Early Release
In August 2007, Pacheco gathered support from 19 other elected District Attorneys in California and filed a motion in federal court seeking to prevent the early release of 56,000 criminals from California State Prisons on behalf of the citizens of Riverside County. Pacheco dedicated Riverside County Assistant District Attorney Bill Mitchell to be lead counsel in the lawsuit to represent himself and the elected District Attorneys from San Diego, Santa Barbara, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Placer, Colusa, Amador, Contra Costa, Solano, Tehama, Butte, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Ventura, El Dorado, Nevada, Kings and Tuolumne Counties.
In the motion, the 20 District Attorneys have intervened in a federal lawsuit filed against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State of California by two California prison inmates, Ralph Coleman and Marciano Plata. The Coleman/Plata lawsuit asks the state to address the prison overcrowding issue. The 20 District Attorneys filed the motion in opposition to the Coleman/Plata lawsuit after the United States District Court for the Eastern and Northern District of California appointed a three judge panel to recommend solutions to the overcrowding issues which included implementing a prison population cap and ordering the early release of prisoners.
On December 12, 2008, Pacheco testified in the lawsuit against the early release of prisoners in the San Francisco federal court. In his testimony, Pacheco offered evidence that the early release of prisoners would jeopardize public safety and further harm our fragile local criminal justice system. United States Code section 3626 requires the court to give substantial weight to any adverse effect on public safety or the operation of the criminal justice system caused by the early release of state prisoners.
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