Prosecutors, this time ones from the federal government, are going to take a second run at putting Ari Aki Young behind bars, most likely for a decade or two, more than a year after he was acquitted or otherwise exonerated on eight of nine charges against him stemming from his 2019 confrontation with a deputy in which he severely beat her and took her gun away from her.
The Young case is a highly paradoxical one, with some of the case’s elements having pitted so-called liberals and conservatives against one another while other elements of the case simultaneously touched off even more bitter philosophical fights within and among factions of progressives and factions of law enforcement advocates.
Young languished in county jail for more than four years after he was wounded and arrested in the aftermath of the September 4, 2019 incident. He at last went to trial in March 2023 on charges of attempted murder, assault with a firearm on a peace officer, two counts of discharging a firearm, obstructing or resisting a peace officer, use of a firearm during the commission of a crime, felony battery against a police officer, disarming a police officer and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Represented by attorney Raj Maline, who convinced the magistrate hearing the case, Judge Miriam Morton, to dismiss the obstruction of a peace officer charge, both charges of discharging a firearm, the battery against a police officer charge, the charge of disarming a police officer and the charge of using a firearm in the commission of a crime, Young was found not guilty by the jury on the assault with a firearm on a peace officer charge and not guilty on the attempted murder charge. He was convicted of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Maline had Young, who is schizophrenic, plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity on all charges.
Some of those within the tightly-knit San Bernardino law enforcement community saw the matter, which included the deputy Young disarmed, Meagan McCarthy, also known as Meagan Forsberg, being injured and leaving the employment of the sheriff’s department, as a cause célèbre, while others took it as confirmation that law enforcement is not a profession that women, or most women, should be involved in.
On September 4, 2019, Young’s mother made a 911 call from her home on Cabazon Court in Victorville requesting assistance in getting her son to leave her house. When the dispatch call went out, Deputy McCarthy was the closest officer to the home. The dispatcher relayed to McCarthy that the mother had said, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Get my son out of here.”
Arriving at the Cabazon Court location before any other deputies, McCarthy was emerging from her car when a visibly angry Ari Young emerged from the home. His mother, wielding a knife with one hand and on the phone with the other, herself came out onto the house’s stoop.
Deputy McCarthy, assuming the mother was still in contract with the sheriff’s department dispatch desk by phone, approached Ari Young, and near the home’s driveway came face-to-face with him. McCarthy, asking Young what was going on, then maneuvered behind him, trying to pin his hands to the small of his back just above his waist in what she said was a prelude to an effort to “pat him down for weapons.”
Somewhat predictably, this did not work and instead, Young rotated around to face McCarthy and then began to physically assault her, landing blow after blow to her head. The struggle between McCarthy and Young was captured on a video shot by a neighbor from the vantage of a second-floor window. Young appeared to be getting the better part of the exchange with McCarthy, who was nearly though not fully rendered unconscious from the head punches, she later stated. The video shows McCarthy falling to the ground, at which point Young can be seen endeavoring to seize McCarthy’s firearm, ultimately succeeding. Seemingly enlivened by the danger she is in at that point, McCarthy gets to her feet and runs off, out of the visual field of the video. On the video, it appears that Young fired the gun in the direction in which McCarthy was last seen heading.
Within moments, other deputies in vehicles are seen coming into the video’s visual field. Upon those deputies encountering the armed Young, they shot him several times. Available video taken several minutes later showed responding paramedics loading him into an ambulance for transport to a trauma center.
It took the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office only two days to charge Young with the nine aforementioned counts.
