By Donald H. Harrison
ENCINITAS, California – Former U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman, who left office on August 4, recalls a High Holy Day service he attended that was held outside during the COVID pandemic. “I looked up to the roof and I could see armed guards,” he said during an interview on Thursday, Aug. 10. “It was just stunning to me how that could be happening at a time when you really want to be engaged in prayer and anything other than security.”
Grossman remembered “looking up and thinking about this armed guard hovering above me. I was grateful for it, but it made me sad. It made it very real and personal that there are those threats that continue to exist in our community and therefore make it all the more important for us to have great law enforcement and public servants devoted to protecting our rights.”
During Grossman’s tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s office – as the First Assistant to U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer, and later as the U.S. Attorney in his own right – his office successfully prosecuted on charges of federal hate crimes John T. Earnest who barged into the Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover 2019 and fatally shot Lori Gilbert Kaye and wounded three other people. The assailant also attempted to burn down a Muslim mosque in Escondido.
Both the federal government and the State of California prosecuted Earnest and in both jurisdictions, he pleaded guilty to all the charges against him. It was decided to incarcerate him in a state prison without possibility of parole. In San Diego Superior Court, he had been convicted of murder and attempted murder.
Grossman’s office had numerous top priorities, among them fighting drug pushing organizations, national security cases, and hate crimes. “Historically, the Department of Justice (DOJ) was founded in large part to combat the violence and hate crimes being perpetrated by the KKK” during the administration of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, Grossman pointed out,
In San Diego, combatting hate crimes “was a priority not only for prosecution but also prevention,” Grossman said. “We did a lot of work reaching out to the community. I spoke at several events. I appointed an Assistant U.S. Attorney (Alicia Williams) to be the hate crimes prosecutor and that was the first time that we had a person designated to be a hate crimes prosecutor in our office. … She did wonderful work across several communities, including the Jewish community, in terms of outreach, education, how to report hate incidents and the difference between hate incidents and hate crimes. It was an important priority.”
Another priority—perhaps the one he spoke about the most during his tenure – was drug trafficking, and specifically the many deaths caused by the illegal sale and distribution of fentanyl. “I pledged to the public that it was going to be a top priority of ours to target everyone in the supply chain who was responsible for that epidemic, everyone from the cartel leadership down to the street-level dealers who were handing out pills and powder and killing people,” Grossman related. “We did just that! During my time there, we brought charges against the Sinaloa Cartel leadership. Those were announced in April on a stage with the U.S. Attorney General (Merrick Garland) …where we indicted the ‘Chapitos,’ the sons of El Chapo (Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.), and we targeted others in the supply chain ranging from cross-border distributors in Tijuana to street-level dealers in San Diego who handed out pills causing the deaths of many members of our community.”
Grossman worked eight years as a San Diego deputy district attorney, and several years in private practice before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office in 2020. He told me that he was drawn to being a prosecutor because the job aligns with many of the values that he grew up with in Reform Judaism.
“There is a very strong connection to justice, to public service, to public safety, protecting the public, doing the right thing, being ethical, and to civility,” he said. “I think all of those are core values. I emphasized those values while I was U.S. Attorney—civility, ethics, professional excellence.”
He said he was born in Chicago, and moved with his mother, father, and younger sister to several midwestern cities because the Sears Department store chain transferred his father to manage one branch after another. Eventually the family settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Grossman had his bar mitzvah. “My family observed the major traditions (of Judaism), but I would not say it was front and center,” Grossman reflected. Nevertheless, “I think that throughout my life I have tried to adhere to the core values of Judaism.”
He said he obtained an undergraduate degree in business economics from the University of Arizona, where he got good grades, but he scored disappointingly on the LSAT exams. He went to work at Dillard’s Department store in Phoenix, thinking perhaps a law career might be closed to him. However, attorney Ken Freedman went to bat for him in San Diego, and “I will never forget the day that I got a call from the admissions team at California Western saying that I had a spot and could I get there in three weeks? I loaded up a U-Haul and off I went.”
Cal Western Law School “had a significant and lasting impact on me.,” he stated. “I am forever grateful to the institution for admitting me. I loved my time there. I really enjoyed law school. The professors had a significant impact on shaping my interest in the law — my criminal law professor, my criminal procedure professor, my evidence professor and, more specifically, the staff and professors who were part of the trial team that I participated on.”
