I mean, how is this guy redeemable at all? This guy can't claim any angle of victimhood or underprivileged background, which seems to be the golden ticket. This guy reeks of what they now call "toxic masculinity" yet he gets a pass because why exactly?
That’s a good question. Ostly left a trail on purpose to what an undeserving candidate he was — had Ostly remained, the guy was facing 8 years in prison. But the new DA didn’t even bring that info into court.
Says right here what happened: "“So the Court had a chance to review three doctors' reports. All three doctors confirmed that... he was in a psychotic episode at the time of the accident… So it's clear at the time of the accident that he was having a psychotic episode because the DMV has given him back his driver's license.”
"...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
Again hitting the nail on the head SDR!! Unfortunately most of us work for a living and can’t sit in court to see the shenanigans happening with not only this case but many more like it. A young woman is dead who has a lot more promise in life then the hooker and Coke snorting mofo who killed her. Is the de facto defense going to be I have a mental illness therefore I can’t be held accountable for my actions? Some of the naysayer commentators here would be singing a different tune if it was their loved one taken from them in a senseless act of violence. Accountability is a two way street.
Will you be accountable for this flagrant discrimination against the mentally ill? It says right there that the court reviewed three doctor's reports: dude was having a psychotic break, not snorting coke with hookers in his car.
If you don’t get that he was trying to get out of his responsibility by claiming he was psychotic — when Ostly laid out the 24 hours prior which clearly shows he wasn’t — I don’t know what to say. The judge definitely didn’t think he was — mental health diversion was denied.
This account that you have published says clearly that he "was locked up at the psych ward for 30 days after the accident. He didn't move into the jail until about 30 days after he was arrested because he was not stable."
If the accident had been drug induced, he'd have been released as soon as the drugs wore off. As a clinical psychologist, I can tell you that you should try getting the county to hold you for 30 days; the psychologists who work in such evaluations have seen a lot, and must convince judges to maintain the hold at 3 and 14 days. It just isn't that easy to fake them all out for that length of time. I'm sorry but what you've published strongly implies that this man was psychotic for reasons unrelated to drug use, since if the drugs had caused the psychosis, they'd have worn off by 3 days, forget about 30. And since this occurred in 2016, quite obviously the matter was not seen as pressing by the *prior* DA or the assigned judge, either. Strongly argues that this man wasn't dangerous anymore.
I am a clinical psychologist: that's not the way 30 day holds work, actually. A 30 day hold means that the psychosis was not drug-induced, because if it were, it would not last longer than the high. Try again.
Actually I don’t give two hoots on what you claim to be, it’s a free country and we are all entitled to our opinions on this chat and in life so you go on and believe what you believe and I will believe what I believe and that is this person got away with killing a person and should have served time in jail for it.
I can respect the rule of law doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or how they came to the decision that they did. Doesn’t change the fact that a promising life was taken away for no good reason.
If you are a clinical psychologist can you explain the Goldwater Rule? If you can also explain malingering and what the two most common reasons for malingering are that would be helpful.
Surely I can. More pertinently, the Goldwater rule wouldn't apply to the 3 court-appointed psychologists and psychiatrists who assessed this man directly and for that purpose. I should say, 3 or maybe more, since the DMV may have insisted on a similar assessment, too. Since anyone hired by the prosecution would certainly assess for malingering and have incentives to find it, I must conclude that either the prosecution hired a charlatan who did not, or the prosecution's own expert (or experts) found that this man was not malingering... two common reasons, or otherwise. Clearly the clinicians who convinced judges at 3 and 14 days in 2016 to hold him for care instead of what happened at 30 days, which was releasing him to jail. (Typically they would release once medication has stabilized the psychosis, you see: sometimes it takes some time to determine which prescriptions work.)
Goldwater applies to you, not the defense experts. You are claiming to be a clinical psychologist to give weight to your diagnosis of someone you have never examined and reports you have never read.
I read the reports in this case, and also reports from those same doctors in other cases. Your assumptions about the facts and the opinions of the professionals that actually examined the defendant are incorrect.
