Los Angeles Time - 08.08.2019

LATIMES.COM S THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019B

CITY & STATE

FATAL PLANE CRASH IN CAMARILLO

Al SeibLos Angeles Times

Federal agencies are investigating the crash of a single-engine plane at Camarillo Airport shortly before 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The Ventura County Fire Department said the two occupants were killed. Their identities were not immediately available.

Gov. Gavin Newsom

granted pardons Wednes-

day night to seven people, in-

cluding Susan H. Burton, a

former inmate who now

helps other women transi-

tion from prison to society.

“By granting these par-

dons to people who are

transforming their lives, the

governor is seeking to re-

move barriers to employ-

ment and public service, re-

store civic rights and re-

sponsibilities and prevent

unjust collateral conse-

quences of conviction,” New-

som’s office said in a state-

ment.

Burton was raised in

housing projects in East Los

Angeles and was sexually as-

saulted several times. In

1982, her 5-year-old son was

accidentally hit and killed by

an off-duty LAPD officer.

She turned to crack cocaine

and was in and out of prison

until she finally found sobri-

ety in a program in Santa

Monica.

After getting off drugs,

she worked to help other for-

mer female inmates adjust

to life without bars and avoid

crime. Burton founded a

Watts-based nonprofit, A

New Way of Life Reentry

Project, that provides hous-

ing for women when they

leave prison and helps them

find work and recover from

drug addiction.

She also has advocated

against long prison sen-

tences and for the restora-

tion of ex-felons’ civil rights,

including the right to vote.

She has received several

awards for her work and in

2017 wrote a book, “Becom-

ing Ms. Burton: From Prison

to Recovery to Leading the

Fight for Incarcerated Wom-

en.”

A pardon does not min-

imize past conduct, nor does

it expunge or erase the con-

viction, Newsom’s office said

in a statement.

The announcement

came after a majority of the

seven-justice California

Supreme Court decided

Tuesday that Burton was el-

igible for a pardon. A major-

ity of the court must review

all clemency applications for

people who have more than

one felony.

In 2004, the Los Angeles

County Superior Court

granted Burton a certificate

of rehabilitation for her

three drug convictions.

In the court’s order ap-

proving a pardon, Justice

Goodwin Liu wrote sepa-

rately that the court grants

such petitions if they do not

represent an abuse of power.

Times staff writer Jaclyn

Cosgrove contributed to

this report.

Gov.

pardons

inmate

activist,

6 others

By Maura Dolan

Hossein Nayeri says he
has been repeatedly
wronged.
He was wronged by the
Marine Corps when he was
accused of theft, he said in
court this week. Nonethe-
less, he and two other serv-
ice members were docked
two months’ pay and con-
fined to their base for 60
days.
He said he was wronged
by Newport Beach police,
who he alleged planted a
glove with his DNA on it in a
truck tied to the kidnapping,
torture and sexual mutila-
tion of a Newport Beach
man — a crime Nayeri said
he had no involvement in.
Nonetheless, he is on trial in
that case, accused of being
part of a plot.
And, he said, he was
wronged by a Los Angeles
County court that annulled
his marriage to ex-wife Cort-
ney Shegerian due to his ex-

isting marriage to a woman

in Iran. “Based on a bunch of

bull!” he said.

Orange County Superior

Court Judge Gregg Prickett

ended testimony for the day

Tuesday, admonishing the

defendant for repeated

“shouting.”

Nayeri, 40, who is being

tried on charges of kidnap-

ping for ransom, aggravated

mayhem, torture and bur-

glary, testified in his case

this week, repeatedly stray-

ing from giving direct an-

swers to Senior Deputy Dist.

Atty. Matt Murphy.

He denied involvement in

the 2012 kidnapping that left

the Newport Beach man and

his roommate stranded in

the desert, rebutted state-

ments from his ex-wife’s tes-

timony and claimed the

Newport Beach Police De-

partment planted the glove

containing his DNA.

According to authorities,

the kidnappers believed the

man, a marijuana dispensa-

ry owner, had buried money

in the Mojave Desert at a

spot where his car had been

traced via GPS.

Nayeri contended he was

paid $1,000 a week by Kyle

Handley of Fountain Valley

— a co-defendant in the case

who was found guilty in Jan-

uary 2018 and later sen-

tenced to life in state prison

— to conduct surveillance on

the man, who owned multi-

ple marijuana dispensaries

and allegedly owed Handley

a large sum of money for

marijuana-related business

dealings.

Nayeri testified that his

involvement in the matter

was limited to surveillance

and that he never asked

Handley — a high school

friend with whom Nayeri

managed marijuana grows

— what he might do to re-

coup the money he said he

was owed.

“You were involved in a

conspiracy to kidnap and

rob [the victim] but did not

know it?” Murphy asked.

“I don’t even know how to

respond with that. Are you

serious?” Nayeri said.

He denied any knowledge

about arrangements by co-

defendants to get rental ve-

hicles or guns, including

items Shegerian testified to

seeing around their home.

Nayeri’s attorney Salva-

tore Cuilla returned to an ex-

hibit presented by prose-

cutors — a notebook filled

with lists and indecipher-

able phrases written by the

defendant.

Given the opportunity to

flip through the notebook on

his own, Nayeri shook his

head and became tearful be-

fore his attorney questioned

him about the book. The

pages include statements

such as “I love you Mrs. Nay-

eri” and “Help!” There also

are references to the Marine

Corps and “heartbreak” and

a “bloody sock.”

When asked to explain

the reference to the bloody

sock — an item that Shege-

rian testified she had found

in the trash after the kidnap-

ping — Nayeri explained

that he had badly injured his

foot in a car crash in Madera

County that killed his best

friend in 2005.

