Month: April 2013

This Weekend’s Child Sexual Abuse Conference in Davis Focuses on Courts Endangering Children’s Safety – Over the course of the last several years, the Vanguard has received a number of complaints about the Yolo County Family Court system, where the complainants allege that local judges have put young children into homes of known sex offenders or otherwise have endangered their welfare.

According to these complaints, the Yolo County Family Court does not consistently ensure the physical and sexual safety of children in custody, nor make good visitation decisions.

By Antoinnette Borbon

A few weeks ago, I did a commentary disagreeing with the jury findings in the trial of John Timothy Ganthner.    I would like to apologize for taking so long to get back to the readers.

Since a little bit of time has passed, it may be far better to answer your questions within a commentary, to refresh the minds of my readers.     I will attempt to answer your questions in an order you may understand.

by Alexandra Rose

On the morning of Monday April 22, 2013, under Judge Timothy L. Fall in Department 2 of the Yolo County Superior Court, the case of James Mings was called for the last time before next week’s jury trial.

James Mings pled “not guilty” to murdering Davis resident Kevin Gerard Seery, a 42-year-old man suffering from pancreatitis and several other illnesses.  Mr. Mings claimed that Mr. Seery had wanted to die and asked Mr. Mings to kill him.

You will not find many more critical of this District Attorney’s office than this site.  However, we believe that the District Attorney’s office deserves real credit for taking a program that has worked successfully in San Francisco, adding true restorative justice components to it, and then planning to implement it in the city of Davis, for starters, as a pilot program.

“Rather than charging a case for prosecution, the District Attorney’s Office will refer certain misdemeanors and infractions to Neighborhood Court,” the DA explained in a press release.  “In Neighborhood Court, a panel of trained volunteers from the community hears the case.  All hearings are confidential, and participation by the offender is completely voluntary.”

A turning point has perhaps been reached in terms of the handling of prosecutorial misconduct.  It was 2011 when the US Supreme Court overturned a multimillion dollar civil verdict for John Thompson, who spent years in prison as New Orleans prosecutors not only withheld evidence, but destroyed it.

As the New York Times noted at the time, the ruling protects prosecutors, giving them “nearly absolute immunity over civil suits.”

By Catherine Woodward

Zechariah Simpson’s jury trial began on Wednesday, April 17, Mr. Simpson, represented by Deputy Public Defender Emily Fisher, is charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly vandalizing the men’s restroom of G Street WunderBar on March 18, 2012. The damages totaled less than $400. Mr. Simpson had been visiting Davis for the first time on St. Patrick’s Day to watch his brother’s band play at the G Street WunderBar.

In his opening argument, Deputy District Attorney Kyle Hasapes emphasized that, since the incident, Mr. Simpson has refused to take responsibility for his actions and must be held accountable. Ms. Fisher argued that her client is innocent and has been wrongly accused of vandalism.

Hopefully you caught PBS’s Tuesday night broadcast of the Central Park Five – if not, I highly recommend it.  Ken Burns remains among the finest contemporary documentarians, presenting the story of five teenagers in late 1980s New York who were railroaded into providing false confessions and ultimately wrongfully convicted of committing one of the most horrific non-murders one can imagine.

Ken Burns did a masterful job of setting the scene, as author Eisa Nefertari Ulen, writing in the Washington Post on Tuesday, notes, “New York was just emerging from the near-bankruptcy of the 1970s and entering a period of lavish conspicuous consumption that was fueled by Wall Street in the 1980s. Black culture was just emerging from the empowerment of the Black Power Movement of the 1970s and entering a period of disenfranchisement that was fueled by the Crack Era of the 1980s.”