Los Angeles County (Lancaster)
LANCASTER — During a probation hearing in April, Judge Denise McLaughlin-Bennett carefully explained to a woman suffering from mental illness that if she completed a one-year treatment program, her felony arson charge would be reduced to a misdemeanor and a three-year prison sentence could be dropped.
“You with me?” McLaughlin-Bennett asked the woman in a mostly empty courtroom in the northernmost point of Los Angeles Cou... (continued)