Court Watch

By now, most know the story of Luis Gutierrez-Navarro, who on April 30, 2009, was walking home from the DMV on East Gum Avenue in Woodland, when he encountered what turned out to be three plain-clothed officers, Dale Johnson, Herman Oviedo and Hector Bautista in an unmarked Yolo County Sheriff’s Department vehicle.

What happened next is subject to dispute.  However, there seems to have been an attempt to contact Mr. Gutierrez, who had no real criminal record aside from some vehicle code violations. Mr. Gutierrez, for reasons that are unclear, fled the scene, the officers pursued him, and eventually at the top of the overpass there was a final confrontation in which the officers claim he pulled a knife and he was shot and killed.

Plaintiffs Allege Police Intentionally Inflicted Serious Bodily Injury on Brothers in 2005 Confrontation –

It has been over seven years since Ernesto Galvan’s life was changed dramatically with a beating in the early morning hours in June 14,  2005 at approximately 3:20 a.m. or shortly after.  Police beat Mr. Galvan, and to a lesser extent his brother Fermin, after they claim he resisted arrest near a West Sacramento Park.

Updated Study Indicates Five Billion Dollars in Costs if System Maintained

Monday’s ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler simply acknowledged the current state of affairs, as he was asked by LA County prosecutors to allow the execution of two longtime death row inmates, both of whom exhausted their legal appeals.

Judge Fidler agreed with the prosecution who argued that the “state is going as slow as they can and calling it progress.”   However, he said that as a trial judge, he lacked “the authority to override a civil court order in Marin County or the California State Legislature’s direction that a long administrative process is necessary to vet any lethal injection method.”

West Sacramento and Other Local Jurisdictions Need to Revisit Vehicle Pursuit Policies –

Imagine, a 17-year-old juvenile steals a car and leads the police on a high speed chase in one end of town, and on the other end of town, a police car turns on its lights and heads off to join the chase.  But just as it does so, it strikes a man crossing the street and hits him so hard that it severs the man’s body at the torso.

This is what happened this week in West Sacramento.  The Yolo County DA’s office would charge the teen, who was arrested after crashing into a parked car, with vehicle theft, felony possession of stolen property, and misdemeanor allegations of evading a police officer, resisting arrest and driving without a license.

Deputy District Attorney Clinton Parish has apparently been on leave since his failed bid to win a judgeship seat from Dan Maguire this past June.  According to several sources, Mr. Parish has not returned to work since the June election.

The story of realignment figures to be a complex story.  From the start we believed that, without changes to both charging and sentencing policies, sustainable declines in prison population may be impossible to achieve.  The data that is now emerging may bear that out.

In a report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, written by Senior Research Fellow Mike Males in mid-August, the latest data analysis shows “that during the first 9 months of realignment there has been a 39% overall reduction in new prison admissions as of June 30, 2012, and a drop of 26,480 in the prison population as of August 8, 2012, compared to October 1, 2011.”

I had my first and only conversation with Chief Deputy DA Jonathan Raven in January of 2010.  We had just launched Yolo Judicial Watch and I was interested in having some sort of dialogue with the District Attorney’s office.  It was a strange and meandering conversation.

The upshot is this – the Vanguard covers public agencies all over Yolo County, but the only agency and agency head that will not speak with us are the Yolo County’s District Attorney’s office and DA Jeff Reisig.

UC Davis student Thomas Matzat, who is also one of 12 protesters facing bank blocking charges, and here facing five felony counts along with another 15 misdemeanors, opted to take a plea agreement on Wednesday to a single charge stemming from an alleged incident at Starbucks on Orchard Road in Davis.

He is alleged to have spray painted the word parasite.  By pleading no contest to that charge, the Assistant Supervising District Attorney Michael Cabral agreed to dismiss the remaining charges against Mr. Matzat.

By George Gascón

California’s “three strikes” sentencing law enacted in 1994 had the best of intentions – to keep serious and violent repeat offenders off our streets. Eighteen years later, we’ve learned valuable lessons about policing and keeping crime down, but we’ve also witnessed the unintended consequences of that law.

Since the law’s enactment, more than 8,500 prisoners have been sentenced to life in prison for solely nonviolent crimes – as minor as shoplifting or simple drug possession.

The key witness described the scene that took place at the Woodland Arco AM/PM as one in which she could tell something was about to go down.  She saw a number of youths running around and acting rambunctious.  However, she was late into a day of driving her daughter to college and wanted to get her gas and move on.

After exiting the gas station, the witness suddenly saw five youths attacking a four-door Honda Accord and the inhabitants inside to the point where the vehicle was rocking.

Two weeks ago Jose Valenzuela was released from custody, pleading to a single count of attempted murder and taking a strike, but getting time served.  His release comes more than 20 months after being acquitted of attempted murder of a man on May 18, 2008 and nearly being acquitted of the second man – one only person held out as the jury hung 11-1 for acquittal.

But that did not stop Mr. Valenzuela  from waiting in the Yolo County jail, serving more than four years in custody despite the fact that the majority of jurors believed him innocent of the crimes for which he was charged.  In addition to the attempted murder charge, he was acquitted of assault for the first victim and the jury hung 7-5 for acquittal of assault for the second victim.