Grossman continued: “That was where I really knew what I wanted to do; from the very moment that I stood up in front of a mock jury I knew that was what I wanted to do. I knew that was the zone I wanted to be in, where I wanted to practice. That was why I chose criminal prosecutions because I’d get the most trials and it was where I felt my interests and my philosophy of the law were most in line.”
Following graduation from law school and admission to the California Bar, he worked for less than a year in the Ventura County District Attorney’s office before applying for a spot that had opened up in San Diego County. He joined the DA’s office under Paul Pfingst and continued into the administration of DA Bonnie Dumanis.
Among many memories, he said, was the 12-month period in which he prosecuted three first-degree murder cases, including one that was featured in 2003 on NBC’s Crime and Punishment. In that one, the defendant Hugo Alcazar was accused of having an obsession with the 14-year-old girlfriend of his brother. He “ultimately assaulted her and strangled her with a coat hanger, a gruesome tragic case. The same case he was also charged and convicted of raping the murder victim’s friend who looked very similar to her. She was 15.”
Eventually, Grossman said, he was ready to move on from the district attorney’s office. He joined a private law firm that focused on white collar criminal defense and civil litigation. Brewer, who later would become his predecessor as U.S. Attorney, was his colleague and mentor in that firm.
Grossman not only learned the defense side of court cases but gained a “whole new perspective.”
“You are meeting with individuals who are being accused of very serious crimes and are looking at potential jail time,” he commented. “That is very challenging. You develop relationships with those clients and their families. It gives you a totally different perspective as a lawyer than you had as a prosecutor. … It gives you perspective on how much power you wield as a prosecutor and how important it is to get it right and to do your best to make charging decisions as a prosecutor that are just.”
After former President Donald Trump nominated Brewer and the U.S. Senate confirmed him as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, Brewer was able to begin his tenure as U.S. Attorney in January of 2019. Grossman remained in private practice until March of 2020 when he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office, soon being elevated to Brewer’s top assistant.
The presidential election of 2020 brought Joe Biden to the White House, and Brewer and other Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys throughout the United States complied with the new President’s request that they submit their resignations. Brewer left office in March 2021, and Grossman as the second-ranking man in the office became the Acting U.S. Attorney – a position that Grossman’s successor, Andrew Haden, today occupies.
After 300 days without a Senate-approved nominee to replace him in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Grossman became the Interim U.S. Attorney, as provided for in the federal Vacancy Reform Act. When another 180 days went by without a Senate-approved nominee, Grossman was appointed by a unanimous vote of the federal district judges in the Southern District of California as the full-fledged U.S. Attorney, the 20th person to hold the office. Recently, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved President Biden’s nomination of Tara McGrath to hold the position, but her name has yet to come to the floor of the Senate for a formal confirmation vote.
Grossman had the pleasure of being sworn in as Acting U.S. Attorney, Interim U.S. Attorney, and as the U.S. Attorney by U.S. District Chief Judge Dana Sabraw, whom he had known since his days in the district attorney’s office when Sabraw was a Superior Court Judge.
While there are many cases of which Grossman said he is very proud, he also said he was proud of the relationships that he formed with “our federal family of stakeholders,” including the probation and pre-trial services department and the 150 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and an equal number of support staff.
He said he emphasized ethics and civility towards “our criminal defense colleagues” during his tenure, putting great emphasis on hiring and training. Credit for the accomplishments during his tenure should go “to the talented and selfless public servants in the U.S. Attorney’s office and our exemplary agency partners,” he stressed. “It was an honor to serve alongside them.”
Grossman is now pondering the next step in his career, although he is not in an immediate hurry to decide. “Right now, I’m spending time with my family; I have two boys in college, and I’m going to move one of them to a new place,” he said. “I want to spend time with my wife and friends, and catch up and reconnect with them. That’s front and center.”
Whatever he does in the future, he would relish opportunities to again be a litigator and also “mentoring and teaching at a firm or some other organization,” he said. “I very much enjoyed that aspect of my job in the U.S. Attorney’s office, being involved in shaping and implementing training programs that align with how I believe cases should be tried.”
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com