Court Watch

Commentary: Law Enforcement Use of Social Networking Sites Needs Judicial Oversight

Surveillance-KeyholeIt is relatively easy to gauge the impact of social media on some levels of law enforcement.  Simply watch expert testimony at gang trials as they cull incriminating photos of youths dressed in particular colors, adorning specific tattoos or slashing specific hand signs, and you can see how the advent and proliferation of social network sites, first MySpace and now Facebook and Instagram, have impacted law enforcement.

But while we may have particularized questions about such techniques, the use of photos to link defendants to gang activity is relatively straightforward, and even mundane, in most respects.  After all, social network sites act more as a repository of images, and thus facilitate law enforcement efforts rather than create new issues.

Clinton Parish Out of Yolo County DA’s Office?

parish-clint

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.

He has been placed on paid leave, according to those sources, and has interviewed at multiple DA offices in the Sacramento Valley.

Analysis: Realignment and Yolo County

prison-reform

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.”

Sunday Commentary: The Arrogance of Power

judge_s_benchI 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.

Special Commentary: Explaining the Vanguard Court Watch Project

Fingerprint-AnalysisI will never forget the feeling as we were watching reporters, cameras and news crews lined up to watch a high profile trial that everyone was covering.  Everyone but us.  We climbed past them, walked the other way.

In our courtroom there were five kids – quite literally, their lives in the balance.  It was that day, nearly two years into the project, that I realized what we were really about.  We are not reporters covering the high profile cases.  Instead, we are the watchdogs that monitor the system and report when things go wrong.

Yes Folks, Innocent People Plead Guilty – And they Do So Frequently

prosecutorial-misconductI suppose I should have learned by now to expect the kinds of responses a couple of our stories got this week.

Frankly, I can understand why people would react to the Jose Valenzuela story and the notion that “it was time for Mr. Valenzuela to take an offer of time served, the first such offer he got” – even if he is innocent.

Matzat Pleads No Contest to UCD Vandalism Charge

Matzat-PosterUC 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.

Judge Denies Pitchess Motion in Bank Blocking Case

serra-siegel-briggsJudge David Reed on Friday denied the defense request for a Pitchess motion, citing a lack of evidence linking the officers’ conduct in the November 18 pepper spray case to the current case.  However, defense attorney Alexis Briggs told the judge that she has additional information that she believes will lead the court to see the matter in a different light and may re-raise the issue at that time.

The defense, prosecution, and various other parties sparred over some of the requests for discovery, and there will be motions to quash a subpoena at the next hearing date of September 21.

Proposition 36 Would Modify California’s Three Strikes Law

Gascon-GeorgeBy 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.

Just Verdict or Wrongful Conviction in Woodland Gang Trial?

gang-stock-picThe 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.

Why Republicans Should Care About Prosecutorial Misconduct

prosecutorial-misconductWith the Republican National Convention this week, I thought it would be interesting to report on this story I dug up in a blog from the Dallas Morning News, written by their editorial writer Rodger Jones.  I keep hearing that this is only a problem with liberals, even though some of the most rabid critics about the misconduct of at least one prosecutor I know are conservative Republicans.

Jeff Leach is a state Representative-elect from Plano, Texas.  Mr. Jones jokes his blog will guarantee Mr. Leach “a call from the Texas District and County Attorney’s Association.”

Justice Not Served in Attempted Murder Case

la-finca

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.

Another Exoneration Leads to another Black Mark For Eyewitness Identification

eyewitness-idIt seems that every week or so another wrongful conviction is overturned in the courts somewhere in this country.  The most recent was David Wiggins, who was convicted in 1989 for a sexual assault of a 14-year-old in Fort Worth, Texas.

Mr. Wiggins was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, despite the fact that neither of the fingerprints at the scene matched his.  The girl’s face was covered during much of this attack as the rapist put a towel over her face.  However, she testified that she removed that towel during the attack and subsequently would pick Mr. Wiggins out of a photo lineup and then a live line up, saying that he looked familiar.

Charge Stacking: Gambling with People’s Lives

Scales-of-Justiceby Bill Pursell

There is a relatively new phrase in our legal system that is still heard all too rarely, but it should be a prime fear of all defendants who enter to the mercy of the courts. The phrase is “charge stacking”. These simple words are creating catastrophic effects in our court rooms. It is this phrase, or this practice of stacking which has enabled a 20 year old first time offender to receive 1,941 months (162 years) in prison without the possibility of parole, reported by Reuters – Tue, Jul 3, 2012.

