YOUR OPINIONS PLEASE

The California Supreme Court has ordered a new hearing in the case of Sara Jessimy Kruzan, who was initially sentenced to life in prison without parole for the shooting death of her former pimp in a Riverside motel room in 1994, when she was 16.
Kruzan, now 34, has been waging a high-profile fight from prison to get a new trial in which she would be able to present a defense as a victim of intimate partner battering by the pimp, George Gilbert “G.G.” Howard.
Kruzan said Howard had raped, molested and subjugated her starting when she was 11, then shopped her as a teen prostitute.
Ordering a hearing is a long way from anything conclusive.
But it came after the California attorney general’s office, which had fought Kruzan’s request for two years, appears to have given some ground.
The state earlier said there was only a prostitute-pimp relationship between Kruzan, who was in her early teens, and Howard, who was 36 when he died.
The attorney general’s office now says that Kruzan’s argument for a new trial with a battered partner defense appears to have some standing, and should be reviewed again.
Kruzan’s attorneys said the state itself termed its “prior, contrary position” as “perversity.”
The California Supreme Court termed it a “partial concession by the attorney general.”
In her 1995 murder trial, prosecutors had argued that Kruzan was no longer employed by Howard in March 1994, when she lured him to the Dynasty Suites on Iowa Avenue, shot him in the neck with a pistol and stole $1,500 from his pocket, and his Jaguar.
She confessed upon her arrest four days later, eventually testifying that Howard’s rival had threatened her life if she didn’t carry out the crime.
Special circumstances attached to Kruzan’s first-degree murder conviction allowed a mandatory life prison term, despite her age. At her 1995 sentencing, the judge said the teen had “no moral scruple” to shoot one pimp at another’s behest.
Kruzan’s supporters for a new trial include the Human Rights Watch organization and actress Demi Moore. In 2009, a 3-year-old video featuring Kruzan and her case went viral. A YouTube version posted on Feb, 28, 2009, has more than 409,400 hits.
Moore had linked to the video through her popular Twitter site.
“She was a child. Unprotected,” Moore wrote in September 2009. “I think she deserves a 2nd chance. Do you?”
In January 2011, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, on his last full day in office, commuted her life sentence to 25 years to life, with the possibility of parole. But the issue of whether she should get a new trial to offer a battered victim defense remained.
This week, there was a major turn in Kruzan’s legal battle.
Her petition for a new trial had been denied in Riverside Superior Court in February 2010. That denial was upheld by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The California Supreme Court was petitioned, and in May 2011 the court asked for informal letter responses from Kruzan and the state attorney general.
CHANCE TO USE DEFENSE
On Wednesday, June 20, the high court ordered a new hearing to show cause in Riverside Superior Court on why Kruzan was not entitled to the relief she is seeking — to get a new trial with the chance to use the battered partner defense .
No hearing date has been set. The attorney general’s office has until July 20 to file papers, and Kruzan has 30 days after that to respond.
Ronald A. McIntire, one of the attorneys representing Kruzan, declined comment Thursday. Calls to the California attorney general’s office made Wednesday and Thursday were not returned.
But the paper trail in Kruzan’s case this year shows a marked shift in the attorney general’s stance, from characterizing her early teen years relationship to Howard as a prostitute to his pimp, to one that pointedly called her “a sexually exploited minor.”
On March 19, a letter brief filed with the state high court by the attorney general’s office contended that Kruzan “cannot be considered a ‘victim of domestic violence’ because she and Howard were not involved in the type of ‘dating relationship’ that is necessary to have existed to support (Kruzan’s) claim that she suffered from intimate partner battering syndrome.
“To the contrary, the facts demonstrate that while Howard may have indeed perpetrated crimes against (Kruzan), their ‘relationship’ was a professional one, as pimp and prostitute.”
McIntire wrote to the court on March 29: “The attorney general’s interpretation of the meaning of ‘domestic violence’ and ‘dating relationship’ is simply wrong.”
The letter noted that the attorney general’s office acknowledged “the severe abuse that Sara suffered at G.G.’s hands,” even as it claimed she was not entitled to relief as a battered partner.
“Under the attorney general’s definition, the severe sexual and emotional abuse that G.G., a man 20 years Sara’s senior, inflicted on Sara for a third of her young life does not ‘count’ as intimate partner battering because their ‘sexual involvement’ — G.G.’s molestation and two rapes of Sara — was criminal, not consensual.”
And McIntire also attacked the attorney general’s position that the relationship between G.G. and Sara did not “count” because after two years of grooming her “during which he acted as everything from her father figure to her boyfriend, G.G. trafficked Sara for the next three years as a teen prostitute — a relationship that the attorney general characterizes as merely ‘professional’ and ‘casual.’ ”
Then on April 17, a letter from the attorney general’s office opened by briefly reviewing its previous stance that Kruzan had failed to demonstrate she was entitled to an intimate partner battering defense.
Then there was this: “However, on further review, this office respectfully requests that the court accept this further briefing and issue an Order to Show Cause … to develop the facts necessary to decide whether Ms. Kruzan is entitled to an intimate partner battering defense.”
While it carries no legal weight, the April 17 letter refers to her as “Ms. Kruzan,” while the March 19 letter referred to her once by her full name, and thereafter as “petitioner.”
The attorney general noted that Kruzan’s relationship with Howard could not fit into the exact definitions of family law code as a co-habitant or former co-habitant, or the category of a dating or engagement relationship.
“Indeed, Ms. Kruzan’s tragic circumstances and the fact that she was a sexually exploited minor is the antithesis of what is traditionally thought of as ‘dating,’” the letter stated.
“But we recognize that it may be applicable here or in other cases. We also recognize that it is perverse to suggest that a minor who has been sexually abused and exploited from the age of 11 should be entitled to lesser defenses than an adult who has been in an abusive dating relationship,” the letter stated.
“While Ms. Kruzan’s situation may not fit neatly into the statutory definition of domestic violence, her involvement in a relationship marred by commercial sexual exploitation should not necessarily foreclose the application of the intimate partner battering defense.”
The letter then asked to withdraw the attorney general’s earlier responses, and for a hearing in Riverside County Superior Court, “with our apologies for the inconvenience that this belated request has caused.”
Kruzan’s attorneys had argued in a subsequent letter that while Kruzan agreed with the new attorney general position, she wanted the matter reviewed by the Supreme Court instead of returned to Riverside County.
The June 20 order was to return it to Riverside County.