What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Judicial Candidate Ericka Wiley - Seat #48
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Who should I vote for for judge?
That is one of the most frequent questions I get during election season. Today I talk with judicial candidate Ericka Wiley, running for seat #48, on WNLA.
https://www.wileyforjudge.com/
LA Forward Voter Guide
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
Who should I vote for for judge? That is one of the most frequent questions I get during election season. Today I'm going to be talking with judicial candidate Erica Wiley on what's next, Los Angeles. Hi everybody and welcome. This is Mike Bonin. Thank you for joining me as we continue on a series of episodes focusing on candidates and propositions on your November ballot. Today we turn to one of the races for Los Angeles Superior Court, a powerful but largely unscrutinized position. Superior Court judges have the power to put you behind bars, to fine you, to dissolve your marriage, to approve your eviction, and even to appoint a conservative or conservator over you. But hardly anybody knows who the candidates for judge are. So today I'm going to introduce you to one that I am supporting, Erica Wiley. Before I introduce Erica, though, a little bit of context about what judges here in LA County do and about who the judges are in LA County. If elected, the candidates you see on the ballot, like Erica, may wind up with a variety of cases depending on their assignments. A superior court judge can hear criminal cases, civil or family law, probate cases, mental health cases, juvenile or traffic cases. And the judges that we have in Los Angeles County are vastly unrepresentative of the Los Angeles County population. Nearly two-thirds of them are male, and 63% of them are white. Former prosecutors make up a whopping 78% of the Superior Court bench. 78%. And only two of LA County Superior Court judges were public defenders who were elected to the position. That is a huge radical imbalance, and it creates racial inequities in the justice system. And it's my feeling that it is our obligation as voters to fix them. Erica Wiley, who is running for LA Superior Court seat number 48, is someone I feel very strongly we need on the bench. Wiley has been a public defender for 24 years and has served in a supervisory capacity in the LA County Public Defender's Office. She has conducted felony trials, misdemeanor, and juvenile trials, and has seen how people suffering from mental illness, homelessness, and drug addiction are thrown in to a system that harms them. She's also a former tenants attorney who fought unjust evictions. She graduated from Fisk University and then got her law degree from Cincinnati College of Law. She volunteers now with expungement clinics and with a program that educates young people about their rights and how to have safe interactions with police. Wiley is running as part of the Defenders of Justice slate. The Defenders of Justice was launched in 2022 by Judicial Accountability Organizers to bring more diverse perspectives to the bench. I spoke with Erica Wiley last week. All right, there we go. Erica Wiley, thanks for joining me on What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01Hey Mike, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.
SPEAKER_00It's very good to have you here. It's so important for people to hear from the judicial candidates. You are the sort of the undercard on the ballot, and so few people know what's going on, and too many people leave it blank, and it's too important. So I want to give people an opportunity to meet you and hear what you're about and what you stand. So let me start as I always do when I have a candidate on. Give me your three-minute pitch. Why should people vote for you?
SPEAKER_01Well, listen, uh, because I'm ready for this job, Mike. You know, I've been a deputy public defender for 24 years here in uh Los Angeles County. And before that, I worked in Merced County. My job has been working on behalf of individuals who are uh experienced the worst time in their life uh for many years. And that's really given me the perspective of understanding what needs to happen to change people's lives. And by that I mean what I refer to as the fact that we have been uh relying on incarceration for many years to deal with one aspect of crime, and that's keeping the community safe. Um but I think that we see, we often see keeping the community safe as parallel from uh impacting the lives of individuals or giving people a second chance. And my experience has been when you give people a second chance and they take advantage of that, that we're all made safer by that because those people are living better lives and not victimizing other people. So I'm running for judge now because after uh now approaching 25 years of experience, I feel that I have the right um knowledge to be able to make a positive impact on the court system and expand the work that I've been doing on behalf of individuals to help the greater community in applying what I know to uh the lives of individuals.
SPEAKER_00The thing that's very different about judicial candidates is that when you tell them to give a three-minute pitch, they actually stick to three minutes. Politicians for people running for other offices don't do that. So thank you very much. Um let me go uh uh a little bit deeper, talk a little bit more about your background and and tell us uh sort of where you grew up and what led you to uh decide to be a public defender.