"Sara Yousuf, a spokesperson for District Attorney Chesa Boudin, called both incidents “heartbreaking tragedies” and noted that the charging decisions —incidents murder for Garcia and vehicular manslaughter for Mushtaq — were made by Boudin’s predecessor, George Gascón."
Anyone who works in the criminal courts can see that you aren't including a full record of how this case actually panned out. This is intellectually dishonest journalism with cherry picked facts that relies on the general public's ignorance of how sentencing works. Where was this defendant between 2016 and 2021?
Where was he? Out of jail awaiting trial. Anyone who knows the criminal justice system in SF knows that cases take forever. Especially since Gascon abandoned ship and Boudin fired the 7 best litigators he had — including the attorney on this case.
What did I not include? There are three transcripts and I read all of them. Why don’t you order them and do the same. How sentencing works? In this case he got a plea deal from the new DA to go free with zero days served post sentencing, when under Gascon he was facing 8 years in prison.
"My client was locked up at the psych ward for 30 days after the accident. He didn't move into the jail until about 30 days after he was arrested because he was not stable."
Are you sure he was out of jail? What is your source on that?
If you have the transcripts then why don't you post them in full instead of cherry picking quotes without context that will be non-sensical to lay people. You are the one making the assertions here, so you can back them up.
Based on what you wrote and what I know about how the courts work - it sounds like this guy was in-custody the entire time this was pending. But of course that doesn't fit the rage narrative of "he got 0 time post-sentencing." Guess what? This happens ALL THE TIME in criminal courts, because people being locked up prior to trial/sentencing is par for the course for most serious/violent felonies. It's pretty common for people to spend years in jail awaiting an outcome in their case, and then plead out for time served after they have done the mid-term on their felony. Many do that to avoid getting sent to state-prison for their time.
Says right here what happened: "So the Court had a chance to review three doctors' reports. All three doctors confirmed that... he was in a psychotic episode at the time of the accident… So it's clear at the time of the accident that he was having a psychotic episode because the DMV has given him back his driver's license.”
"...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
Hi Susan, thanks for writing this article. I was a witness to Kate Slattery's death back in 2016 and it affected me immensely. I wrote about it at the time from a safe streets standpoint (https://medium.com/@bradmcmanus/to-ed-lee-re-vision-zero-86c2bbffd7d5), but I was always curious about what happened to the driver. It seems like there was minimal information at the time and it took months and years to find out more. This article gave me further closure -- though it is not exactly the outcome I was hoping for. It is so wild that the driver got off ... and reading what his days were like leading up to the incident is ABSOLUTELY ABSURD.
This is common throughout the United States of America.
Not only in such extreme legal issues but across the board the unrighteous are overtaking the righteous and are being allowed by our politicians our police bad even by We The People. If good people don't start standing up fight and be willing to lose some comforts then we don't have a snowballs chance in hell.
Gabe, with your deep knowledge of the workings of the judicial system and its intersection with mental health and mental disability, I'm sure that you've heard of privilege and confidentiality? It says right there in the report that they guy was in the middle of a psychotic break; what good is jail (which we call "the department of corrections", not the "department of punishment") to correct a medical issue? The question is whether the medical issue was treated: if the DMV restored his license, then it seems likely that this happened.
His license was taken away after he killed someone. They restored it 9 months later — as the judge said “...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
You know, I sometimes write reports of that nature for the DMV, although I had nothing to do with this one and have no first-hand knowledge of whatever went on between this person and the DMV. In general, our DMV is very skeptical after vehicular incidents like this, especially if someone died and even when no one did. That is why they hire people like myself to do psychological testing and advise them. Again, sounds as if (1) the DMV, (2) the trial judge, (3) the judge(s) who signed off on 3-day and 14-day holds, and (4) 3+ psychologists found this man credible... "3+" because the DMV would have required such testing, too.
Don't know what to tell you, other than that your conclusions consistently don't match the evidence that you yourself posted, at least not to this forensic psychologist. This system was broken before; it is broken now. Still, this particular instance appears to be a credible case of non-drug -induced psychosis, from what I read. Who knows? Without interviewing the parties directly and conducting psych testing at the time of the events in question, I can't know and more importantly, neither can you.
