Delayed Penalty

Open season on 49ers in San Francisco

In their final NFL pre-season game last Saturday night, the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Los Angeles Chargers 30-23. Not appearing in the game was 49ers receiver Ricky Pearsall, whose career nearly ended before he stepped on the field.

Last August 31 in downtown San Francisco, an armed robber demanded Pearsall’s watch, and in the ensuing struggle shot Pearsall in the chest. Miraculously enough, the bullet hit no vital organs and Pearsall survived. The shooter was described as a 17-year-old high-school senior from Tracy, California, some 70 miles away. The armed robber was not identified, but his first court appearance provided some clues.

His mother, also unnamed, needed a Spanish interpreter to follow the proceedings. Members of Pearsall’s family, also present, had a right to wonder if the shooter is legally present in the United States. As they should know, California’s sanctuary law protects criminal illegals from deportation, and the 2016 Proposition 57 took away prosecutors’ ability to try juveniles as adults. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters, “there are five crime types for 16 and 17-year-olds, for which we would consider potentially seeking to transfer them to adult court. Attempted murder is one of those charges. And so again, it was for consideration.”

By mid-September the news stories stopped dead. No word of a trial, no identification or location of the shooter, and no official statement on the shooting from Gov. Gavin Newsom that reporters could find. In San Francisco, violent criminals can rob and shoot people like Ricky Pearsall with complete anonymity, but there’s more to it.

In September 2019, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1391, which bars all prosecution of those under 16 in adult court. As a result, anyone under age 16 could rob and murder the entire 49ers team, be tried only in juvenile court, serve time only in juvenile prison, and gain release at age 25. So to paraphrase Scott McKenzie, if you’re going to San Francisco, you just might meet some violent people there.

Ricky Pearsall missed the first six games of the 2024 season. In the 49ers final game against Detroit, he caught eight passes for 141 yards and a touchdown, the most for a 49er rookie since Jerry Rice in 1985.