Has Justice Been Served?
If you were to ask 86-year-old Mr. Rong Xin Liao of San Francisco or his family members, the resounding answer will be no! In February of 2020, Mr. Liao was seated in his walker at a bus stop near Eddy and Leavenworth in the Tenderloin neighborhood when he was brutally assaulted by then 24-year-old Eric Ramos Hernandez. The apparent random attack was captured on surveillance video. It shows Ramos Hernandez running toward Mr. Liao, and then kicking him in the head with such force that he fell off his walker onto the sidewalk. He was in the hospital with serious injuries for several days.
After Ramos Hernandez was arrested, Stop Crime SF added this crime to its Court Watch program, where we monitor the progress of cases as they move through the court system. We discovered that judge Charles Crompton (the former legal director of the Glide Foundation) had sent the case to Mental Health Diversion on or about April 14, 2021. “MHD” allows defendants to participate in psychiatric care for up to two years, instead of facing criminal prosecution.
On December 2, 2021, there was a hearing scheduled before Judge Crompton. A rally had taken place in support of the victim on the steps of 850 Bryant Street that morning too. This case was well publicized in the media, and there were TV reporters outside the hearing room and others inside taking notes for their later news broadcasts.
Mr. Liao was there to make a formal statement to the court as the victim. He spoke in a very loud voice to judge Crompton, as Mr. Liao was hard of hearing. He spoke into a microphone in Cantonese, with a court-approved translator repeating his impassioned words to the judge (who was about twenty feet away from the victim) and back to the crowded courtroom into English. He was telling the judge the suffering he had experienced and how he now feared living in San Francisco. He told of his pain, both physical and mental, and of his injuries and hospital treatment which included stitches to his head. At the end of the victim’s statement, there was a brief silence in the courtroom, as the gravity of what had happened to the victim was so shocking.
Despite the request from Mr. Liao that jail time be given to the man who had attacked him, Judge Compton ignored that request and instead sent the defendant to be re-evaluated. On or about December 14, 2021, the judge placed the defendant into a different type of diversion program called “Behavioral Health Diversion”.
According to information from the District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office, 24% of violent felonies were handled in diversion programs. According to its website: “The mission of the Behavioral Health Court of the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco is to enhance public safety…”
What we can add is that once a defendant completes the diversion program, which Eric Ramos Hernandez did on May 16, 2023, the records of the crime will be sealed as if it never happened. The case is closed for Eric Ramos Hernandez, but not for Rong Xin Liao.
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