SPEAKER_01Wow, so um my background is I'm a lifelong Angelino. I wasn't born in uh LA. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, where my dad's from. But um I I've been here since the age of two. Um my parents uh separated when I was very young, so I was raised by a single mother in South Central Los Angeles, but I also had the support of a very strong and involved uh father. Um growing up in South Central Los Angeles, I saw a lot. Um this was in the you know 80s and 90s when the crack epidemic was rampant, crime was rampant, and so my reality was uh as a child navigating uh that situation. Um but with a very uh unique uh parentage, I think. My my dad was a chiropractor, my mom is an educated woman, but decided to stay home with her kids because uh she had six kids, uh four boys, and she was determined to keep them out of the criminal justice system, away from trouble, and she knew the environment that she lived in. So uh despite the fact that she was working on her master's degree, she worked selling secondhand clothes from a small business. And she was always, always um involved in helping the community, to the extent of just giving away things to women who couldn't afford it that day, right? Baby clothes and things of that nature. And and by that, she taught me that you know giving back to your community had uh real benefits. Uh those women and those people in that community who patronized my mom's store uh fed us for many years, uh supported her for many years until she uh became a teacher. Um with the support of my parents, um, it became key to me as a young person that education was what was going to change my life, was gonna separate me from uh the people who uh lived really, really hard lives. And so I focused on education as my parents did. I had the opportunity with their support to go out of state for college. I attended a historically black college, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. And by that time, my dad had moved back to his hometown, so I attended the University of Cincinnati for law school. And the impact of uh my parents and uh their interest in uh their community just stuck with me. It stuck with me through um law school. I had a lot of interest in public interest law back then, and then um taking my first criminal law class, that's something that really, really piqued my interest, and so the coming together of public interest and criminal law led me to be to want to be a public defender. I took my first job as a public defender out in Merced County because LA was experiencing a high experiencing a hiring freeze. Got a lot of experience there. That's a rural county up near Yosemite in Merced, where I first uh started. Um did a lot of trials there in that first year because they were a small, underfunded county. And then when the hiring freeze opened up in LA, I took a job here. Um and this is where I've been since uh the year 2000 doing uh the work that I love, public public interest work, uh helping people change their lives.
SPEAKER_00And what kind of cases do you handle?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, you know, LA County, um, the public defender's office is a training ground. So in the in the beginning, I started off doing minor misdemeanors, but after uh 24 years, um most of the cases that I handle now are very serious cases, cases where uh people are accused of murder, uh, of abusing children, of violent crime. Um I'd say the highest level case that I handle right now were people who are facing uh potentially the death penalty if that was uh what was happening in our county now, but it's not really. Um life without the possibility. Sorry, really near the uh fire station here. Um people accused of murder um and are looking at life without possibility of parole as some of the most serious cases that I'll that I handle right now. But you know, over my career in in the office, I've I've touched on a lot of things. I've worked as a trainer in the office uh uh in the sense that I was also a supervisor and trained people in that role. But the work that I really love is um work in court every day in front of a judge, arguing cases and advocating for um individuals.
SPEAKER_00I'm curious what your view of the criminal justice system was before you you walked into the courtroom for the first time as a as a public defender, and how being a public defender has altered that perception.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's interesting because um the first time that I walked into a court uh wasn't as a public defender. Um I worked in uh eviction defense uh as one of my first jobs back with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. And I also had a part-time job working at um a longtime agency here in uh LA County, uh St. Anne's uh maternity home, where a part of my job there was to transport um the women who the young women who live there, teenage mothers, uh, to their court hearings. And um both of those um experiences as a uh LaFLA attorney, LA um Legal Aid Foundation, and working on behalf of those young women, driving them to their court experiences, really um just solidified for me that there was a marginalized portion of our community who didn't seem to be getting the best out of the court system, or uh who were dealing with a system of judges, uh, prosecutors, people involved in the court system who didn't see them as individuals, who didn't see their, um didn't have empathy for their individual situations. And so that experience, those experiences informed my um just really reiterated what was in me from um a young child that um really getting in there, getting into the courts, and getting on the side of individuals who had no one else on their side was something I really had a strong desire to do. After many years in this system, um as an attorney now, um obviously the the knowledge base is there, the the strong grasp of of California law and its application, um, its impact on the lives of individuals, um, has given me a broader perspective. I definitely respect the the role of the prosecutor. They are needed. There's a lot of crime in our community. Um but I but I'm appreciative also of the tempered approach which has happened in um the years of late, both in the change of law, changes in our laws, and the changes in the approach to um quelling crime in the community, to understanding that there needs to be a wraparound approach to that. Uh getting at the underlying underlying causes of crime is something that I've seen happen, and I certainly think is the most effective way to advance public safety.