It is still a horrific tragedy, Boudin or no Boudin. I don't understand why anyone would try to use an innocent woman's death to make some illustrative case about Boudin, when clearly this man was deemed safe under the PRIOR DA's watch by the DMV. IMHO the victim's family and probably the driver's suffered horribly, and this sort of sensationalist muckraking likely just rips open old wounds unless you know them and are doing this at their request. If not, it is ghoulish.
The thing that matters is that you cannot separate out a psychotic break that was a result of mental illness that was no fault of his own, and one triggered by drug use. When the cocaine use was proven and admitted, his defense collapsed.
Google Calcrim 3425 there is more information. In an unconsciousness defense the defendant has the burden of showing it was not triggered by drug use, and that is almost impossible when cocaine is involved.
I mean, how is this guy redeemable at all? This guy can't claim any angle of victimhood or underprivileged background, which seems to be the golden ticket. This guy reeks of what they now call "toxic masculinity" yet he gets a pass because why exactly?
That’s a good question. Ostly left a trail on purpose to what an undeserving candidate he was — had Ostly remained, the guy was facing 8 years in prison. But the new DA didn’t even bring that info into court.
Surprised Chesa would risk losing the support of San Francisco's cycling demographic for this guy.
They are Chesa supporters, hence their silent on this plea deal.
The deal was brokered by Boudin's predecessor, Gascón.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Two-cyclists-killed-Two-drivers-arrested-And-in-16520656.php
The deal was brokered by Boudin's predecessor, Gascón.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Two-cyclists-killed-Two-drivers-arrested-And-in-16520656.php
Says right here what happened: "“So the Court had a chance to review three doctors' reports. All three doctors confirmed that... he was in a psychotic episode at the time of the accident… So it's clear at the time of the accident that he was having a psychotic episode because the DMV has given him back his driver's license.”
"...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
I read here that he was psychotic, actually. That's a little different huh.
Psychotic? Say, that's pretty useful. I have to remember that next time I kill someone.
Again hitting the nail on the head SDR!! Unfortunately most of us work for a living and can’t sit in court to see the shenanigans happening with not only this case but many more like it. A young woman is dead who has a lot more promise in life then the hooker and Coke snorting mofo who killed her. Is the de facto defense going to be I have a mental illness therefore I can’t be held accountable for my actions? Some of the naysayer commentators here would be singing a different tune if it was their loved one taken from them in a senseless act of violence. Accountability is a two way street.
Will you be accountable for this flagrant discrimination against the mentally ill? It says right there that the court reviewed three doctor's reports: dude was having a psychotic break, not snorting coke with hookers in his car.
If you don’t get that he was trying to get out of his responsibility by claiming he was psychotic — when Ostly laid out the 24 hours prior which clearly shows he wasn’t — I don’t know what to say. The judge definitely didn’t think he was — mental health diversion was denied.
This account that you have published says clearly that he "was locked up at the psych ward for 30 days after the accident. He didn't move into the jail until about 30 days after he was arrested because he was not stable."
If the accident had been drug induced, he'd have been released as soon as the drugs wore off. As a clinical psychologist, I can tell you that you should try getting the county to hold you for 30 days; the psychologists who work in such evaluations have seen a lot, and must convince judges to maintain the hold at 3 and 14 days. It just isn't that easy to fake them all out for that length of time. I'm sorry but what you've published strongly implies that this man was psychotic for reasons unrelated to drug use, since if the drugs had caused the psychosis, they'd have worn off by 3 days, forget about 30. And since this occurred in 2016, quite obviously the matter was not seen as pressing by the *prior* DA or the assigned judge, either. Strongly argues that this man wasn't dangerous anymore.
And of course, the deal was brokered by Boudin's predecessor, Gascón.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Two-cyclists-killed-Two-drivers-arrested-And-in-16520656.php
Probably if he wasn’t snorting Coke and banging hookers he wouldn’t have had the psychotic episode in the first place. Just sayin
I am a clinical psychologist: that's not the way 30 day holds work, actually. A 30 day hold means that the psychosis was not drug-induced, because if it were, it would not last longer than the high. Try again.
