| Trutanich calls himself an "environmental attorney". And yes, he indeed has been a tireless defender... of Big Business, fighting AGAINST environmental standards. Just look at this paper he wrote called "Defending Environmental Crimes" (.pdf), a how-to guide for lawyers defending corporate polluters and the like. He also defended John Woodrum, the guy who shot and killed sea lions. How nice. And you got to love his campaign's spin on that: taking the case and having "plead guilty and take responsibility" for killing those sea lions. Uh-huh. Because that's what good defense lawyers do, right? Tell their clients to plead guilty and "take responsibility"?
Oh, and Trutanich's firm represents the NRA, and has threatened to sue Los Angeles for our tighter gun control laws.
His latest ad depicts Latinos as gang members, which should surely endear him to the Hispanic population here.
But above and beyond all this, us Bruin fans have known about Trutanich for a while now as basically the USC Trojan football team's in-house lawyer. Every time a USC football player gets arrested for rape/robbery/etc., he's suddenly there to represent the player, who could not possibly afford Trutanich, and yet he's representing them anyway. (Hmmmm......)
Odds are Long Beach attorney Carmen Trutanich will make the potential misdemeanor assault charges against linebacker Rey Maualuga go away without lifting a finger.Trutanich, a defense lawyer known around Delgadillo's office as "Nooch," rotated in and out of his staff job on the 8th floor of City Hall so fast recently, it's hard to tell if he was coming or going.
....
Trutanich, a former prosecutor with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, represented former USC cornerback Eric Wright after Wright was arrested on suspicion of rape while in possession of 136 hits of Ecstasy in March. In April, after Trutanich put together a defense team consisting of himself, a Torrance-based attorney and an investigative firm, the D.A.'s Office found insufficient evidence to file sexual-abuse or drug charges, according to news reports.Last year, Trutanich represented running back Hershel Dennis, who emerged from a four-month investigation for alleged sexual assault with no arrest and no charges. NCAA and Pac 10 officials inquired about pay arrangements in both cases. Trutanich said the families paid.
Oh, and to show how petty he is, in 2006, it was announced that Trutanich would no longer defend USC players because... his daughter didn't get into USC. Looks like school loyalty only went so far with Trutanich.
Meanwhile, L.A. City Councilman Jack Weiss is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who worked on prosecuting gang members and white collar criminals. He helped write those gun control laws Trutanich threatened to sue the city over. He vows to prosecute those who pollute our environment. People like LAPD chief Bill Bratton, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Rep. Diane Watson, and L.A. City Councilman Herb Wesson have all endorsed Weiss. So has the L.A. County Democratic Party, along with groups like Planned Parenthood (L.A. chapter).
And to compound the UCLA-USC rivalry, Weiss got his law degree at UCLA, and was also the editor-in-chief of the UCLA Law Review.
So... on one hand we have a tough-on-crime prosecutor who fights polluters. On the other, we have someone who defends polluters and wants to weaken our gun laws, and whose election would be Pete Carroll's dream come true, knowing that his players could get away with murder at USC, and the city attorney wouldn't lift a finger to do anything about it.
Oh, and there's some others (Michael Amerian, David Berger) also running that I've never heard of.
(To further my own personal conflict on this, in the last election he was in, I voted for Weiss's primary opponent. Quite a few UCLA students felt he had neglected us, while his opponent reached out to us. And yes, there's talk that Weiss is hated by the other councilmembers. Still, between him and Trutanich, the choice could not be clearer if you're a Democrat/environmentalist/Bruin.
And to make it really personal for me, I've been friends with Trutanich's daughter for over a decade.) |
