A Woodland man, Justin Garcia, will face trial on charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, child endangerment and resisting arrest following Judge Fall’s ruling after a preliminary hearing on Friday, which showed wildly divergent testimony between YONET officers who arrested Mr. Garcia on November 10, 2012, and eyewitness accounts of the supposed victims.
Judge Fall called the kidnapping charges unusual in that they involved fear rather than force, but noted that the statute does not require a particular level of fear that compels the victim to comply. He said it will be up to a jury to determine whether the facts in this case constitute kidnapping and false imprisonment.
A female, in her testimony, indicated that she did not know Justin Garcia well – indeed, she had trouble identifying him with certainty in court. She testified that she received a call from him near midnight and he wanted her to give him a ride. It turns out that his sister was dating her brother.
Almost immediately after she picked him up, a police car turned on its lights. What she did not know is that, even before Mr. Garcia had entered her vehicle, a team of YONET agents were tracking him out of a nearby housing complex, suspecting him to be a parolee in possession of meth.
When the police lights were turned on, she attempted on several occasions to pull over. However, he directed her to keep driving. The incident reports indicated she had told the YONET agents that she had seen him reach into his sweater and believed he had a weapon. However, on the stand she downplayed that possibility.
Agent Gary Richter, a YONET agent who is employed by the sheriff’s office, testified that the vehicle slowed and seemed to pull to the corner several times, but failed to yield. He estimated that the car was driving at a low rate of speed, around 30 to 35 mph. It may have run one stop sign, but otherwise was not driving unusually.
Under cross-examination, the female acknowledged that, while she frequently gave rides to individuals, she did not have a driver’s license. She acknowledged that that fact played a small part in her reluctance to pull over, but that it was mainly Mr. Garcia’s insistence that caused the fear.
Ultimately, she would pull over, and YONET agents testified that she perhaps traveled, in total, two square city blocks and returned to the point at which she had picked up Mr. Garcia. At this point, he ran back into the home of his cousin.
Mr. Garcia had been there earlier in the day, shooting dice in the garage with another individual. At some point the residents of the house, who had a small baby, went to sleep, and were awakened near midnight by Mr. Garcia rushing back in, and the entry of the YONET agents with the dogs.
Here the reports diverged. The YONET agents told the court that they entered the home, and demanded that Mr. Garcia come out. There was no response for about five minutes. He then came out with his hands up, looked at them and went back into the back bedroom.
Eventually he would emerge again, and he was ordered to lie down on the floor and crawl toward the officers. He did not comply with that order either, and eventually was handcuffed and arrested.
Agent Richter testified that he talked to one of the inhabitants, who told him that Mr. Garcia rushed into the bedroom, waking them from sleep. He said he needed to hide and that if he took the rap for the scales and drug paraphernalia in the garage, it would be a parole violation.
Mr. Garcia yelled at the inhabitant to hide him and then pushed the inhabitant to the bed. The inhabitant said he did not feel that he was free to leave the room when he was pushed to the bed and that Mr. Garcia had told him to stay in the room.
However, the account given in court between those of the witnesses and the YONET agents was, as stated, wildly divergent.
The male inhabitant indicated that he did not recall saying that he was shoved on the bed with both hands. He suggested that he did not mean to tell police that he feared leaving the room and now retracts it. He said he was never in fear of being hurt or scared.
Under cross-examination from Deputy Public Defender Charlie Butler, the inhabitant was asked if he had exaggerated his story to the police. He had to explain to the witness what it meant to exaggerate a story by using a fish analogy – e.g. if you caught a fish this big, but told people the fish was far larger.
The witness agreed and suggested that everything had happened so quickly.
His wife testified that the cops woke her up when they entered their home. While the YONET agents testified that Mr. Garcia was not welcome in their home, she said under cross-examination that another individual who had been shooting dice in the garage had let him in.
She testified that Mr. Garcia did not push her husband, but rather, in the commotion, they bumped shoulders and her husband staggered but never fell on the bed.
The statements given to police in this case are at odds with the testimony of all three of the “victims” in this case. Judge Fall ruled that the statements from the police are sufficient to allow a jury to decide the matter, but the question remains as to whether they would be sufficient to gain a conviction.
There seem to be two possibilities here. Either the witnesses, all of whom know the defendant, have changed their accounts based on either fear of the defendant or sympathy for his possible punishment if he is convicted of these charges, or the YONET agents fabricated their report.
There was the suggestion by the defense during the preliminary hearing that the accounts of the YONET agents have evolved over time, and there is also the fact that at least two of these agents have somewhat questionable reputations and there are a number of complaints against them, both in their departments as well as in court trials.
In the end, this case will come down to whether the police end up believing the witnesses or the police as to what happened.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“There seem to be two possibilities here. Either the witnesses, all of whom know the defendant, have changed their accounts based on either fear of the defendant or sympathy for his possible punishment if he is convicted of these charges, or the YONET agents fabricated their report.”
The odds of it being the first of your options is overwhelming. Contemporaneous reports by law enforcement about witness interview words trump later testimony that likely got “refined” through threats and pleadings of so called friends, including a sister’s boyfriend whom now supposedly was unknown to the victim.
I should have added a third possibility. These folks were not the most articulate people in the world, and it’s possible that they communicated something that was misinterpreted by the agents.
That said, under normal conditions I’d agree with your “odds” but in this case, not as sure. We’ll see.