Actually I don’t give two hoots on what you claim to be, it’s a free country and we are all entitled to our opinions on this chat and in life so you go on and believe what you believe and I will believe what I believe and that is this person got away with killing a person and should have served time in jail for it.
All true. Except, isn't it funny how multiple judges disagreed with you, which is why they are judges and you and I are not?
I can respect the rule of law doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or how they came to the decision that they did. Doesn’t change the fact that a promising life was taken away for no good reason.
All judges are God and never make mistakes.
If you are a clinical psychologist can you explain the Goldwater Rule? If you can also explain malingering and what the two most common reasons for malingering are that would be helpful.
Surely I can. More pertinently, the Goldwater rule wouldn't apply to the 3 court-appointed psychologists and psychiatrists who assessed this man directly and for that purpose. I should say, 3 or maybe more, since the DMV may have insisted on a similar assessment, too. Since anyone hired by the prosecution would certainly assess for malingering and have incentives to find it, I must conclude that either the prosecution hired a charlatan who did not, or the prosecution's own expert (or experts) found that this man was not malingering... two common reasons, or otherwise. Clearly the clinicians who convinced judges at 3 and 14 days in 2016 to hold him for care instead of what happened at 30 days, which was releasing him to jail. (Typically they would release once medication has stabilized the psychosis, you see: sometimes it takes some time to determine which prescriptions work.)
Goldwater applies to you, not the defense experts. You are claiming to be a clinical psychologist to give weight to your diagnosis of someone you have never examined and reports you have never read.
I read the reports in this case, and also reports from those same doctors in other cases. Your assumptions about the facts and the opinions of the professionals that actually examined the defendant are incorrect.
He said he thought “God was driving the car.” The judge didn’t buy it and denied the mental health diversion.
Sounds like a fairly typical psychotic statement, to me.
This guy claimed insanity too — also was using coke — and he’s going to prison: https://www.kron4.com/news/national/former-nfl-player-justin-bannan-found-guilty-on-all-counts-in-2019-shooting
See above. Doesn't explain a 30 day hold. Quite the opposite.
"Sara Yousuf, a spokesperson for District Attorney Chesa Boudin, called both incidents “heartbreaking tragedies” and noted that the charging decisions —incidents murder for Garcia and vehicular manslaughter for Mushtaq — were made by Boudin’s predecessor, George Gascón."
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Two-cyclists-killed-Two-drivers-arrested-And-in-16520656.php
Anyone who works in the criminal courts can see that you aren't including a full record of how this case actually panned out. This is intellectually dishonest journalism with cherry picked facts that relies on the general public's ignorance of how sentencing works. Where was this defendant between 2016 and 2021?
Where was he? Out of jail awaiting trial. Anyone who knows the criminal justice system in SF knows that cases take forever. Especially since Gascon abandoned ship and Boudin fired the 7 best litigators he had — including the attorney on this case.
What did I not include? There are three transcripts and I read all of them. Why don’t you order them and do the same. How sentencing works? In this case he got a plea deal from the new DA to go free with zero days served post sentencing, when under Gascon he was facing 8 years in prison.
Really?
"My client was locked up at the psych ward for 30 days after the accident. He didn't move into the jail until about 30 days after he was arrested because he was not stable."
Are you sure he was out of jail? What is your source on that?
If you have the transcripts then why don't you post them in full instead of cherry picking quotes without context that will be non-sensical to lay people. You are the one making the assertions here, so you can back them up.
Based on what you wrote and what I know about how the courts work - it sounds like this guy was in-custody the entire time this was pending. But of course that doesn't fit the rage narrative of "he got 0 time post-sentencing." Guess what? This happens ALL THE TIME in criminal courts, because people being locked up prior to trial/sentencing is par for the course for most serious/violent felonies. It's pretty common for people to spend years in jail awaiting an outcome in their case, and then plead out for time served after they have done the mid-term on their felony. Many do that to avoid getting sent to state-prison for their time.
Okay, well what happened in reality then?
Says right here what happened: "So the Court had a chance to review three doctors' reports. All three doctors confirmed that... he was in a psychotic episode at the time of the accident… So it's clear at the time of the accident that he was having a psychotic episode because the DMV has given him back his driver's license.”
