Santa Monica Man Charged With UCLA Student Kidnapping Dies by Suicide Before Court Hearing

**Death of Alexander Schecter Before Scheduled Court Date**

Alexander Schecter, a 26-year-old Santa Monica man facing serious felony charges stemming from an alleged kidnapping and sexual assault, died by suicide on Monday evening, hours before a preliminary court hearing scheduled for Tuesday at the Airport Courthouse. A family member found him unconscious and not breathing at the family home on the 800 block of San Vicente Boulevard, and Santa Monica Police Lieutenant Lewis Gilmour confirmed there was no indication of foul play. The Los Angeles County medical examiner's office formally released his name and manner of death the following day.

Schecter had been out on bail at the time of his death. He had been arrested in March after allegedly preventing a female UCLA student from leaving his vehicle and threatening her with violence. During the subsequent investigation, authorities connected him to a separate sexual assault case near Culver City from the previous October. In April, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office charged him with kidnapping to commit another crime, first-degree residential robbery, two counts of forcible oral copulation, and one count of rape — a sweeping set of charges that carried severe potential consequences.

**Family, Defense Attorney, and Questions of Due Process**

Schecter's death immediately prompted public statements from his defense attorney and his family that pushed back sharply against both the charges and the way prosecutors handled the case publicly. His attorney, Debra S. White, framed the death within a broader cultural debate, arguing that the MeToo movement — while important in drawing attention to sexual misconduct — has created conditions where accusations alone can cause irreversible harm to a person's life before any verdict is reached. White argued that charging decisions and public statements from prosecutors can function as a form of prejudgment, and that taking allegations seriously must be balanced against procedural fairness and restraint.

The family issued its own statement through White, directing pointed criticism at Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and the public communications his office issued earlier in the year. The family also disclosed that Schecter had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and suffered from anxiety, and maintained that the underlying evidence in the case was more nuanced and complicated than the media coverage had reflected. Whether those claims would have borne weight in a courtroom will now never be tested — the preliminary hearing that would have been a first major legal checkpoint in that process never took place.

**The Broader Tensions the Case Surfaces**

The circumstances surrounding Schecter's death arrive at a moment when debates over prosecutorial conduct, pretrial publicity, and the rights of defendants are particularly charged. The charges against him were severe — kidnapping to commit another crime is among the most serious counts a California prosecutor can bring — and they were announced by an office that has made public-facing communication a notable part of its posture under Hochman. Critics of aggressive prosecutorial messaging argue that DA offices sometimes use press releases and public statements strategically, in ways that shape public perception before any evidence is tested in court. White's statement gives voice to exactly that concern.

At the same time, the case involved named victims — a UCLA student and a woman near Culver City — whose experiences and safety concerns are a significant part of the public interest calculus. Prosecutors make charging decisions based on the evidence available to them at the time, and high-profile cases involving violence against women frequently face the opposite criticism: that charges are too timid or that public communications are too deferential to defendants. The tension between those two pressures is difficult to resolve, and Schecter's death means the legal process will not produce the kind of evidentiary resolution that a trial might have provided to any of the parties involved.

The case also draws attention to how the criminal justice system intersects with mental health. The family's disclosure of Schecter's autism spectrum disorder and anxiety diagnoses raises questions — frequently unresolved in individual cases — about how courts, prosecutors, and defense attorneys account for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions during charging, bail, and pretrial processes. The stress of facing a multi-count felony case while awaiting a court date is significant under any circumstances, and that pressure is compounded for individuals with underlying mental health vulnerabilities.

The victims in the underlying cases, whose identities have not been made public, now face the end of the legal proceedings without a conviction, acquittal, or any adjudicated resolution. For survivors of sexual violence who go through the difficult process of cooperating with law enforcement and prosecutors, the death of a charged defendant before trial is a particular kind of closure — or absence of it — that advocacy groups frequently highlight as one of the most painful possible outcomes of the legal process.