uh with any of these categories i would follow california or what we did was follow california penal code to define who was a violent or non-violent offender so several reports indicate that violent criminals have been subject to parole likely criminals that the unsuspecting public did not intend on releasing when they passed proposition 57. sex offenders gang members batterers of police officers have been made subject to parole as a result of your direct efforts violent criminals were paroled and california was made less safe yes my question is did you intend for violent criminals to be released early or were you simply unaware of the consequences of your action which which one was it did you know what you were doing or did you not know what you're doing thank you senator the intention of the law was to comply with that federal court order and the choice that governor brown faced i'm not asking about the governor the governor has not been nominated to the ninth circuit you have so i'm interested in a litigant who would appear before you who might very well be troubled about a judge who is soft on crime who wants violent criminals who is fine with violent criminals being released early that would trouble a great many litigants i think that would trouble a great many californians who believed that this proposition was not affecting violent criminals when in fact it was and so my question is is what was your intention not governor brown's not anyone else your intention and were you aware of what you were doing did you know violent criminals would be released early when you were helping lead the efforts to pass this proposition as i mentioned earlier the law the the the choice that was faced was between allowing federal courts to order the outright releases of of prisoners without any sort of rehabilitation rehabilitation efforts or to create a system of parole consideration and sentencing credits to address uh an order that the united states supreme court had affirmed and the government time has expired but let me just try one final time were you aware violent criminals would be released early under this yes or no senator i we were aware uh in the governor's at the governor's direction that it would affect the entire population of the prison system hopefully to get people to rehabilitate and to improve their lives before that sounds like a yes thank you senator from

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 574,641

Keywords: Sen. Ted Cruz, President Biden, Senate

Id: rSFyIm04-o8

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021