By Alexander Ramirez
WOODLAND, CA. Late last week in Yolo County Superior Court, Judge Tom Dyer’s department, there were several cases where the alleged victims urged the court to dismiss charges against those accused of crimes.
Those pleas made little apparent difference to Judge Dyer, who still scheduled future criminal proceedings.
In the first case, Michael Castellanos Bautista was in the Yolo court for a misdemeanor charge of sexual conduct of distributing images of another.
While Bautista’s response was not picked up by the YouTube stream, Judge Dyer can be heard telling Bautista that anything Bautista says can and will be used against him and that they’re not here to argue about how Bautista feels about the charges. The public defender was assigned afterward.
When Judge Dyer mentioned the stayaway order for Bautista toward a minor, the court was reminded that there was a minor on stream wanting to be heard.
There was a brief silence before Judge Dyer asked if there was anything else the alleged victim wanted to say, to which the victim responded, “I don’t find him guilty, everything. I just want to drop the charges on him.”
A criminal protection order was still served and Bautista was scheduled to come back on Nov. 3 in Dept. 11 at 9 a.m. for a pretrial conference. Bautista is out of custody on bail.
In another case, Martina Elena Garcia was in court charged with a domestic violence-related offense and a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, a baseball bat.
Other than the lack of a criminal record on Garcia’s profile, there was also a third-party witness to the incident who claims the alleged victim was chasing Garcia in a parking lot before Garcia allegedly struck the victim.
When the victim of this case was contacted by the prosecution, they said that Garcia was not guilty and they made everything up. And didn’t want anything to do with a proposed court order.
Because of those statements, and Garcia’s ability to stay with her mom, Garcia was released on supervised own-recognizance (SOR) with a protective order for the alleged victim of this case, to stay away from her.
Despite the mitigating comments of the witness and the victim, Garcia’s case was scheduled for Nov. 3 for a prehearing conference and a preliminary hearing.