SPEAKER_00So when did you decide to run for judge? How did you decide to run for judge? Uh why did you decide to run for judge?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's something I wouldn't have considered in the past for a couple of different reasons. Um it's because I didn't see myself in that role, and I mean that literally. I I would look up on the bench when I'd walk in with my armful of cases every day, and I didn't see black women on the bench. And so I saw sort of self-edited. That wasn't a place for me. Um you know, the place that I that I had was, you know, this great job that I had working as a public defender. But that's changed and the uh diversity on the bench is expanding. Uh but another reason why I didn't see myself as a judge is because of uh the state of the law 10, 15 years ago, where it seemed like the judges who uh really seemed like they wanted to give my client a chance gave lip service to, well, I can see uh Mr. X has tried and done this program, and maybe this crime is not as serious, but the three strike three strikes laws say this, Miss Wiley, and so your client is gonna get 25 years to life. And I I could never see myself in that role with those kind of constraints, making those kinds of decisions in the lives of people who I knew from my experience as their advocate, uh, really had a story in what brought them to the situation and were amenable to change. Uh but the laws have changed. Prop 47 was a game changer. Um and now I see myself uh expanding in my role as a public servant to being able to do uh good on a wider scale.
SPEAKER_00So you you you talk on your your website about your experience and your approach, and you say that experience has shown me that in order to protect the public, we must provide those who suffer from mental illness, homelessness, and drug addiction with the support and resources to improve their lives and ultimately live in a way that ensures that we are all safe. How does a judge facilitate that?
SPEAKER_01Well, a judge exercises her discretion. A judge um looks at every person as an individual. A judge is um a person who is often um asked to, you know, intervene and break the tie. The prosecutor wants prison, the defense attorney wants uh time served and uh to get out of jail right away. And the judge has to make the decision of what's appropriate in this case. And so a person who, from my background, knows that many of the people coming into this system um are dealing with some of those things that you talked about in the text from my website, uh, mental illness, um drug addiction, uh, poverty, poverty on the level of uh homelessness, uh knows that you know when I have had clients who have had an opportunity to have some of these issues remedied in their uh lives, who've gotten mental health treatment, who've gotten an opportunity to uh be placed in residential uh treatment programs, that their lives change drastically. And someone who has had a history of repeatedly committing petty thefts or even um strong arm robbery to eat and to support a drug addiction now has other options and can make a different um decision in their life moving forward. And so um that's what a judge can do exercise her discretion in individual cases. And uh you asked about the work that I that I do, and I and I mentioned that I do uh cases on the level of um capital murder. And so that experience informs me as well. Um I've had clients who I know who I'm I'm their advocate, and and as a public defender and someone who loves the law, believes that everyone has a right to a fair trial and to um competent representation, and have dedicated myself to be just that, but certainly knows that some people have uh committed themselves to behavior um that likely will not change and often makes other people unsafe repeatedly. And so in exercising that judgment, I'm a reasoned decision maker, someone who's seen both sides of the coin, someone who is um open to change and other people who are not open to change, and for that reason, in s in those cases, prison is appropriate. So a bench officer is someone who makes those decisions, and I'm prepared to make those decisions.
SPEAKER_00Uh your website then goes on to say that you're dedicated to criminal justice reform, fair sentencing, and ending the cycle of mass incarceration. What does criminal justice reform mean to you and what role does a judge have in making sure that we achieve it?
SPEAKER_01Well, criminal justice reform um has been uh is what I mentioned to you before, uh a different view from a prosecutorial standpoint of what's appropriate in uh cases which don't involve violent crime. Um, second chances, dealing with the underlying causes of um crime, helping people um improve their lives through uh drug treatment, through housing them, through getting them mental health treatment. That's what criminal justice reform looks like to me. It means um figuring out why this crime happened, as opposed to just saying this person committed a crime, it falls under this penal code, this is what the law says in terms of what time should be applied to that, and just you know, throwing the book at them in that situation. Um, we know that when people go to prison and return to our communities, that now they're dealing with the collateral consequences of uh incarceration, the inability to get a job, get housing, certainly if there's mental illness and it hasn't been treated, and they've been locked in a very stressful environment in a cage for for years. To me, um, and what I've seen is that's a a recipe for uh disaster.
SPEAKER_00And what does fair sentencing mean to you?