Both prosecuting and defending Young was problematic from the outset. By December, a psychologist, Susan Velasquez, was being consulted with regarding Young. Young, who remained in the custody of the sheriff’s department, was the subject of a stipulation and order on July 14, 2020 that he be involuntarily administered psychiatric medication on a non-emergency basis in facilitating his continued incarceration. As a consequence of his mental incompetency, Young’s case languished throughout 2020, 2021, and 2022, though in 2022, Dr. Mendel Feldsher M.D., Dr. L. Mattos PhD., Dr. Marjorie Graham-Howard Ph.D. and Dr. Angelika Marsic Ph.D. examined him or were consulted in regard to his mental condition. In early 2023, Dr. Ijeoma Ijeaku was brought in to carry out an evaluation of Young, as well. Despite a priority being put on having psychiatric and psychological professionals making a finding that Young was fit to stand trial based upon his actions having endangered a peace officer, more than three years elapsed before such a pronouncement was made.
In addition, working with Young as a client presented difficulty for the San Bernardino County Public Defender’s Office, which made a successful motion based upon Penal Code § 987.2 to be relieved as Young’s legal representative. The court agreed to have Maline serve as Young’s defense counsel.
Maline moved to aggressively defend Young, obtaining as much relevant information as possible about his mental state, behavior and observations of such when he was in the previous custody of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Rather than pursuing a defense by reason of insanity, Maline explored going the hard route, defying the odds in a county where the prosecutors line up automatically in favor of law enforcement officers in any form of dispute with citizens and where the jury pools are stacked with potential jurors inclined to engage in unquestioning acceptance of the testimony of sworn law enforcement officers and disregard the testimony of witnesses or experts who might contradict those officers.
After the case was originally on track to be heard by Judge Shannon Faherty, who heard and ruled upon most of the pretrial motions, and then was transferred to Judge Miriam Morton, Maline seriously focused on finding jurors who would not automatically find against his client based simply on the assumption that his action threatened a police officer.
Over four days – from April 24 through April 27 – Maline and Deputy District Attorney Kathleen Fultz went toe-to-toe over arriving at a jury panel to try the case, going through three jury panels. On April 24, Maline and Fultz concurred on excusing two prospective jurors, then a third, and then four more for cause. After Fultz dismissed two prospective jurors by peremptory challenge, Maline exercised two peremptory challenges of his own.
On April 25, a supplemental jury panel was brought in, at which point one prospective juror was excused for cause and then Fultz excused a juror through a peremptory challenge and then another. Maline answered with a peremptory challenge. Fultz excused another juror with a peremptory challenge. Maline then matched that with a defense peremptory challenge.
On April 26, Fultz exercise three peremptory challenges, at which point Maline excused four prospective jurors with peremptory challenges. Another juror was excused by mutual prosecution and defense agreement and then another by mutual consent. Fultz then jettisoned three prospective jurors by peremptory challenge. Maline responded with two further peremptory challenges.
On April 27, a juror was deferred upon not being present when the proceedings for that day began.
Another supplemental jury panel was called in. Three prospective jurors were excused for cause. Another juror was excused by Fultz’s peremptory challenge. Three more jurors were excused by mutual agreement between Fultz and Maline. At that point, the jury and its alternates were set.
Over the more than three-and-a-half years that elapsed since Young’s shooting and arrest, much had occurred. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the neighbor’s video of McCarthy’s beating by Young went viral. The accompanying narrative was that McCarthy had sought to detain Young by pulling his hands behind his back in an effort to handcuff him, a ploy which failed abjectly, resulting in her beating, having her weapon taken away from her and then narrowly avoiding death when Young opened fire on her. This fueled the further circulation of long-existing contentions that women are unsuited for the role of law enforcement officer and that particularly when unaccompanied while functioning in their professional capacity they represent a danger to themselves and the public at large. Such contentions were themselves immediately suspect to contravention and being labeled as politically incorrect. Nevertheless, suggestions that McCarthy’s experience served as an illustration of women officers’ general inability to mete out at will overwhelming physical force on subjects encountered in the field persisted. In her encounter with Young, McCarthy had sustained a concussion, a dislocated eye socket, black eyes, multiple contusions and a broken thumb. After several months’ recovery, she returned to work but in 2022 medically retired.