The idea of charge stacking is simple. The method entails finding as many possible criminal counts to “stack” against the defendant in order to strengthen the core case of the prosecution. This is possible because the main deterrent against stacking charges is the law of double jeopardy. In Blockburger v. United States, the Supreme Court said the government may separately try and punish the defendant for two crimes if each crime contains an element that the other does not. Therefore double jeopardy is so weak a deterrent that a person can be convicted of ten counts of perjury when they were perjuring about one thing on ten different days.

14-Year-Old’s Forced Removal From Davis Home Causes Questions and Concerns

yolo_county_courthouseCritics Call For New Legislation Protecting Child’s Rights, and the Overhaul of the Family Court System

Last week, longtime Davis resident Fraser Schilling wrote a letter the Davis Enterprise depicting a scene where four Davis police officers “were…dragging a 14-year-old girl to the airport because Yolo County Superior Court Judge Kathy White and the DA’s Office had ordered her forced emigration to Washington, even though the decision was under appeal.”

At the time, he questioned the use of police resources and the show of force, writing, “The two-day drama did answer the question of how many Davis PD officers, judges and attorneys it takes to screw up a 14-year-old girl – at least a dozen.”

District Attorney Declines to File Charges in Glacier Apts Tasering Incident

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The Yolo County District Attorney’s office declined to file charges against UC Davis students Jerome Wren and Tatiana Bush, who were arrested for allegedly repeatedly resisting arrest after police responded to a call of a disturbance on May 23 at the Glacier Point Apartments in West Davis.

Ms. Bush, a recent UC Davis graduate who served as a member on Cruz Reynoso’s Task Force looking into the pepper spraying, believes that she and Mr. Wren are the victims of police brutality.

Commentary: Prosecutors Increasingly Reluctant to Use Death Penalty

GarcettiA series of reports have shown that the number of death sentences in California have been declining, with only ten such sentences handed down in 2011.

A story in the Oakland Tribune tracks the decisions of District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, who has not sought the death penalty in any cases since she took that position back in 2010.

Former District Attorney Speaks Against Death Penalty

Garcetti

by Gil Garcetti

My office sought the death penalty in dozens of cases when I was the Los Angeles County district attorney for eight years, and chief deputy district attorney for four. The cases had horrific and compelling facts; I had no problem seeking death sentences. But though I never was squeamish, I now fully support Proposition 34 to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole. Here’s why.

California’s death penalty is broken beyond repair, hideously expensive, and inevitably carries the risk of executing an innocent person. The hundreds of millions of dollars we throw away on this broken system would be much better spent on solving and preventing crime and investing in our kids’ schools.

Extreme Sentencing

prison-reformBy Rachel Myers

Snatching a purse off the arm of an elderly woman is one of the nastier offenses I can think of – the kind of thing that might make you shake your head and say to yourself “I hope whoever did that gets what’s coming to him.” And then you think for a second about just what he ought to have coming to him: community service, maybe – or even a night in jail. Stealing from an old lady is pretty mean, after all, and you’d want whoever did it to learn a lesson.

I guess that’s what the state of Texas was thinking when it sentenced Willie James Sauls last week for that very crime. Except in this case, apparently the lesson Texas wants us all to learn is “we don’t believe in rehabilitation” – for the crime of stealing a purse, Sauls was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The prosecutors in the case justified the long sentence by pointing out that Sauls has prior convictions and that he “already had chances to address the issues with his behavior.” And with that, they decided this purse snatcher should be locked in prison until he’s 82.

Sunday Commentary: Obsession? A Look Behind the Numbers of Vanguard Coverage of DA Reisig

reynoso-tf-8.jpgIt has become a noteworthy phenomenon in and of itself.  Every time we run a story critical of Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, a handful of people defend the DA, not on the merits but by attacking the messenger, in this case the Vanguard.

In recent columns we have one reader deploring the Vanguard‘s obsession: “Please get help for your sick obsession about the district attorney,” they write.  Another, “This was a nonstory that highlights the Vanguard’s bitter animosity toward the local DA.”