SPEAKER_01Fair sentencing is very consistent with um that same train of thought, looking at individuals, looking what their background has been, if a person has committed many violent crimes in the past over years, and it doesn't uh appear that despite intervention, the things that I'm talking about, getting at those underlying causes, that that person is willing or able to change, um, making those hard decisions. Um, in an opposite case, if I'm dealing with a young person and this is their first time, um, these two people are charged with the same thing, right? A robbery, um, but someone has a long history of unchanged behavior despite intervention, or a young man who um or woman who's their first time in the criminal justice system, and these things haven't been um employed, these uh options, these second chances haven't been employed. Um fair sentencing looks at uh what's appropriate in each individual situation.
SPEAKER_00Your your final point in that sentence I read earlier was ending the cycle of mass incarceration. Uh I want to ask you a little bit about that, and I want to step back a bit because those of us who are policy walks or live in the public realm understand what mass incarceration is and the things that contributed to it. It's not a term that is as um uh as fluent among the average voter. So can you talk a little bit about what you see mass incarceration as and why it needs to be uh fixed?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's what I talked about a little bit before, Mike. Um the the laws which sort of um handcuff judges in making these individual decisions, which said that if someone had committed um two strikes in the past, that their third felony, regardless of what that was, um the the the um typical example is the the the stealing of pizza, right? That they were going to uh prison for the rest of their life. Um you know this idea that um you know everyone needs to be um confined or judges need to be confined to um these strict laws is something that I've that I'm happy has changed and which uh in the as a matter of fact contributed greatly to mass incarceration, the inability for judges to make reasoned, individualized decisions. And so when I say on my website that I support ending mass incarceration, what I'm talking about is supporting um those aspects of the law, the law in general, but those aspects of the law which talk about giving people second chances, if it's appropriate. I hope I answered your question.
SPEAKER_00You did. You did. You you you talked about earlier about your your personal background and how that gave you a a perspective and and a Relevant set of experiences to deal with criminal law. Of course, when we elect a judge, there's no guarantee they're going to be working on criminal law. It could be civil law, it could be traffic court, it could be family court. What experiences do you bring to the bench that would uh qualify you to navigate those issues?
SPEAKER_01Okay. So uh a little bit of my past uh experiences I talked about before has to do with uh civil law, to the extent that I have worked in landlord uh and tenant law, um eviction defense. Um but I think that those experiences that I talked about um with having a family and coming from a family um and an environment where I've seen people end up in different systems, right? The criminal system, um the dependency system, um, and knowing the kinds of things which feed into those systems, the kind of life circumstances which feed into those systems. I certainly think that my family background, my upbringing, um my approach in life is something that has prepared me to um take on what would certainly be a learning curve if I was uh placed in a civil court, because we do become typecast in our law. You know, we in our work, we, you know, take continuing legal education and in criminal law. Um we work every day in the criminal courts. But I think that what voters need to know and what's most important about the background of a of a person seeking to be a judge is that they have an outlook of empathy, right? An outlook which understands that people are not uh simply the case that appears in front of my desk, that appears on my desk as a bench officer, uh, but they are people from backgrounds, often uh dealing with things which are beyond their control, and the ability to understand that that's the case, that um my my position perhaps as a as a middle class person with the ability to uh pay rent on time and uh purchase a house and send my kids to uh good schools is not the situation that a lot of people find themselves in. And so understanding because of my background and my my approach in life, that uh people come from all backgrounds and those things need to be considered, I think, prepares me to uh do justice and uh enact empathy in my decisions.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned earlier Prop 47, the impact that's had on uh uh expanding the the range of of fair sentencing and and and allowing uh the system to help address some of the causes of crime and prevent crime. There is certainly a very um well-funded and widespread public perception that Prop 47 has failed and that crime is out of control and that nobody gets punished for anything. You're in the courts every day. Uh what's the reality on the ground?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh the reality on the ground is that um this idea that you know violent crime is is overtaking us as a community um just doesn't kind of jive with the facts, right? Most of the uh cases filed in the criminal courts today are not uh violent cases, but tons and tons and hundreds of thousands of of minor misdemeanor cases and felonies are are less than those in terms of their numbers. Um and also uh as a person who um handles many very serious cases that um I know and I've seen in my experience, not just in my cases, but in the cases uh that I discuss with my colleagues and that I see being filed in the in the court and handled by other lawyers who are doing the same work as I do, that those cases are being prosecuted very vigorously. Um it's very, very difficult to uh settle a case involving violent crime. Um and when I say settle, uh to arrive at a plea disposition which your client will take because it doesn't involve a lot of years. A lot of these cases involve offers for a lot of years, or you're going to trial on them. Um but the the it is it's it is very true that the approach to nonviolent crime has has changed, both uh due to Prop 47 and the approach of the District Attorney's Office, current uh uh DA. Um and like I've said in the past, I think that it's highly, highly appropriate that those changes have take taken place. Um it just has been just markedly ineffective to lock up people for a very long time for for minor crimes. And that's what had been happening in the past. But you know, in order to um achieve your goal as a as a you know political candidate running for all kinds of different things, you've got to be able to identify a problem that you're going to solve. So I think that there's been um a lot of hype around um exaggerating uh the prime the problems of um violent crime in our area, even to the extent um of showing you know these smash and grabs and things that are happening that are not even happening in the uh LA area. Um but but it it is a problem and it's something that needs to be addressed. And I think that if you have bench officers who make reason individualized decisions, and uh as I hope to do as a bench officer, that um the outcomes uh will speak for themselves.
