Court Watch

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.”

By Ibrahim Baig

Jurors heard from the defense on Monday, April 15, concerning charges against Andrew White.  Andrew White is allegedly involved in a robbery with the use of a firearm.

Defense attorney James Granucci called some of Andrew White’s family members to the stand. The witnesses include Mr. Hagey, who worked with the defendant, Billy Henderson, White’s cousin, Dorothy Trammull, White’s mother, and Troy Taylor, Billy’s friend.

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in Woodland at the Celebration Center Church (100 Woodland Ave), the Vanguard Court Watch Council of Yolo County (VCWCYC) is inviting the public to come forward to express their concerns about the judicial system, providing testimony and giving personal accounts of contemporary cases in the Yolo County Court system.

“The public has an opportunity to tell of their experiences in the Yolo County judicial system.  Experiences that normally are not covered in the newspaper,” said David Greenwald, Executive Director of Vanguard Court Watch.  “The Council will take public comment, testimony from invited speakers, and then deliberate in closed session to determine our course of action.”

On Monday the Yolo County District Attorney’s office unveiled an innovative new pilot project, modeled after a program that San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon implemented two years ago.

Jeff Reisig unveiled a program, in partnership with the Davis Police Department and the UC Davis Police Department, called the Neighborhood Court, a new adult criminal offender diversion program based on restorative justice.  This innovative program will be offered in the city of Davis and on the UC Davis campus, starting in May of 2013.

Back in the summer of 2010, lasting for six excruciating months – on again and off again – the gang injunction trial was an underwhelming experience.  Trotting out biased police officers who were stunningly allowed to testify, not just to what they witnessed, but also to what they were told, the District Attorney’s office managed to produce dozens of cases over the course of a decade in hopes of proving the existence of a nuisance represented by the Broderick Boys Criminal Street Gang, and thus laying the justification for a gang injunction.

In the end, we were left with the abiding belief that, while there may be areas where gang injunctions are necessary as a tool to reduce gang violence, the case was not made that West Sacramento was such an area.

By: Catherine McKnight

On the morning of Wednesday, April 10, the trial of People v. White began under Honorable Stephen L. Mock in Department 3.

Andrew Lawrence White is being charged on two counts of second-degree robbery with a firearm, and two additional enhancements for discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury. The court heard opening statements by DDA Robin Johnson and private defense attorney James Granucci.

In March of 2011, Judge Kathleen White, following a nearly six-month trial that went from July 12, 2010 to December 15, 2010 on alternate weeks, issued her ruling in favor of upholding the gang injunction in West Sacramento.  Three months later, she issued a final “Judgment Granting Injunction After Trial” against the Broderick Boys criminal street gang in West Sacramento.

The gang injunction issued by the court imposed a curfew and restricted other activities of gang members in a defined area within West Sacramento called the “Safety Zone.”

By Vanguard Court Watch Interns

Today in Judge Fall’s courtroom, Marlon Raye was brought from jail in a wheelchair for a probable cause hearing. He was arrested in West Sacramento on February 19 while riding a bicycle. He was charged with Resisting/Delaying Arrest and Possession of Methamphetamine.

Officer Wright, of the West Sacramento Police Department, testified that he observed the bicycle leaving the Pickwick Motel shortly after midnight. The officer was patrolling on foot. He called for assistance. No mention was made of why Officer Wright believed there was a reason to pursue Mr. Raye, nor why he was not in a patrol car. Foot patrol is not a common method used in West Sacramento.

by Alexandra Rose

On the morning of Monday, April 8, 2013, in Department 3 of the Superior Court of California, Yolo County, the armed robbery case of Andrew White was set to start under the Honorable Stephen L. Mock.

Andrew White is charged with two counts of robbery with use of a firearm, with an additional two enhancements related to discharging a firearm that inflicted great bodily injury.

Judge David Rosenberg has been working on this new courthouse for a decade now, and he deserves tremendous credit for the fortitude and skill to get it to the point where on Friday they actually broke ground on the new building.

“We truly love our historic courthouse … but it was built five generations ago for another time and another era,” he said, as quoted in other news accounts.  “We have outgrown that historic courthouse in every conceivable way.”

by Antoinnette Borbon

On Friday March 29, 2013, eleven alleged gang members, with all of nine different defense attorneys, filed into the courtroom. Nine different defense attorneys, with a couple conflict attorneys in that pile, were sent to the judge’s chambers for what seemed like forever, only to come out with yet another continuance date.

Some of the defendants were out of custody. Their charges stem from possession of drugs to possessing firearms and other gang-related activity. The People’s case is represented by Robin Johnson, Deputy District Attorney.

Earlier this week, we reported on a study from ProPublica that, in analyzing state and federal court rulings from 2001 to 2011, in particular “scrutinizing instances in which state or federal courts identified misconduct serious enough to throw out a conviction,” found that of 30 cases that met their very specific criteria, only one prosecutor would be disciplined in a meaningful way for misconduct.

Those findings mirrored earlier findings from the 2010 report from the Veritas Initiative, “Preventable Error,” funded by the Northern California Innocence Project, which documented more than 800 instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including 107 where the prosecutors were found to have committed misconduct more than once – two were cited for misconduct four times, two were cited five times and one prosecutor was cited for misconduct six times.

by Antoinnette Borbon

On Wednesday, March 27, 2013, the jurors came back with a guilty verdict on almost all counts in the state’s case against defendant John Timothy Ganthner, who was charged with child abuse and sexual abuse of a child, among serveral other charges and enhancements.

Deputy District Attorney Robert Gorman even added a count of torture, the only charge the jury acquitted on.