SANTA ANA – Attorneys for a 19-year-old killer who has escaped custody twice filed a motion to recuse the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from prosecuting him based on multiple news releases and public comments that the defendant is “extremely dangerous and violent,” according to court records obtained Tuesday.
Ike Souzer was indicted in December on single felony counts each of possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner and a prisoner manufacturing a deadly weapon. A hearing on the motion is set for June 2 in the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.
Souzer could face up to four years and eight months in prison if convicted of the charges at trial. He made headlines in April 2022 when he freed himself of his electronic monitoring device and escaped custody in a halfway house in Santa Ana.
Souzer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for stabbing his mother to death in 2017, when he was 13 years old, by Orange County Superior Court Judge Douglas Hatchimonji. While in custody, he was convicted in December 2021 of attacking three correctional officers, according to prosecutors.
He was ordered to wear an electronic monitor for the remainder of his sentence until it expired on July 9, 2023, and was released to a halfway house in Santa Ana, prosecutors said.
While on trial in juvenile court for the killing of his 47-year-old mother, Barbara Scheuer-Souzer, he escaped juvenile hall in Orange shortly after midnight April 12, 2019, and was arrested the next day at a McDonald’s restaurant in Anaheim.
Souzer stabbed his mother in their residence in the 11000 block of Gilbert Street in Garden Grove on May 4, 2017. She told authorities before she died in a hospital that her son was the one who attacked her.
“During the defendant’s juvenile proceedings involving the death of his mother, (prosecutors) released confidential information about the juvenile court proceedings stating the defendant escaped while on trial for murdering his mother, following the finding the defendant was only guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of his mother” attorney Alexander Bartel of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office wrote in his motion filed earlier this month.
Bartel said District Attorney Todd Spitzer commented that, “Given the fact that this case was required to be heard in public, and all of the evidence was presented in public, the judge’s decision and his rationale for making the decision should absolutely be made public.”
Bartel said Spitzer’s office issued a news release that Souzer has a “violent history of attacking correctional officers,” and referred to him as “extremely dangerous and violent.”
Bartel also said Spitzer has written an editorial in a newspaper about the case and that his office now has a conflict of interest.
“Here, the facts are indisputable that the head District Attorney, Todd Spitzer, has used defendant as a political tool to advance his own interests,” Bartel said.
Now any prosecutor handling the case cannot plea bargain it out, Bartel argued.
“Clearly, no OCDA attorney assigned to defendant’s matter would be able to show any leniency to defendant without embarrassing Todd Spitzer, who has shown that he has an `axe to grind’ against defendant,” Bartel said.
“The ire with which Todd Spitzer has targeted defendant in his prior media appearances, articles, and press releases is evident of the fact that Spitzer would be totally hypocritical to exercise any leniency in defendant’s matter,” Bartel said.
Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, said the office expects to file a response in court Wednesday.
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