A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of attending the Justice Summit put on by the Public Defender’s Office in San Francisco. They had three panels, and one of the most interesting spoke to alternative approaches to gang prevention efforts.
One of the most compelling speeches was the “keynote” by UCLA Professor Jorja Leap, author of Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me About Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption.
The good news is that the Yolo County Grand Jury did not find anything untoward about the operations of the Yolo County Jail, but they are concerned with issues of inmate overcrowding, recidivism rates and budget reductions.
“Only individuals arrested on felony offenses are detained,” they report. “Each detainee is interviewed to identify gang affiliation, history of sexual offenses, confidential informants, race, religious preferences, federal inmates, etc.”
On Wednesday, Tomas Matzat was back in the Yolo County Court where he was finally arraigned on his felony and misdemeanor charges for vandalism.
Famed Defense Attorney Tony Serra made his first appearance in front of Judge Tim Fall – it was largely uneventful and a matter of formality. Mr. Matzat pled not guilty to the charges and they set, at least for now, a preliminary hearing for July 18.
One race that clearly lacked drama was the race for Yolo County Judge, where Judge Dan Maguire easily retained his seat defeating Deputy District Attorney Clinton Parish. With the latest update from the Yolo County Clerk Recorder’s Office, Judge Dan Maguire holds an overwhelming 55.4% lead in the election for Yolo County Superior Court Judge. Judge Dan Maguire currently has 20,543 votes (77.2%) compared to Clint Parish who has 6,054 votes (22.8%).
On May 26, the Vanguard reported on a Davis Police incident that began with a police response to Glacier Drive to a reported fight. The responding to the 911 call ended up with police having to use a Taser on Jerome Wren and confront Tatiana Bush who had intervened.
Mr. Wren is facing felony resisting arrest (PC 69) and now Ms. Bush, a student at UC Davis, is alleging excessive force and police brutality in an article this morning in the California Aggie.
When Clinton Parish decided to Challenge Dan Maguire for judge, he immediately cited the fact that Dan Maguire was a “political appointment” by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He said, “Political decisions have no place in the court. Last minute political appointments are not in the best interest of Yolo County. I believe the People of Yolo County can make better decisions than Arnold Schwarzenegger as to who should be a Judge in our County.”
The atmosphere was a bit different than the typical day in Yolo County. Judge David Reed’s department six was packed full of 12 defendants, five attorneys, and countless supporters, to the point where the court’s capacity was maxed and throngs of supporters overflowed into the lobby, where some briefly verbally skirmished with private security personnel who staff the exterior portions of the courthouse.
One of the big questions that emerged last week is why do innocent people plead guilty? We noted the discussion of the Alford Plea, so named because Henry Alford was accused of murder and faced the death penalty, where enough evidence existed that could possibly have been enough to cause a jury to convict him.
As Yolo County Public Defender Tracie Olson noted, “The evidence was strong but Henry said he was innocent. Henry, however, pled guilty to a charge of 2nd degree murder in order to avoid the death penalty.”
In February, Senator Mark Leno introduced legislation that would revise the penalty for simple drug possession under the state law, from a felony to a misdemeanor. It is legislation that follows the lead of 13 other states, as well as the federal government.
A recent poll by Tulchin Research in San Francisco found that 70 percent of Californians want to reduce the penalties for personal drug use.
The launching of the National Registry of Exonerations, a new joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, actually reminds us of just how little we actually know about wrongful convictions, where and when they occur, and how many have occurred.
What we do know ought to alarm and frighten people far more than they are. The reason we are not utterly alarmed on a global scale is that we are comforted by the relatively small number of false convictions.
I thought I was done talking about the judge’s race in which Clinton Parish made false and misleading attacks. After all, at some point, it simply becomes a matter of kicking the proverbial dead horse.
However, I was reading Bob Dunning’s Davis Enterprise column and I realized there is something that still needs to be said here and it has to do with a YouTube shot at a Republican gathering in Woodland in which Fred and Kathy Santos speak in favor of Clinton Parish.
Brian Banks was a star linebacker that every major college program in the country wanted to have play for them. However, it was all taken from him when he was accused of rape and his lawyer convinced him to take a plea bargain even though there was no physical evidence of the crime.
Without that plea bargain, California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks wrote last month, “he might have spend the rest of his life in prison even though the case was built on the shaky testimony of his alleged victim, a fellow high school student.”
The Atlantic, on May 14, published an account of Carlos DeLuna who was put to death back in December of 1989 for a murder that occurred in Corpus Christi. It was a crime that he did not commit but shows the depths of the problems with capital punishment.
This case is most notable from our perspective for a key reason. On June 27, 2006 “Chicago Tribune reporters, Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, published the last of a three-part, groundbreaking series about the legal and factual problems with the DeLuna case.”
Edward Carter was a 19-year-old African-American man. He was convicted of the rape of a pregnant woman in Detroit in 1974 and sentenced to life in prison. That conviction, researchers Samuel Gross and Michael Shafer say, was based entirely on the cross-racial identification by the white victim.
But Mr. Carter was one of the more fortunate people to have been wrongly convicted, because there was DNA evidence in this case that would exonerate him.
Clinton Parish’s candidacy for judge effectively ended the moment that he made unchecked and unsupportable charges against his opponent, Judge Dan Maguire. The fact that they were so quickly and easily brushed aside shows either a level of desperation or just plain amateurism by the candidate.
Mr. Parish wants the voters to believe that he is a good attorney who exercised some indiscretions as a political candidate. The truth is that Mr. Parish is in fact the person that we saw this week. That is the view that everyone in the courthouse got, that is why Public Defender Tracie Olson, normally cautious, early on signaled that her office would simply not trust him to preside over their cases.
On Thursday night, District Attorney Jeff Reisig, after first standing by his man, pulled his endorsement of his own employee.
He sent an email to the Davis Enterprise stating: “Having considered all the facts and circumstances surrounding judicial candidate Clint Parish’s attack mail piece, including recent explanations from his campaign, I have decided to retract my endorsement of his candidacy.”
Clinton Parish Acknowledges Some Accusations Baseless But Does Not Go Far Enough for His OpponentOn Wednesday, Clinton Parish, whose candidacy for judge in Yolo County can only be described as on life support, acknowledged that he failed to properly vet charges that were launched in his mailer.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Parish admitted that he “did not verify claims in an attack mailer that alleged campaign rival Judge Dan Maguire was involved in corporate fraud and bribery while working at a Colorado law firm in the mid-1990s.”
One does not expect to see personal, let alone partisan, attacks in a race for judge. And yet that is precisely what has happened in Yolo County. The chances of Clinton Parish defeating an incumbent with strong support from his own bench and much of the Yolo County Bar were slim to start, but his effort to inject energy and controversy into the race may be backfiring on him.
The first fallout happened on Tuesday morning, when Sheriff Ed Prieto, touted on the flyer as a key support of Clinton Parish, pulled his endorsement.
One attack piece, targeted for voters in Davis, attacked Judge Maguire on a number of issues such as the deal to commute the sentence of the son of former Speaker Fabian Nunez, despite the fact that Dan Maguire was already a judge in Yolo County by the time that occurred.
For the second time in less than a week, mailboxes in Davis and probably the rest of Yolo County received an attack mail piece. This time it was the race for Yolo County Superior Court Judge and Judge Dan Maguire, the incumbent was on the short end of it.
In addition to touting the Deputy DA’s record and endorsements from Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto, and the West Sacramento, Woodland and Winters Police Officers Association, the mailer attacks Dan Maguire as “Arnold’s Bagman,” referring to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
