Local opinion: County Attorney, judges are failing the community

The tragic Empire Pizza shooting, which almost killed nine people, could have been avoided.

Years ago, the Arizona legislature enacted mandatory sentencing provisions in reaction to a judiciary that was soft on crime. The legislature empowered Arizona's county attorneys to impose these mandatory provisions in order to stop judges from giving probation to violent criminals.

Unfortunately, County Attorney Laura Conover routinely dismisses the mandatory prison sentence provisions, allowing prohibited possessors of weapons and violent offenders to receive probation through available plea agreements. Despite their ability to reject an inappropriate plea agreement, too many local judges go along with her and fail to impose any prison time.

The Empire shooting case was predictable and just waiting to happen. Last September Tim Steller of the Star warned of Conover's lenient gun policies . He described the lack of effective prosecution of violent prohibited possessor defendants as dangerous and like a revolving door for criminals.

In the Empire shooting case, defendant David French had a prior aggravated assault conviction . In that case, he pointed an assault rifle at the victim; the victim reported that he saw a laser sight trained on him, and he thought he would be shot . The pre-sentence report indicated that French fired one shot in the direction of the victim. The incident was caught on video, weapons were found in the French home, and French confessed.

A slam dunk case. French was looking at a mandatory minimum of five years in prison; however, Conover's office dropped the mandatory time and pled him to a probation-available plea. The defendant and his attorney requested probation, and a review of the oral sentencing shows that Conover's prosecutor did not oppose the defendant's request for probation and sat idly by while this injustice played out.

Even today, Conover can't even admit that her office was remiss in failing to recommend prison. The dereliction of duty by the County Attorney 's office and Laura Conover's failure to acknowledge that wrong is unforgivable. Judge Goodwin compounded the problem by accepting the defense attorney's arguments and giving French unsupervised probation. If Conover's office had kept the mandatory requirement for prison, the horrific shooting at Empire Pizza would never have occurred because this dangerous criminal would still be in jail.

After the Empire shooting , the response by Conover has been less than acceptable. She gave numerous politically self -serving and completely misleading statements concerning the original plea in French's first case. First, she said, " he pled to the indictment " (not true ...she dropped the dangerous nature portion of the indictment so that French could get probation). Then she said "he didn't get much of a deal" ( not true ....he went from a mandatory presumptive 7.5 years in prison to available probation.

Then it was "we couldn't find the victim." No evidence of efforts to find the victim, and in addition, a brand new prosecutor could have won this case without a victim. Laura Conover has been consistent about one thing during her conversations with the press this week, and that is even after her failures in the French case, she is not interested in a "tough on crime" approach to prosecution.

Until we have a County Attorney who will hold violent criminals accountable and judges who take public safety more seriously, the people of Tucson and Pima County will continue to be in danger.