by Ibrahim BaigIt was a short trial for Ricardo Munoz this week. The trial concluded yesterday with closing arguments.
Deputy District Attorney Diane Ortiz reiterated to the jury that this case is a simple case. Ortiz walked the jurors through each charge and explained how the People have met the criterion for a guilty verdict.
By: Alexandra Rose and Catherine Woodward
On the morning of Monday March 11, 2013, in Department 4 of the Yolo County Superior Court, the domestic violence casewas set to start under Judge Rosenberg.
The Defendant is accused of the following felonies: injuring his wife, resisting an officer, attempting to remove a firearm from said officer, child abuse, and damage to power/telephone lines. He is also accused of a misdemeanor for injuring a wireless connection device.
In early 2011, then newly-elected Santa Clara District Attorney, Jeff Rosen, created a Conviction Integrity Unit. Led by prosecutor David Angel, the department was set up to review cases of alleged prosecutorial misconduct and create policies to prevent errors.
In a statement at the time, Mr. Rosen said, “Integrity is central to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. We will protect defendants’ rights, even as we justly prosecute them. For a prosecutor, the ends never justify the means, we do the right thing, and we do it the right way.”
By Vanguard Court Watch InternsKevin McCarty’s trial came to a close on Monday afternoon, when the jury found him guilty of misdemeanor resisting arrest and obstructing a public officer. He was found not guilty of the other counts, including battery of an officer, battery of another person, and a hate crime.
In the early morning hours of May 18, 2012, Mr. McCarty had been celebrating his 21st birthday at Tres Hermanas in Davis when he got into a bar fight with an acquaintance. The victim was identified as a Sikh and wears a turban. During the commotion, the victim’s turban was knocked off when Mr. McCarty took a swing at him. Mr. McCarty, who had blacked out, later refused to cooperate with police. In attempts to restrain him, police slammed Mr. McCarty to the ground and he was knocked out.
“In both cases, the mistreatment of residents stemmed from Davis police officers assuming crimes had taken place and they knew who was guilty – before conducting investigations,” Rich Rifkin writes in his Wednesday, March 6, 2013 column in the Davis Enterprise.
He continues, “They failed to treat residents of our community with respect. They acted aggressively, intemperately and without regard for justice.”
Sikh Culture Expert TestifiesKevin McCarty, a UCD student, is accused of a hate crime resulting from an altercation with another student at a Davis bar in May, 2012. During a bar fight, he knocked off the turban of a man identified as a Sikh. On Thursday, March 7, an expert was brought in by the prosecution to answer questions about the Sikh religion.
Ashveer Pal Singh is a doctoral student at Stanford and has dedicated himself to studying his own Sikh heritage. His field studies are carried out in the Punjab region of India, which is 60% Sikh.
by Antoinnette Borbon The state’s case against Kevin McCarty slowly took a different turn Thursday afternoon as three of the defendants took the stand to tell their account of what happened on the night of May 18, 2012.
First to take the stand this afternoon was Sgt. Ilya Bezloglov of the Davis Police Department. He testified to being called out to the downtown bar, Tres Hermanas, because of an altercation.
by Antoinnette BorbonOn Wednesday the state began the first day of a presumed two-day trial of a young defendant accused of assault and a hate crime. The alleged victim testified, as the state’s first witness, in front of a jury in Judge David Rosenberg’s courtroom.
He told the court that he and the defendant were at a local bar in downtown Davis, Tres Hermanas, when the defendant came past him and uttered racist remarks and hit his turban off of his head. He testified he was extremely angry and felt the defendant had intentions of striking him, so he began hitting the defendant first, in what he called a self-defense mechanism. Once the two became involved in the altercation, bouncers were summoned to break it up. But no blood or bruises were shown on either the defendant or the alleged victim.
By Jeff AdachiA group of state judges wants to persuade the public to cash in one of our fundamental rights: trial by a jury of our peers.
The idea, floated by the California Judges Association as a cost-saving measure, requires passing a state constitutional amendment to shrink juries in misdemeanor criminal cases from 12 to eight members. Paring down juries is a dangerous bargain.
By Vanguard Court Watch Interns On Monday, March 4, an arraignment for the James Mings case was held in Department 9.
In the fall of 2011, Mr. Mings turned himself in following the death of Kevin Seery in Davis, and Mr. Mings was subsequently charged with first degree murder. Jury selection for Mr. Mings’ trial was interrupted last week due to Deputy DA Martha Holzapfel’s unexpected illness.
