The Vanguard published an afternoon piece on Wednesday showing that Jeff Reisig had not originally written large segments of his op-ed that was released the previous week in the Woodland Daily Democrat.
While many readers drew inferences from the article, the article itself only reported what we knew at the time. It did not make accusations.
Sunday, on the final day of its three-day executive board meeting held in Anaheim, the California Democratic Party overwhelmingly endorsed Prop 34 — the November ballot initiative that would commute all the state’s death sentences to life imprisonment without possibility of parole (LWOP).
Saturday night, though, a lively five-person panel session organized by the party’s Progressive Caucus paired Prop 34 proponents with prisoner rights advocates to debate whether the Prop 34 remedy might be worse than the ailment.
The Vanguard has learned that Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig lifted huge portions of his op-ed last week from an op-ed entitled “Justice for crime victims demands death penalty,” written by Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully with Phyllis Loya, the mother of a Pittsburg police officer whose son was murdered.
While the piece written last week by Mr. Reisig is twice the length, at least six paragraphs are directly lifted and another six are slightly altered from the piece written by Jan Scully.
By Gary Wells, Professor of Psychology, Iowa State UniversityI have been conducting experiments on eyewitness identification since 1975, while I was still a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State University. Along with a fellow student, we designed this simple experiment where we staged a theft repeatedly and had people try and pick the thief out from a lineup. Not only did they make a lot of mistakes, but sometimes they were quite certain that they were right when in fact they were wrong.
Late this week comes the news that the wife of convicted killer Marco Topete was attacked last weekend, slashed in the face with a knife. The couple that attacked her were arrested and now face assault and mayhem charges.
I first heard about this on Thursday, and on Saturday it made the news in Woodland and today it makes the news in Davis.
Last night at the Vanguard annual dinner and awards ceremony, Don Heller, a former prosecutor who helped to draft and write the 1978 Death Penalty Statute, argued that Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s op-ed released on Wednesday was so filled with errors and factual misstatements that its obvious intended purpose was to politicize the death penalty issue rather than bring forth honest discussion and debate.
Mr. Reisig, in his op-ed, wrote: “In fact, the only objective study on the issue of costs associated with the death penalty, conducted by the non-partisan Rand Corporation in 2008, does not even support the death penalty opponents’ claims. There is simply no solid evidence that eliminating the death penalty and replacing it with life in prison will save taxpayers money.”
One of the more interesting debates that is emerging is over the issue of stop and frisk as a crime control policy. The policy began in New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Depite the controversy and complaints from rights groups and minorities, the mayor continues to support it, arguing as he did in June, “that it had helped make New York the safest big city in the country, while acknowledging that the police needed to treat those whom they stopped with greater respect.”
You will have to forgive us for focusing a bit on the death penalty this week. After all, this evening five of the leading spokespeople on the issue will be coming to Woodland for a Vanguard event.
In any event, Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig gave us a month’s worth of material. Mr. Reisig was making the argument that the system works, after all, as he writes, “Each of them received due process through the many checks and balances of the criminal justice system and were justly convicted and sentenced to death.”
By Tracie OlsonI am writing as the Public Defender of Yolo County. Contrary to District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s recent opinion piece, there are numerous, overwhelming reasons to oppose the death penalty, and none involve dishonoring victims.
INNOCENT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH AND EXECUTED.
District Attorney Jeff Reisig laments the “endless delays in the criminal justice system, frivolous appeals, and a mountain of misinformation” caused by the “ACLU and its agents.” However, he conveniently ignores the fact that the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded over 920 exonerations across the United States since 1989, more than 100 of which had been sentenced to death.
On Thursday evening, death penalty opponents from across the state will be coming to Woodland to talk about the current state of California’s Death Penalty. It’s interesting, to say the least, that the DA, who has been quiet on this issue since the jury recommended death in the Topete case and Judge Richardson confirmed it, suddenly has an Op-Ed piece in the Woodland paper this morning with Guadalupe Diaz, the sister of slain Officer Tony Diaz.
The piece includes a passionate defense of the death penalty, an emotional appeal and a pointed attack on the ACLU, one of many organizations that have come together to support a ballot measure this November that would convert the death penalty to life without parole.
