By Sophie Marconi
On Monday July 18 at 1:38 pm in Department 9, Judge W. Johnson conducted a preliminary hearing on an assault case regarding the defendant Chad Patterson and an assault of three individuals, including two men and one young woman. The incident occurred on June 28, 2016, at approximately 7 pm.
The first victim who was called as a witness described his experience with the defendant as follows. The witness was working at Davis Gas & Shop when he saw a man apparently being attacked and screaming for help. The witness opened the door of the shop to see what was going on, when the defendant approached the witness and attacked him, swinging at him twice and making contact on the second swing.
The witness experienced facial trauma as well as swelling, and the same day went to urgent care to have his injuries evaluated. He received two stitches, and later went into the hospital twice more, to get his stitches removed and to review his symptoms of dizziness and headaches. He stated that he experienced a concussion, a neck injury and a shoulder injury as a result of the punch. He explained that, after the defendant hit him in the face, surrounding witnesses began to approach the crime scene, causing the defendant to run away.
The next witness, also a victim, called to the stand was a young female student who, at the time of her attack, was waiting for the bus. The offense took place near the victim’s home, Alhambra Apartments. The witness was sitting at the bus stop when she saw the defendant approach her. Immediately after he approached, the defendant began punching the witness in the face several times on the right side of her face, as well as on the back of her head with closed fists. The victim attempted to run away from the defendant, crossing the street while screaming for help as the defendant ran after her.
At this point, a male witness approached the scene to try to help. The witness approached the defendant in an attempt to calm him down and was immediately attacked by the defendant. The defendant pushed this witness – and now third victim – down, beating him relentlessly. The witness/victim lost consciousness at one point during the beating for approximately one minute, but later told the police officer that he estimated the defendant had punched him 15 times. Eventually a final witness heard the ruckus from a nearby apartment, came outside, and pushed the defendant off of that victim. The third and final witness that the prosecution called to the stand was Officer Mathew Muscardini, who arrived at the crime scene shortly after the final attack.
Officer Muscardini has been a Davis police officer for approximately 5 years, and arrived at the crime scene to see two of the male witnesses holding down Mr. Patterson, the defendant. Officer Muscardini immediately noticed one of the victim’s facial injuries and noted this in his report. Officer Muscardini testified that the last victim of Mr. Patterson’s attack was beaten to such an extent that he was screaming incessantly while he received medical attention. The officer described the last victim’s face as severely swollen, blue, red, and bleeding. He stated that the white of his left eye was no longer white because it was filled full of blood. He also noted that the swelling of the left side of his face was so severe that it protruded out significantly.
Officer Muscardini told the courtroom that he had called the victim that morning to check in. The victim told officer Muscardini that he still had blurred vision out of his eye four weeks later. The victim also stated that his eye had been swollen shut for the first several days following the incident. He relayed that he had to take eye drop medication throughout the day, and had also been experiencing hallucinations. The victim had been in the hospital for four weeks already.
At this point the officer explained that he had detained Patterson, and later, when he officially arrested him and explained the situation to him, Patterson said nothing. Officer Muscardini also stated that Mr. Patterson said nothing at all on the way to Yolo County Jail, which he found unusual. He also noted that each victim had stated that Mr. Patterson never said a word to any of them during the three attacks, which each witness found odd. Each victim told the officer that they had never seen Mr. Patterson in their lives, and assured Officer Muscardini that there was no relation at all between themselves and Mr. Patterson. It is also important to note that each description provided by the several witnesses/victims during cross-examination matched up. All witnesses testified that the defendant had worn a black shirt with brown pants, had no weapons or visible belongings, and had messy hair.
Is that a reference to retired Judge Arvid W. Johnson? As far as I know, no current judges with the last name Johnson sit on the Yolo County bench. However, I know that for some cases retired judges are brought back temporarily. So perhaps that is the case here?
Regarding the case itself: It sounds like Mr. Patterson is insane. He should probably do some jail time for these attacks. But longer term, he needs to be locked up in a psychiatric facility. There is clearly something not right with him. And society does not need to be put at risk having him walking around, ready to explode.
That was my guess also, Rich, and was the question I put in immediately – W. Arvid Johnson. And you are correct that there is no judicial assignment to a courtroom for the surname Johnson, thus a visiting or retired judge. But without confirmation, I did not change it.
I really do not believe that using our jails and/or prisons as holding pens for the mentally ill is appropriate. What should be determined ( if it has not been) is if the defendant was under the influence of some substance at the time and the mental aberration he was demonstrating was drug induced and temporary. If so, then perhaps incarceration would be the best option. However, if this is solely or primarily related to mental illness, then hospitalization would be a much more appropriate solution for the safety of both the society and this individual.
I generally agree with you here in these sorts of cases. I do think, however, some jail time* — say 3 months — for these senseless attacks, purely as punishment, is in order, even if the underlying cause is/was mental illness. If the underlying cause was something else — like he is some sort of sociopath — it’s harder to know what to do, but jail time is more clearly in order.
Ideally, we would take guardianship of the severely mentally ill before any innocents are harmed. That is the non-libertarian world I prefer: Where we don’t presume that someone who is psychotic, but has not yet been arrested for a crime, is capable of making rational decisions about his own life like any other adult. We would, instead, treat such people more compassionately. We would not let them fall into homelessness, severe depression, street-drug addiction, alcoholism and all the other maladies which go along with untreated diseases of this nature. But, alas, since the mid-1970s, our society has largely washed its hands of these folks. We’ve closed down most of our psyche hospitals. And we have given over the responsibility for their care to our jailers — after they have caused some mayhem.
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* In my opinion, we callously give jail/prison sentences which are too long and serve little or no societal purpose. It is a serious punishment to put someone in jail for 3 months or 6 months. It gets the point across. Who benefits from a 10-year sentence? In most cases — short of murderers or rapists — long prison sentences go too far beyond punishment. They are used, mistakenly in my view, to keep someone away from society.
However, it is not as if, when someone is sentenced to 12 years in prison, we make sure that when they get out they have the tools (job skills, education, drug counseling, moral guidance, etc.) to succeed post-incarceration. Most of our prisons and jails are just warehousing people until their sentences are done, and then it’s usually just a matter of time before they go back to jail/prison. So society is “safe” from that one individual for a little longer, but in much graver danger once he goes home. And prisoners are leaving incarceration, without necessary reforms, every day.
… FWIW, I would be just as happy to exile our bad apples. Give them a shorter prison term and then put them out on a remote island with free food and shelter, where they can reside with other ex-cons, and prohibit them from moving back to the U.S. But we will never do that. So I think the second best alternative would be to help them gain the tools they need to live in society.
The other part of this equation is that even if a person has a supportive family there is nothing they can do to help. If someone wants to die other than the occasional 72 hour hold there is little that can be done.
Sadly, as a family member, I can attest to the fact that you are completely right. It was seeing my in-law going downhill (with paranoid schizophrenia) and having no ability as a family to help him — he was never fully convinced that he was ill — that I became convinced that our approach as a society is misguided, and the end result most of the time is horrible for the person with the disease: be it suicide, homelessness*, drug/alcohol addiction and in many cases prison.
*I have no idea where he is now, if he is alive. Last I heard, several years ago from one of his sisters, is that he was homeless and not getting treatment.
Rich
“I generally agree with you here in these sorts of cases. I do think, however, some jail time* — say 3 months — for these senseless attacks, purely as punishment, is in order, even if the underlying cause is/was mental illness.”
Why would you see any punishment as desirable for the mentally ill ?