The case of Eliaser Aguilar is the exact type of case that Proposition 36, passed overwhelmingly by the voters last November, attempted to address. Mr. Aguilar spent nearly 14 years in prison for a single count of possession of meth in 1999.
The Aguilar case, in fact, illustrates the flaws of the previous system. Mr. Aguilar, you see, was not being punished for his use of meth so much as he was for his previous offense, back in 1987, when he was 30 years old and committed a string of armed robberies.
By Vanguard Court Watch InternsThe trial of James Mings ground to a halt on Wednesday when Deputy DA Martha Holzapfel fell ill, causing Judge Richardson to send the jury home.
When the trial resumed on Thursday morning, Ms. Holzapfel was still ill. Her supervisor, Deputy DA Rob Gorman was supposed to take her place and select the jury.
Last November, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Prop 36, known as the “Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012.” Under the new law, which created PC 1170.126, those sentenced to 25 years to life for a non-violent third strike can be resentenced.On February 15, 2013, Judge Timothy Fall re-sentenced Eliaser Aguilar, who has been in prison since 1999 on a single count of violation of section 11377(a) of the California Health and Safety code for possession of a controlled substance.
According to a release from the West Sacramento Police Department, Officer Sergio Alvarez, while on duty, used his position to stop and assault women – six in total, some of them more than once, who range in age from 20 to 47.
All of them frequented the West Capitol Avenue area, where Mr. Alvarez had a home and allegedly was housing prostitutes.
by Bessie Samson and Antoinnette Borbon Today began the first day of paneling a jury for the state’s case against defendant Ming. Ming has been indicted on a charge of first degree murder of a Davis resident, that happened at the College Square apartments on J St back in October 1, 2011. Ming claims he knew the victim briefly, but the victim was suffering with several illnesses and had asked him to end his suffering.
The victim, Kevin Seery, 42, was reportedly suffering from a number of ailments which included diabetes, chronic pancreatitis, chronic hepatitis and pneumonia at the time of his death. He stood at 6-1 but weighed just 133 pounds.
The notion of cash for convictions is the idea that fiscal incentives might drive the decisions made by prosecutors as to which cases to pursue. In the age of declining budgets, prosecutors increasingly are forced to rely on external grants which contain the incentive to arrest, prosecute and convict more people in the targeted category.That may sound benign, but when the need for funding trumps the need to protect the community or ensure that justice is done from the perspective of the community, the victim and the defendant, we have a potential problem.
By Vanguard Court Watch Interns
The afternoon session of Department 1 on Friday, February 22 included a preliminary hearing regarding the Wayne Cottle case. Mr. Cottle, defended by Mr. Ryan Friedman, was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine. Deputy District Attorney Mr. Jay Linden called the first and only witness, Officer Josh Helton of the Davis Police Department.
On October 6 of last year, 911 operators provided Officer Helton with the phone number of Ms. Pratt, the defendant’s girlfriend, who believed that he was suicidal and possibly in possession of drugs and/or a firearm. Specifically, she said that he had a methamphetamine and Adderall problem, and it was likely that he was using.
California leads the nation in wrongful convictions, according to a 2012 study, but it trails many states, particularly New Jersey, in safeguards and best practices aimed at reducing critical areas where wrongful convictions are likely to occur.
For instance, in 2011 the New Jersey Supreme Court made a ruling that was aimed at resolving what they called the “troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications.” A year later, for the first time, the New Jersey courts are having judges instruct jurors in order to improve their evaluation of eyewitness identification.
by Antoinnette BorbonToday we heard testimony in the state’s case against defendant Kyle Hall. Hall is charged with one count of false imprisonment and another count of attempted kidnapping.
On November 25th, 2012, the alleged victim and her boyfriend were at the Raley’s shopping center in Woodland.
Clinton Parish showed appallingly poor judgment last year in authorizing attacks against incumbent Judge Dan Maguire. Even if those attacks had been accurate, it is questionable for one to play that sort of politics in a judicial race that is supposed to be about experience and neutrality, not politics.
How easily the charges were systematically dismantled under the least amount of inquiry, however, casts the situation in a very different light. It calls into question Mr. Parish’s ability not only to be a judge, but also to be a prosecuting attorney. After all, if you cast baseless charges against your political opponent, why would you not cast the same charges against a poor, defenseless defendant?
