The plea deal, under which Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, who admitted to charges related to the 2023 death of a 69-year-old Jewish man near Los Angeles, gets probation and a year in jail, is “woefully inadequate,” according to Joshua Burt, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.
It also “emboldens others to act in anger against the Jewish community,” Burt told JNS.
Alnaji, 52, pleaded guilty to all charges, including felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, on Tuesday after initially pleading not guilty. Paul Kessler died from injuries sustained in an altercation with Alnaji on Nov. 5, 2023.
The attack occurred in Thousand Oaks, near Los Angeles, amid competing pro- and anti-Israel rallies. Alnaji struck Kessler with a megaphone, and the sexagenarian fell and hit his head on the pavement.
The Ventura County Superior Court has suggested it will place Alnaji on probation, with up to a year in jail, according to the county district attorney’s office. Erik Nasarenko, the district attorney, stated that “Alnaji should be sentenced to prison for his violent behavior, and our office strongly objects to any lesser sentence.”
Under state law, Alnaji could spend four years in jail.
Tom Dunlevy, supervising senior deputy district attorney for Ventura County, told JNS that “the judge offered probation if Alnaji pled guilty, but with a custodial sanction of up to 365 days in jail as a term of probation.”
“If the court places the defendant on probation, they then set the terms of probation,” he said. “One of those terms could be an amount of jail time up to a year in jail.”
“The judge’s offer was noted on the record in court,” he said. “It is not unusual for a case to be conferenced with a judge if a defendant is considering pleading guilty before trial.”
“In this case, we communicated our position that the defendant should receive a prison sentence, and the judge extended an offer over our objection which the defendant accepted,” he said.
“Without real, lasting consequences, men with evil intent or anger in their hearts will not be deterred from harming an already vulnerable community, elderly and Jewish alike,” Burt, of the ADL, told JNS.
“Jewish communities and individuals across the United States, including Mississippi, West Bloomfield, Michigan, Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C., have endured violence, death and fear,” he said.
“This plea deal will only serve to further isolate and victimize Jewish communities in the United States and beyond,” he told JNS.
‘Get out of jail free’ card
Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, told JNS that ever since the county medical examiner’s office determined that Kessler’s death was a homicide, “the district attorney’s office sought the maximum sentence, and his family opposed leniency.”
“Nonetheless, the court offered the man responsible for his death the possibility of spending just one year in jail, followed by probation,” Lewin said. “This offer, opposed by the prosecutors, is not only an offensively light sentence for a homicide, it sends exactly the wrong message.”
“Instead of serving as a warning to protesters that if they injure or, heaven forbid, kill someone at such a demonstration, they will be held accountable, this proposed sentence signals the opposite,” she told JNS.
The court’s decision gives protesters a “get out of jail free” card, according to Lewin.
“At a time when protests, like the one at which Paul Kessler was killed, are becoming increasingly violent, it is disturbing to see some corners of our justice system treat the life of a Jewish American as worth so little,” she told JNS.
The law firm representing Alnaji, stated that its client tried to knock Kessler’s phone down after, it said, the latter put his phone in Alnaji’s face and made “inflammatory accusations.” It also said that Kessler had balance issues due to a benign brain tumor, and that the tumor “exacerbated” his injuries from the fall.
“Mr. Alnaji chose the path of resolution to bring this matter to a close and prevent further community harm and violence,” stated Ron Bamieh, founding partner of an eponymous firm, who represents Alnaji.
‘Open season’
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that “Kessler was beaten to death with a megaphone at a pro-Israel rally by pro-Palestinian protester Loay Alnaji.”
“The Ventura County district attorney failed to charge this as a hate crime and failed to pursue a murder charge—the strongest available theory being second-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement, given that Alnaji struck a visibly pro-Israel Jewish man in the head with a hard object at a rally defined entirely by the Israel-Hamas conflict,” Filitti said.
“Instead, Alnaji was allowed to plead to involuntary manslaughter and is looking at probation and up to a year in jail,” he told JNS. The district attorney’s office “didn’t just undercharge,” he added. “It stripped the crime of its identity.” (JNS sought a response from the district attorney’s office.)
“That isn’t justice,” Filitti said. “When the message sent to would-be killers of Jews is ‘you might spend a year in county jail,’ it’s not a deterrent. It’s an invitation to open season.”
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, told JNS that “the admission of guilt to the heinous crime of killing Paul Kessler, an elderly Calabasas resident who was peacefully supporting his people, is a welcome development.”
“It reinforces what our Jewish community has always known: that pro-Jewish and pro-Israel demonstrators are peaceful and law-abiding, while those who seek to destroy the Jewish people and Israel are not,” Farkas said.
