George Soros funds opponent of the Sacramento DA that busted the Golden State Killer.

From the late 1970s through 1986, a vicious criminal terrorized California with 12 murders and more than 40 rapes. In late April, police in Sacramento arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, charging that he was the Golden State Killer, the Original Night Stalker, and the East Area Rapist.

“The answer has always been in Sacramento,” said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. “For forty years, countless victims have waited for justice.”

Schubert organized the press conference that brought district attorneys from central and southern California, where the Golden State Killer had raped and murdered. Now leftist billionaire George Soros is bankrolling a campaign to oppose Schubert and on June 5 elect Noah Phillips, a self-proclaimed progressive who touts “social justice” themes.

As the Sacramento Bee reports, “Soros has funneled about $400,000 to Phillips through his California Justice & Public Safety PAC” and has been “spending heavily this year to flip district attorney races for progressive candidates all over California and in several other states.” Activist Shaun King has kicked in $40,000 and Phillips’ endorsers include Sen. Kamala Harris, who got her start under Willie Brown and received $5,400 from Soros for her 2016 Senate campaign.

“DA Schubert seems to love acting tough,” wrote Van Jones in a Bee commentary on Sunday. “But she isn’t so tough on police officers who break the rules and kill civilians.” According to Jones, a communist who served as “green jobs czar” for POTUS 44, “she is culpable for allowing officers to injure and kill black people with impunity.”

That was a reference to the accidental shooting of Stephon Clark during the response to a 911 call on March 8. Clark had a criminal record for robbery, pimping and domestic abuse. One of the officers involved was African American, and so is Sacramento police chief Daniel Hahn. Van Jones, who holds forth on CNN, did not mention the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo and how that reflected a supposedly “broken” criminal justice system.

By some accounts, DeAngelo was the most prolific criminal to avoid capture. DNA was crucial to the arrest and victims and relatives alike expressed relief that their nightmares were over. Even so, some journalists were raising concerns that DNA itself might pose a threat.

The Golden State Killer’s murder victims included Keith Harrington, 24, and his wife, Patrice Harrington, 27, who was also raped in the 1980 case. As Keith’s brother Bruce Harrington explained, when DNA kicked in as a crime-solving tool, he urged the Senate Public Safety committee to establish a DNA database but “ran into a buzz saw of opposition.”

The loudest anti-DNA voice was state Senate boss John Burton, the loud-mouthed hyper-partisan who chaired the state Democratic Party from 1998-2017. “You were wrong,” Harrington said of Burton at a Sacramento press conference. “I shame you again.”

Harrington backed the 2004 Proposition 69, which allowed DNA testing for felons. The measure passed despite furious opposition from the ACLU, another favorite of George Soros. The anti-DNA bias came up again after the arrest of DeAngelo.

“If there’s anything to be cautious about,” wrote Erika Smith of the Sacramento Bee, “it’s the collection and storage of genetic material from thousands, if not millions, of people.” For the paper’s Stuart Leavenworth, the tactic of DNA matching “has put genetic testing companies on the defensive and raised questions about their ability to protect consumer privacy as investigators increasingly seek out DNA databases to solve crimes.”

Police got DeAngelo’s DNA from the rape kits. Then they got more DNA from objects the criminal discarded after they identified him through a relative who left a sample on GEDmatch, an open source database. Those concerned with privacy should not entrust their DNA to voluntary sites like that.

As Bruce Harrington pointed out, DNA helps apprehend those guilty of violent crime but also helps to clear those unjustly accused of crimes. DNA is a matter of science, not conjecture. DNA does not lie or change its story.

Those who oppose the use of DNA testing are anti-science ideologues who elevate the rights of criminals above those of innocent victims. That is common practice in California, where Proposition 47 has downgraded felonies to misdemeanors and Proposition 57 gives convicted double murderers a second hearing with no need to present new exculpatory evidence. The most blatant injustice is the Democrats’ protection of violent criminals who are not supposed to be in the country.

Last week President Trump met with California public officials who opposed the state’s sanctuary law which, as the president said, “provides safe harbor to some of the most vicious and violent offenders on Earth, like MS-13 gang members putting innocent men, women and children at the mercy of sadistic criminals.”

California governor Jerry Brown tweeted that Trump “is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA,” though he offered no details. Democrats claim they are not protecting criminals but they keep federal official from the jails where false-documented illegals are already in custody. State supreme court justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye objects to federal ICE agents “stalking,” illegals in courthouses.

In these conditions, a repeatedly deported false-documented felon like Jose Inez Garcia Zarate can gun down Kate Steinle in broad daylight on a San Francisco pier, and state Democrats are okay with it. In California, criminals’ rights are number one and, as the late Frank Zappa might say, innocent victims aren’t even number two. That’s life with the criminals’ lobby in power.