Court Watch

By Will Matthews and Rebecca McCray

A recent study from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) demonstrates that decriminalization of marijuana can actually improve our children’s futures while saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

In 2011, Senate Bill 1449 was implemented, which reduced the punishment for simple marijuana possession from a misdemeanor criminal offense to a civil infraction punishable by a fine of no more than $100. Data from the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center for 2011 reveals an impressive 20 percent decrease in overall youth arrests in the state compared to the previous year, and a 60 percent decrease in marijuana arrests. The CJCJ analysis determined that the “largest contributor to [the overall] decrease was a drop of 9,000 in youths’ low-level marijuana possession arrests” since the passage of SB 1449.

We are closing the seventh calendar year of the existence of the Davis Vanguard.  In some ways, our mission has changed over that period of time, but in fundamental ways, we remain the same with the idea of providing the alternative voice to the discourse provided in more mainstream publications.

The future of the death penalty in California could not be more murky.   In November, the voters had a chance to end the death penalty in the state, but Prop. 34 was narrowly defeated, 52 percent to 48 percent.  That leaves the system still alive, technically, though on life support.

The case of Marco Topete began in June of 2008, when the parolee led Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz on a high-speed chase that ultimately ended with the tragic shooting of the sheriff’s deputy.

From the time Mr. Topete was arrested and the time that reporters and the public were locked out of the Yolo County Courtroom, until the jury ultimately reached the verdict during the penalty phase to impose the death penalty – there were numerous twists and turns.

They stood last week in front of the Yolo County Courthouse, a few mothers, less than a month after their sons had been convicted of attempted murder as they shot into an inhabited dwelling.  With the enhancements, it is likely that their sons face 35 to life.

German Vizcarra, 19, Juan Reyes, 21, and Rolando Arismendez, 38, had their trial in late October and were found guilty on all counts.

By Maggie Clark

On a Las Vegas morning, crime investigator Gil Grissom surveyed the scene of an apparent suicide by a wealthy casino heir, dusting for prints, looking for fibers – any clue to help him and his team find the true story. Through drug analysis, fiber testing and close contact with the police, Grissom determined that the dead man was killed by his brother, who hoped to get a piece of their family’s fortune. Grissom was right. The brother confessed to the crime and was sent to prison.

When Clinton Parish, a Deputy DA in the Yolo County District Attorney’s office, announced just over a year ago that he intended to challenge Judge Dan Maguire for his judicial position, he did so with the full backing of his boss, District Attorney Jeff Reisig.

However, when he mailed attack brochures to county residents that proved to have unverified accusations against the judge, many of Mr. Parish’s backers, including Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto and DA Reisig, quickly withdrew their support.

In the immediate aftermath of the loss of Proposition 34, the ballot measure that would have ended California’s death penalty and replaced it with life without parole, its ballot sponsors took solace in the relative closeness of the election.

“The mere fact that the state is evenly divided is nothing short of extraordinary. In 1978, 71% of the electorate supported the Briggs Death Penalty Initiative and now, after hearing the facts, voters are almost evenly split,” said Jeanne Woodford, the official proponent of the SAFE California Campaign and former Warden at San Quentin State Prison where she oversaw four executions.

GUEST COMMENTARY – Californians seem to like their local governments. In fact, the recently released report from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests that voters have strong confidence in their local governments and want more authority shifted to the local level. Not surprisingly, this is precisely the thinking behind public safety realignment, a historic change to California’s public safety system.

Governor Brown calls this the “principle of subsidiarity.” When something needs to get done, give it to the smallest, least centralized organization that has the ability to do it. That is essentially what is happening with many public safety functions.

Proposition 34 Still Polling Under 50% But Support Surges – Last week an LA Times poll showed that Proposition 34, which would convert the death penalty in the state of California to life without parole, had pulled within the statistical margin of victory – demonstrating huge gains in a week.

Now the Field Poll, widely regarded as the most accurate of state polls, shows the unthinkable – that Proposition 34 has a lead outside of the margin of error.

Same Poll Finds Three Strikes Reform Passing Overwhelmingly – Last week, the LA Times-USC Poll found that support by voters to repeal the death penalty has increased dramatically, which puts the measure in range, though not enough at this point to actually ensure its passage, as support still falls below the critical 50 percent threshold.

The gap is just three points – 42 percent in favor of its passage (which would end the death penalty) and 45 percent against, with a critical 12 percent undecided.

by Ron Briggs

GUEST COMMENTARY – Bill O’Reilly is the newest endorser of Proposition 34, the initiative that will replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole and make inmates work and pay restitution (rather than sit in private cells without doing anything, as they now do).

It might be surprising to some that O’Reilly, a political commentator on Fox News, a national leader among traditional thinkers, supports Prop 34. But a look at California’s death penalty shows why: California’s death penalty is simply a fiscal disaster that coddles criminals, enriches lawyers, and hurts victims.

The first ever academic investigation into the scope and cost of wrongful convictions revealed on Wednesday that California leads the nation in wrongful convictions.

The project, California Wrongful Convictions Project, launched by the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law), and Hollway Advisory Services, a criminal justice research firm, announced that their research found that at least 200 wrongful convictions have been thrown out since 1989 in California, costing those convicted more than 1,300 years of freedom and taxpayers $129 million.

ANALYSIS – Throughout the trial that seemed to stretch on far longer than the 13 calendar days it encompassed, the hope was that, win or lose, this trial would provide closure to the grieving family of Luis Gutierrez who was gunned down by plain-clothed sheriff’s deputies on April 30, 2009.

The odds from the start seemed stacked against the plaintiffs. After all, they had only three witnesses who actually saw what happened that day and none of them saw everything.  How were they going to prove this case, even at the lower civil trial level of preponderance of the evidence?

ANALYSIS – As the Federal Civil Rights Suit trial wrapped up last week, the Sacramento Bee‘s Denny Walsh does an exceptional piece in which he argues “jurors must ask: What about the knife?“

As Mr. Walsh writes, “The jury’s verdict likely will swing on whether the plaintiffs’ lawyers have sown enough doubt in jurors’ minds that Gutierrez did not have the knife when the shooting occurred.”