SPEAKER_00A bit of a lighter question. You uh did not, I presume you did not grow up as as many candidates uh did, uh aspiring to run for office, always imagining yourself running for office. No way. Running for office is a very strange experience, even for people who have managed campaigns or or been around them. Uh how have how have you found being a candidate?
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, like an out-of-body experience. You know, I'm a I'm an introvert um by nature, and so um conversations like this one um are ones that I would have, frankly, with family, you know, those who were, you know, minimally interested in what I uh I do, ask me questions like the ones that you've had, and it's it's been very comfortable talking to them about that. I I've gotten more comfortable talking to um podcasts and folks like yourself over the last year. Um but it it has been um quite an adjustment for me in just opening up um it's it's taught me a lot about myself, Mike. You know, these things that that I talk about in terms of, you know, um, in particular the question you ask about what made me want to become uh a judge. I never thought about, I mean, I knew about, and I I certainly had um a perception of the way that the thing the way that uh the law has changed. Uh but really connecting how that has informed my decision to want to expand the work that I've done. Um, having the opportunity to have very positive feedback from the community in terms of um the long list of endorsements that I have has really assisted me in understanding that I'm that I'm on the right path. So that that's really helped me also. In addition to the you know, the repeated work that I've done in speaking to uh groups and on judicial forums and in podcasts, um the the positive feedback has has also been something that has helped me kind of come out of my shell. So it's it this is a whole different world that I'm used to.
SPEAKER_00So but you mentioned you've got a lot of endorsements. Uh what are some of the top ones you'd like voters to know about?
SPEAKER_01Oh, um absolutely the uh LA County Democratic Party. Um uh the Los Angeles Times is one of my endorsers. Um in the primary I was endorsed by um one of my idols, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. I recently got the endorsement of um our mayor, uh Karen Bass. Um I'm endorsed by Labor, and um I'd say maybe about 20 or so of our local Democratic clubs, um, local politicians, and quite a few judges, um, all who have uh given me positive feedback and supported my candidacy. I'm very proud of that, and it's it's something, like you said, that has helped me kind of uh you know get through this campaign.
SPEAKER_00Uh any uh final thoughts or points you want to make to leave with voters before they cast their ballots?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Uh do your research. Um as you talked about in the beginning, Mike, uh you know, some people don't even make it to the the bottom of the ballot where you know my name will be. But and and I think in the past it there's been very little information about who uh judicial candidates are, but that's changed quite a bit. I think the introduction of of different kinds of candidates, in particular candidates like myself, public defenders who are aspiring to the bench, um has caused us to kind of talk about the differences between us and uh the traditional candidates, the prosecutors. So we've all got websites and a lot of us do podcasts, and we all do social media. So the information's out there. You don't have to leave the judicial candidate uh boxes blank. You can do your research and find out who we are as people, uh how you'd feel appearing in front of this person as a judge based upon how they showed up uh in the past as a prosecutor or a defense attorney or a public defender. Um and I and I encourage people to do their research. I think if they do, they'll find that I'm uh the better candidate for seat uh 48, and I encourage them to uh absolutely vote for me.
SPEAKER_00Erica Wiley, thanks so much for joining me in What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_00And that does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. If you want to know more about the various candidates and propositions on the ballot, check out the LA Forward Progressive Voter Guide. I provide a link in the show notes. My thank you to Erica Wiley for joining me, to my friend Marta Avery for editing, and to the organization LA Forward for sponsoring and partnering with me on this podcast. And as always, thanks to you for listening. Very much appreciate it. Until next time, take good care and peace.