Each year, the Los Angeles County court system handles more than 20,000 cases of felony domestic violence.
But those who have long dealt with the issue said they would be hard-pressed to find another case in which the system so failed the victim as the killing of Monica Thomas-Harris by her estranged husband.
"This was a complete screw-up from beginning to end," state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who has written about 25 bills on domestic violence, said Wednesday. "Judges around the state were stunned that this could happen."
As the case continued to spark outrage this week, there was a growing feeling that it might lead to a reexamination of how the justice system deals with domestic violence cases.
Experts cited numerous red flags.
First, the district attorney's office did not seek a criminal protective order against Curtis Harris, who had a history of escalating violence toward his wife. The most recent incident came in November when he was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his wife, binding her with duct tape and threatening her with a stun gun.
Then, when the 34-year-old ex-con agreed to plead guilty late last month to false imprisonment and possession of a firearm, the prosecutor and judge filling in on the case did not postpone the sentencing so those more familiar with the facts could review the deal.
After the plea agreement was reached, the judge and prosecutor took the virtually unheard-of step of permitting Harris to leave jail, either ignoring or missing a Probation Department report that declared him "unsuitable" for release.
"It is a shock," said Patti Giggans, executive director of the social service agency Peace Over Violence, once known as the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. "Because with all of the work we have been doing to make the criminal justice system work in these cases, to see it fail like this is infuriating."
Since the bodies of Thomas-Harris and her estranged husband were discovered Saturday at a Whittier motel in an apparent murder-suicide, the district attorney's office has launched an internal investigation into its handling of the case in the Pomona courthouse. The preliminary results from the inquiry are expected within a month, said Pamela Booth, a branch supervisor who oversees the D.A.'s office in Pomona.