Franky Carrillo spent two decades in prison after he was convicted of a drive-by shooting in 1992 and sentenced in 1992 to one life term and 30 years to life in prison. Critical to his conviction was the testimony of five eyewitnesses who said that they saw him pull the trigger.
Had we known then what we know now about the fallibility of eyewitness identification, particularly under poor lighting conditions, this travesty of justice may have been avoided.
Last week, the Davis Enterprise kindly ran a story about the Vanguard‘s Death Penalty Event on their front page. That apparently was enough to prompt former Judge Jim Stevens to object.
He wrote in a letter to the editor, “Your recent article on the meeting of death penalty opponents was interesting but full of humbug. I respect the right of others to work for and express their opinion but reserve my right to tell them they are full of garbage.”
by Andrea LyonMonday, July 23 2012, Warren Hill is scheduled to be executed in Georgia. He was convicted of killing another inmate while serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This is despite the fact that Warren Hill is mentally retarded. Georgia was one of the first states to ban the execution of the mentally retarded; but there is a catch. The defendant bears the burden of proving he is mentally retarded beyond a reasonable doubt. This is the only state that requires the defense to bear this burden. Only the Board of Pardons and Parole can stop his execution now.
While a judge has found that Mr. Hill is mentally retarded, with an IQ of only 70, he didn’t find that fact beyond a reasonable doubt but rather by a preponderance of the evidence, which is the ordinary standard in civil matters, more likely than not. And it is on this technical basis that he will be executed. The Georgia Supreme Court voted four to three to reinstate Hill’s death sentence, and at the end of last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled seven to four to uphold that death sentence even though the majority seemed to think it “unwise.”
On Wednesday, the trial of Tomas Matzat, facing multiple charges of vandalism on the UC Davis campus as part of the Occupy protests, was moved to Judge David Rosenberg’s court, as Judge Tim Fall recused himself without explanation.
Attorney Tony Serra moved to suppress a search warrant of Mr. Matzat’s campus residence, arguing that it “was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment in that it was a fishing expedition, subject to a facially deficient warrant that was not based on reasonable or probable cause.”
In June of 2005, Ernesto Galvan and his brother Fermin were out on Riverbank Road in West Sacramento when they were approached by Officer Schlie of the West Sacramento Police Department.
What would ensue would leave Ernesto Galvan badly beaten and disfigured after police unleashed a series of baton blows to his head. The District Attorney’s office would charge the men with obstruction and delaying a police officer as well as misdemeanor counts of battery on a police officer.
Defense for the 11 students and one professor charged with numerous misdemeanors for their alleged role in blocking the US Bank in UC Davis’ Memorial Union in January and February this year filed a Pitchess motion on Friday.
At a brief hearing they scheduled Judge David Reed to hear motions on August 24, 2012.
In two weeks, at the Vanguard’s Dinner and Awards Ceremony, the work of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) will be honored with a Vanguard Award. On hand to personally receive that award with be NCIP Executive Director Cookie Ridolfi and Legal Director Linda Starr.
The immediate benefit of the work NCIP and other branches of the Innocence Project across the nation is to exonerate those who have been wrongfully imprisoned like Franky Carrillo, who spent 20 years in custody before his 2011 release. Mr. Carrillo will be one of the featured speakers at this year’s event and will present the Vanguard Award to the organization and individuals who helped to exonerate him.
Flawed Work by FBI Led to At Least One Wrongful Execution Paper ReportsThe Washington Post is reporting this morning that the Justice Department and FBI “have launched a review of thousands of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted or deserve a new trial because of flawed forensic evidence”
They report this is the largest undertaking of post-conviction review ever done by the FBI.
Cruz Reynoso to Present Award to Pepper Sprayed Students; Northern California Innocence Project HonoredAs if the amazing line up of speakers at the Vanguard Dinner and Awards Ceremony was not enough, the Davis Vanguard announces its six annual awards. The Vanguard Awards honor the work of individuals and organizations on behalf of social justice.
In a few weeks, Franky Carrillo will speak at the Vanguard‘s annual Dinner and Awards ceremony. His wrongful conviction, that cost him 20 years in custody, was based not just on the faulty memory of the witnesses but also intentional manipulation by law enforcement.
Carrillo was sentenced in 1992 to one life term and 30 years to life in prison after being convicted of one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder in a fatal drive-by shooting.