During the trial, it was established that upon her arrival at the Cabazon Court location, Young was not engaged in any evident criminal activity and that it was Young’s mother who was armed with a deadly weapon. Maline methodically went over the physical evidence available, including the video, as well as testimony of the several witnesses, highlighting contradictions that, from a certain perspective at least, could be interpreted as McCarthy overasserting herself within a situation that provoked Young, particularly as she attempted to dominate him physically after she confronted him without having evidence of any crime on his part being committed. The jury might have construed her assertion that she was merely attempting to pat Young down as a prevarication and that she actually was attempting to handcuff him.
Maline presented evidence and testimony that McCarthy had been summoned to the Cabazon Court location over a domestic disturbance rather than a report of criminal activity, that there was no indication or probable cause showing that Young was involved in any articulable criminal activity and that Young had made no hostile or threatening gestures or movement toward McCarthy up until after McCarthy forcefully sought to restrict Young’s movement. Maline succeeded in securing from Judge Morton findings as to the accuracy of that evidence and testimony and jury instructions that dwelt upon the importance of considering that evidence before reaching a verdict.
Moreover, through an analysis of the video of the confrontation between Young and McCarthy, the testimony of several deputies as well as McCarthy herself, two of the department’s current criminalists testifying as prosecution witnesses, Christi Bonar and Kirk Garrison,  and  the testimony of a former department criminalist, Randolph Beasley, testifying as a defense witness, Maline was able to demonstrate that in neither instance when Young discharged McCarthy’s gun was he aiming it at her. Evidence recovered from the shooting scene on Cabazon Court – consisting of a bullet hole made in a nearby garage – demonstrated Young fired McCarthy’s gun northeasterly as he walked away from the spot where he had repeatedly punched McCarthy and knocked her to the ground and then took her gun. McCarthy testified that she had run toward a bush that was directly south of where Young stood after he liberated the gun from her.
After the trial and deliberations, the jury on May 30, 2023 found Young guilty only on the count of recklessly discharging a firearm. Insofar as Young had been incarcerated since September 4, 2019 – 1,365 days or 3 years, 8 months and 27 days – a duration longer than the normal sentence for discharging a firearm with gross negligence, he was set free.
His acquittal on the other charges, however, alarmed law enforcement officers, who maintained the jury’s finding was like declaring open season on police officers. San Bernardino Sheriff Shannon Dicus appealed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Riverside, which examined the matter to determine if federal charges were warranted and could be applied without subjecting Young to double jeopardy – being prosecuted for the same crime he has already been exonerated on. Double jeopardy prosecutions are banned by the U.S. Constitution.
According to Martin Estrada, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, the federal charges of interference with commerce by robbery, using and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and possession of a stolen firearm and stolen ammunition are sufficiently different from the crimes the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office lodged against Young in 2019 that they can overcome any challenge on the basis of double jeopardy.
Calling Young’s attack on McCarthy “completely unacceptable,” Estrada said the U.S. Department of Justice will step in when the state justice system fails to adequately protect law enforcement officers.
“My office has reviewed the evidence of that assault, and we are bringing federal felony charges against Mr. Young,” he said. “Our law enforcement officers put their lives on the line for us every day and deserve to be protected from violent attacks such as this one. The deputy in this case was doing just what we would want: responding to a call of a domestic disturbance, trying to protect a victim, and for that – doing her basic duties – she was brutally attacked.”
The special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Los Angeles Field Division, Christopher Bombardiere, said, “These violent individuals will be held accountable for their merciless attacks. ATF is committed to building cases against the ruthless individuals who have no regard for other’s lives.”
Despite the evidence presented at trial and the emphasis that Maline put on what he said were indicators his client had not shot at McCarthy, federal authorities maintain Young fired the gun “at her,” meaning McCarthy.
Upon conviction, Young could serve anywhere from ten to 40 years in federal prison.
In a Southern California media market interview with Los Angeles ABC News-affiliated Channel 7, Maline said, “This is about as low as I’ve seen a prosecutor go. I’ve never seen anything like this in 25 years.”
-Mark Gutglueck