Month: August 2013

By Dan Williams

The jury remained in deliberation for most of the day. The question on their minds was not if the alleged actions took place, but rather if the victim was mentally able to give consent; and if she was, whether she communicated it.

The issue that this case raises is an interesting one. The outcome of this case could set a dangerous precedent. We could be seeing what is essentially an IQ floor on sexual relationships and consent. Now, I’m not saying that anybody who’s ever had the privilege of being a sexual partner of dim-witted cousin Skeeter is at risk of being thrown on the sex offender list; but this is something we should be concerned about with regard to those who have issues communicating, and to their biological urges.

Thomas Vukodinovich faces 57 felony charges for a sexual relationship he had with a 49-year-old developmentally disabled woman, who the prosecution says has an IQ of 37 and is considered moderately retarded.  Mr. Vukodinovich was the bus driver in charge of transporting disabled individuals to work.

According to the prosecution, he used this bus to drive the alleged victim to a number of secluded locations throughout Yolo and Solano County to have sexual relations with her and then warned her that if she reported him that he would get in trouble, be arrested and lose his job.

When a person is wrongly convicted for a crime, there is the presumption that the process broke down.  Often we look to prosecutorial misconduct, mistakes by investigators and ineffectual defense.  As this year was the 50^th anniversary of the seminal Supreme Court decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, there has been much attention focused on the decline of indigent defense.

We have found that public defense is strained by declining budgets, high workloads and other problems.

There was a time when DUI convictions, even for accidents that caused the deaths of innocents, were given small prison terms, virtual slaps on the wrist.  One of the great success stories has been the rise of the power of the MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) lobby.  In this county, even accidents not involving alcohol have been treated at times as vehicular manslaughter.

A few years ago we saw a case before Judge Fall, where an elderly woman driving in a parking lot was given gross vehicular manslaughter when she killed a pedestrian.  In a more recent case, Judge Mock in a court trial ruled that ten seconds of inattentiveness by the driver of a delivery truck that slammed into stopped traffic on I-5 warranted vehicular manslaughter, but without the gross negligence component.

by Antoinnette Borbon, Christina Zuniga and Dan Williams

As the trial of Thomas Vukodinovich, who is being accused of having sexual relations with a disabled woman, continued, Deputy District Attorney Alvina Tzang played the taped interview of the alleged victim. In this interview it was clear much of what she was trying to say could not be fully understood. It sounded like a type of “gibberish,” and much of it consisted of repeated answers.

Steve Gail assisted in the investigation and has worked with the district attorney’s office for several years, 36 to be exact. He talked about his experience on the stand. He described his knowledge of sexual abuse cases, but admitted to only having worked on one other case such as this in years past. Mr. Gail stated he had done a few elder abuse cases, too.

In early June, former Dixon High JV Football Coach Troy Hensley, 37, was arrested for allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with, and later threatening, a 17-year-old Dixon resident, over a 3 1/2-month period in 2012 at multiple locations in Davis, according to a release from the Davis Police Department.

However, our attention focused on the incident when the Dixon Patch published a story entitled, “Did Dixon’s Vice Mayor Influence Bail Reduction for Hensley’s Release?”