Above: Marissa Roy (left) and John McKinney. Photos: Roy, Los Angeles City Clerk candidate video; McKinney, McKinney campaign.
I today sent the same five questions to both candidates for Los Angeles City Attorney, Marissa Roy and John McKinney, with the same deadline: 5 p.m. Pacific on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. I asked each campaign to answer yes or no, with up to 150 words of explanation.
The Los Angeles City Attorney prosecutes misdemeanors committed in the city, including stalking and restraining-order cases that never reach the county district attorney. California’s Constitution, through Marsy’s Law, gives crime victims the right, on request, to be told before a case is resolved by a plea and to be heard before the plea is accepted. It also guarantees restitution, and state law adds 10 percent annual interest to restitution orders.
In our coverage of the race through Oct. 27, neither candidate has said publicly how the office would handle those rights. Voters choose between Roy and McKinney on Nov. 3, and the winner takes office in December.
The first three questions come from Cody Lightfoot’s Oct. 12 report in CityWatch on a stalking case prosecuted by the City Attorney’s Office, in which court records show prosecutors gave the defendant a victim’s address in open court so he could mail restitution. Read that report here.
The questions
- Will your office tell victims before it agrees to a plea deal, and make sure they can be heard?
- Will your office stop giving victims’ addresses to defendants so they can mail restitution?
- Will your prosecutors ask for the interest state law already provides on restitution, every time?
- When a victim says your office violated Marsy’s Law, who will review the complaint, and will you publish each year how many complaints you received and how they were resolved?
- Will your office keep or restore a Family Violence Unit, with one prosecutor handling each domestic violence, stalking and restraining-order case from filing to sentencing?
What happens next
We will publish both campaigns’ answers verbatim and side by side after the deadline. If a campaign does not respond by then, we will report that. Answers that arrive later will be added with the time we received them.
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