What Came After My Father’s Murder

A Decade Later, a Former State Legislator Is Still Wrangling With Police and the Criminal Justice System

It was the first and only murder in Silver Lake that year.

I picked up the phone at our house in Sacramento, where I was serving my third year in the California State Assembly. My wife Danielle saw my expression change. “What’s wrong?” she asked. I didn’t want our 3-year-old daughter, Elliana, to hear, so I quietly mouthed the news to Danielle: “My sister says Dad is dead.”

My sister had gone to visit our dad and found him slumped over in a chair. It made no sense.

At 78, my dad, Joseph …