A former gang member and convicted mass shooter was released after serving just eight years of his life sentence by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — and given a new job in the California State Capitol.
A Los Angeles Times puff piece aimed at softening the tale of violent offender Jarad Nava attempted to explain away his crimes by bringing up his rough childhood, and cited Newsom to make the case that he’s a truly reformed member of society.
Meet Jarad Nava.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) November 24, 2023
Nava is LA gangster who shot and paralyzed a 16-year-old girl who now works for California's Department of Public Safety after Gavin Newsom slashed his 162 year sentence to just 8 years. pic.twitter.com/IpUd4kfjcD
Before becoming an assistant in a state senate committee, Nava was convicted of four counts of attempted murder in 2014 after participating in a gang-related shootout.
A member of the Pomona Don’t Care Krew street gang, Nava’s rap sheet increased from petty crimes to violent attacks as a teen.
“Nava said he doesn’t remember much of what happened when the white truck he was riding in swerved into the opposite lane and pulled alongside a Lexus sedan carrying what he thought were his enemies,” Times staff writer Hannah Wiley wrote.
Whether Nava knew the car was carrying his rivals or not, the results were still disastrous.
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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsNava shot several times into the car, which was carrying 16-year-old Yesenia Castro, her 15-year-old sister Marlene Castro, Jessila Suarez, 25, and Marlyn Reyes, who was 17 and nine months pregnant.
The sisters had a brother in the enemy gang, and the other two young women were reportedly dating other gang members.
Nava was “high and drunk,” so he “doesn’t remember telling the four, according to court records, they were ‘gonna die today,'” the Times noted.
No one died, but Yesenia remains paralyzed in a wheelchair to this day due to one of the bullets severing her spinal cord.
But, Wiley says, Nava was only 17 at the time, and had a tumultuous upbringing.
The article wrote a detailed account of Nava’s childhood, describing how he was “born to a struggling 19-year-old mom and absent dad” and had “no stability.”
“In order to protect myself, I felt like the more I perpetrated violence on others, the safer I would be,” the offender told the publication, recalling how he was initiated into the gang at 16.
Nava also expressed his indignance at being punished at the time, telling a detective, “Attempted murder? That’s life?”
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He declined to take a plea deal of a 30-year prison sentence and opted to stand trial as an adult, where he was sentenced to 162 years in prison; 40 years to life for each attempted murder charge, plus two years for the firearm possession.
However, Newsom commuted Nava’s sentence to just 10 years to life in March 2020 after a progressive criminal justice reform organization fought for his release.
“Nava walked free from California State Prison Solano more than 150 years early on Dec. 22, 2020,” the Times reported.
His paralyzed victim, Yesenia, said that he should still have served a long sentence in a documentary about the case.
“This act of clemency for Mr. Nava does not minimize or forgive his conduct or the harm it caused,” Newsom wrote at the time. “It does recognize the work he has done since to transform himself.”
Now, Nava ironically works for the Senate Public Safety Committee on “modify[ing] the criminal justice system in California to focus on rehabilitation in lieu of lengthy prison terms.”
Newsom even recounted how he shed tears over Nava purportedly turning his life around after leaving a group of women with deep mental and physical scars.
“I came back and started crying in the office. To read a report about somebody, to see a ridiculous overcharging, to consider his age in relationship to that crime, to take a risk on a commutation … and then to see him all dressed up, so proud that he has a job. And I remember that meeting because he kept talking about how he felt a sense of responsibility not to screw up. Not for himself, but for others.”
Nava’s victims declined to contribute their words to the puff piece, which ended with, “Either way, in the California Capitol Jarad Nava is finally home.”