"...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
Typically in such cases, the prosecution hires the doctors. Certainly one, if not all three.
Exactly.
Hi Susan, thanks for writing this article. I was a witness to Kate Slattery's death back in 2016 and it affected me immensely. I wrote about it at the time from a safe streets standpoint (https://medium.com/@bradmcmanus/to-ed-lee-re-vision-zero-86c2bbffd7d5), but I was always curious about what happened to the driver. It seems like there was minimal information at the time and it took months and years to find out more. This article gave me further closure -- though it is not exactly the outcome I was hoping for. It is so wild that the driver got off ... and reading what his days were like leading up to the incident is ABSOLUTELY ABSURD.
We need to stop voting democrat. They're liberal policies are slowly KILLING us all.
We need to stop voting democrat. They're liberal policies are slowly KILLING us all.
Remember Susan is a homophobe and a bad reporter.
https://www.milkclub.org/joint_club_statement_the_removal_of_susan_reynolds_after_homophobic_remarks
That was a BS attack by loony gays.
So you know.
The devil has taken over.
This is common throughout the United States of America.
Not only in such extreme legal issues but across the board the unrighteous are overtaking the righteous and are being allowed by our politicians our police bad even by We The People. If good people don't start standing up fight and be willing to lose some comforts then we don't have a snowballs chance in hell.
Okay please enlighten us Mr. Schmo and Pf. Not very convincing thus far.
Gabe, with your deep knowledge of the workings of the judicial system and its intersection with mental health and mental disability, I'm sure that you've heard of privilege and confidentiality? It says right there in the report that they guy was in the middle of a psychotic break; what good is jail (which we call "the department of corrections", not the "department of punishment") to correct a medical issue? The question is whether the medical issue was treated: if the DMV restored his license, then it seems likely that this happened.
When he got the plea deal for no jail time he took back his “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea.
that's how plea deals work, yes, and strongly implies that he was convicted of a felony then.
His license was taken away after he killed someone. They restored it 9 months later — as the judge said “...The fact that the DMV reinstated his driving privilege nine months ago means they went through their own process and they decided to reinstate his driving privilege. That's what it means.”
9 months later, or 9 months ago? The murder was in 2016.
Make up your mind.
You know, I sometimes write reports of that nature for the DMV, although I had nothing to do with this one and have no first-hand knowledge of whatever went on between this person and the DMV. In general, our DMV is very skeptical after vehicular incidents like this, especially if someone died and even when no one did. That is why they hire people like myself to do psychological testing and advise them. Again, sounds as if (1) the DMV, (2) the trial judge, (3) the judge(s) who signed off on 3-day and 14-day holds, and (4) 3+ psychologists found this man credible... "3+" because the DMV would have required such testing, too.
Don't know what to tell you, other than that your conclusions consistently don't match the evidence that you yourself posted, at least not to this forensic psychologist. This system was broken before; it is broken now. Still, this particular instance appears to be a credible case of non-drug -induced psychosis, from what I read. Who knows? Without interviewing the parties directly and conducting psych testing at the time of the events in question, I can't know and more importantly, neither can you.
It is still a horrific tragedy, Boudin or no Boudin. I don't understand why anyone would try to use an innocent woman's death to make some illustrative case about Boudin, when clearly this man was deemed safe under the PRIOR DA's watch by the DMV. IMHO the victim's family and probably the driver's suffered horribly, and this sort of sensationalist muckraking likely just rips open old wounds unless you know them and are doing this at their request. If not, it is ghoulish.
The thing that matters is that you cannot separate out a psychotic break that was a result of mental illness that was no fault of his own, and one triggered by drug use. When the cocaine use was proven and admitted, his defense collapsed.
Google Calcrim 3425 there is more information. In an unconsciousness defense the defendant has the burden of showing it was not triggered by drug use, and that is almost impossible when cocaine is involved.
https://www.forensicpsychology.org/TongHandout2.pdf
Surely I can.
And now who is "googling a bunch of psycho babble?"
OK Chesa🙄
Didn't realize that he was a clinical psychologist. Live and learn.