“I’ve had bloody socks

routinely since the acci-

dent,” he said, adding that

the crash crushed and

burned his right side, leg and

hip and “cooked” his foot.

Nayeri was convicted of

vehicular manslaughter in

the crash, according to re-

ports, and was placed on

probation with a suspended

prison sentence of four years

and eight months.

Nayeri testified that all

the entries in the notebook

were made around February

2011. He described the writ-
      ings as “fragment thoughts”
      and the time of year as
      around the anniversary of
      both the fatal crash and the
      disappearance of his father,
      a physician in Iran.
      The victims have testi-
      fied that the man was bru-
      tally beaten and that they
      were dropped off, bound, in

the desert about 150 miles

from Newport Beach. The

captors cut off the dispensa-

ry owner’s penis and poured

bleach over his body.

One of the captors tossed

a knife into nearby bushes

and the roommate was told

that she could cut herself

free if she could find it. She

managed to release herself,

but the man’s hands were

too swollen, according to

testimony.

After the woman walked

barefoot through the desert

for more than mile to a

nearby highway, a Kern

County sheriff ’s deputy

found her with her hands

still bound behind her back

and a blindfold pushed over

her forehead, Nayeri was ar-

rested in November 2013 and

escaped from Orange

County Jail in 2016, evading

authorities for eight days be-

fore being captured in San

Francisco.

Sclafani writes for Times

Community News.

Man accused of kidnapping, torture denies all

By Julia Sclafani

Gov. Gavin Newsom said
Wednesday that he wasn’t
ready to back a legal “right to
shelter” for those without
housing, even though the
idea was put forward by two
key allies who lead his task
force to help find solutions to
homelessness.
A right-to-shelter mea-
sure would force municipal-
ities to construct enough
shelter beds so that any
homeless person requesting
to come indoors can do so.
Newsom’s task force
leaders, Los Angeles County
Supervisor Mark Ridley-
Thomas and Sacramento
Mayor Darrell Steinberg,
also support a requirement
that homeless people be
forced to accept shelter if of-
fered, once cities have cre-
ated adequate shelter ca-
pacity.
These policies would
transform how California
handles its ballooning
homeless population. But
Newsom, who has made
solving the housing and
homeless crisis a priority,
isn’t ready to fully support
the proposal by Steinberg
and Ridley-Thomas.
“They need to be provoc-
ative. You have to be provoc-
ative. I want this debate,”
Newsom said at an event in
Los Angeles to announce
new funding for legal serv-

ices to help homeowners and

renters.

In his first public com-

ments about the proposal,

the governor said Steinberg

and Ridley-Thomas had

reached out to him before

their announcement to

make sure they weren’t

getting out too far in front of

him. Newsom said he en-

couraged them to release

the proposal because it

is a conversation worth hav-

ing.

No one has yet fully de-

tailed what a right-to-shel-

ter law in California would

look like and how the con-

struction of shelter beds

would be funded. Newsom

said Wednesday that if a

right-to-shelter mandate

were to be enacted, the state

alone wouldn’t be able to fi-

nance building all those

shelter beds.

“That’s a fundamental is-

sue that has to be addressed,

and we’ve made that clear to

the mayor,” he said, refer-

ring to Steinberg.

In an op-ed and interview

with The Times, Steinberg

said he was partially in-

spired by a legal obligation

that’s on the books in New

York. The requirement came

about in 1981, two years after

New York was sued by a

man who had been turned

away from a homeless shel-

ter because of a lack of

space.

“We have a long-term

plan to build housing for

people who are unshel-

tered,” Steinberg said in an

interview at the time, “but

we cannot continue with the

reality that while we fix this

problem that we are OK with

90,000 people being on the

street.”

Advocates in New York

say this sort of requirement

can be lifesaving, because

homeless people are indoors

during cold winters and hot

summers can be deadly.

Even in L.A., where sunshine

and mild temperatures are

typical, more people died of

causes related to hypother-

mia last year than in New

York City.

Homeless service work-

ers in Los Angeles said any

law forcing people into shel-

ter would make it harder to

bring people off the streets.

Resources to build any kind

of housing are tight, they

added, and the money is bet-

ter spent on building some-

thing that can permanently

house people.

“The cost is so high to

keep people housed in shel-

ters that there won’t be

enough money on the back

end” for permanent housing,

Kris Freed of LA Family

Housing told The Times re-

cently. “I understand the

frustration from the public

... and we get calls every day

from homeowners where en-

campments are. But we’re

moving people into housing

faster than ever.”

In January, New York

City’s point-in-time count

recorded 3,588 unsheltered

individuals. But on a given

night, about 58,

homeless people sleep in-

doors in shelters, hotel

rooms or run-down private

apartments for which the

city pays billions to keep up.

In California, 90,000 of the

state’s 130,000 homeless peo-

ple are unsheltered, and

politicians are becoming in-

creasingly vocal about those

numbers as the government

tries to figure out how to

build more housing.

Newsom on Wednesday

echoed these sentiments.

“We want to do the right

thing, but living out on the

streets and sidewalks ... that

cannot persist.

“And so this is a good de-

bate, but it’s one of many

things we need to debate,”

he said, adding that “there’s

compassion fatigue out

there.”

Newsom wary on ‘right to shelter’

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOMonWednesday in Los Angeles with Assemblymen

Miguel Santiago, left, and Jesse Gabriel, and Rep. Katie Porter.

Kent NishimuraLos Angeles Times

Governor not ready

to back allies’ idea,

but says homeless on

streets ‘cannot persist.’

By Benjamin Oreskes