Man charged with kidnapping UCLA student dies by suicide before court hearing

**The Charges and the Case Against Alexander Schecter**

Alexander Schecter, a 26-year-old Santa Monica resident, died by suicide on Monday evening, just hours before a scheduled preliminary court hearing at Los Angeles's Airport Courthouse. Schecter had been out on bail when a family member found him unconscious and not breathing at the family's home on the 800 block of San Vicente Boulevard. The Los Angeles County medical examiner's office confirmed his death as a suicide and released the official finding on Tuesday. Santa Monica Police Lieutenant Lewis Gilmour stated there was no indication of foul play.

Schecter had been facing an extraordinarily serious set of criminal charges. Prosecutors alleged that in March of this year he prevented a female UCLA student from leaving his vehicle and threatened her with violence — conduct that led to his arrest. As investigators pursued that case, they identified him as the suspect in a separate sexual assault that had occurred near Culver City the previous October. In April, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office charged him with five counts: kidnapping to commit another crime, first-degree residential robbery, two counts of forcible oral copulation, and one count of rape. Taken together, the charges placed Schecter among the more serious criminal defendants in the county's recent caseload, and the district attorney's office had spoken publicly about the allegations in ways that generated significant news coverage at the time of the arrest and charging.

The case now ends before any verdict or adjudication of the underlying facts — a reality that will leave the accused's guilt or innocence permanently unresolved and that raises its own set of complicated questions about the criminal justice system, public accountability, and what is owed both to accusers and the accused in high-profile sex crime prosecutions.

**Family, Defense, and the Clash Over Due Process**

Schecter's death has immediately ignited a fierce dispute over whether prosecutors and their public communications contributed to his fate. His attorney, Debra S. White, issued a statement framing the case as emblematic of what she characterized as an overcorrection by the MeToo movement. White argued that while the movement brought essential and overdue scrutiny to sexual misconduct, the environment it created now enables allegations alone to cause irreversible harm to individuals before courts have had any opportunity to weigh evidence. Her core argument was directed at prosecutors specifically: that charging decisions and public statements made by the district attorney's office treated Schecter as though his guilt were a foregone conclusion, stripping him of any meaningful presumption of innocence in the public sphere.

Schecter's family, also through White, directed pointed criticism at Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, objecting to the statements his office released following the arrest and charges earlier this year. The family disclosed that Schecter had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and lived with anxiety, conditions they argued made him particularly vulnerable to the pressures and stigma attached to such public accusations. They also asserted that the underlying evidence was considerably more nuanced than the way it had been characterized in news coverage and official statements — a claim that, with the case now permanently closed, cannot be tested in court.

These statements from the defense and family put Hochman and his office in an uncomfortable position. Prosecutors routinely issue press releases and hold media briefings when charging serious violent and sexual crimes, arguing that public transparency serves both accountability and public safety. Critics of that practice — particularly defense attorneys — have long maintained that such communications can be prejudicial and devastating before any facts are established. The Schecter case gives renewed force to that argument, though it simultaneously remains true that the underlying allegations involved two named victims whose experiences prompted the investigation in the first place.

**The Unresolved Tensions the Case Leaves Behind**

The death of a defendant before trial is an outcome the justice system has no clean mechanism for processing. There will be no acquittal, no conviction, and no formal factual record. For the women who reported being victimized — the UCLA student whose kidnapping complaint triggered Schecter's arrest, and the woman allegedly assaulted near Culver City in October of last year — the case ends without any judicial acknowledgment of what happened to them. That silence is its own form of harm, distinct from but no less significant than the questions Schecter's family is now raising about his treatment.

The broader debate over prosecutorial restraint and public communications is unlikely to be resolved by a single case, but the specificity here matters. Nathan Hochman, who has positioned himself as a reformist district attorney in Los Angeles County, now faces scrutiny over whether his office's public messaging in this instance was measured or excessive. The defense's argument is not simply that Schecter was innocent — that claim remains unproven in either direction — but that the institutional weight of public prosecution, amplified by media coverage, can itself become a form of punishment before any finding of fact.

The case also highlights the particular pressures facing defendants with mental health conditions or neurodevelopmental diagnoses within a system not designed with their vulnerabilities in mind. Schecter's family's disclosure of his autism spectrum disorder and anxiety raises legitimate questions about whether the bail process, public exposure, and the pace of criminal proceedings adequately account for defendants whose psychological profiles may make pretrial periods especially destabilizing. Those are systemic questions that extend well beyond any single defendant's conduct or culpability.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.