Court Watch

The lesson for the courts is clear, never invite me to jury duty.  This Monday I was excited to go to jury duty – I have always been called to jury duty only to have my session canceled before coming in. 

This time, at least, I made it in the door before the case – which we covered earlier this week – was continued.  I went in knowing full well that there was more of a chance of June snow in Yolo County than my being selected to serve on the jury, but I still wanted to watch the process from the inside.

Judicial Watch has been thinking hard about the Yolo County Law Day.   Law Day is a national observation honoring the legal system, especially the criminal justice system, and the people (particularly cops, lawyers and judges) who create and administer it.  Often the activities include educational opportunities for school students, such as visits to the courts or the production of mock trials, to give them a sense of the fundamental and basic role the law plays in maintaining our culture and civilization.

In Yolo, it often takes the form of a gathering in the administration building for a free lunch, with speeches and awards by and for those who work for the system.  The last one, held on May 2, 2011, was such a magnificent spiritual, cultural and political celebration of “the Law” that we simply could not bring ourselves to report upon it.

As a general matter of speaking, trials are set for a given date, but can be granted continuances based on a notion of good cause.  What constitutes good cause may seem somewhat nebulous, but it generally is reserved for matters of logistics – the unavailability of a key witness, the failure to receive evidence with sufficient time to review it, delays caused by reports or tests from other agencies, etc.

Last week the case of Kenneth Woodall was confirmed for trial to begin on Monday.  That means both parties – represented by the Deputy DA Ryan Couzens and Deputy Public Defender Dan Hutchinson – agreed they were ready to proceed.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s office issued a press release announcing that Yolo County Superior Court Judge Kathleen White issued a final “Judgment Granting Injunction After Trial” against the Broderick Boys criminal street gang in West Sacramento.  The gang injunction issued by the court imposes a curfew and restricts other activities of gang members in a defined area within West Sacramento called the “Safety Zone.”

According to the DA’s office, “After hearing all of evidence at trial and reviewing the exhibits and the post-trial briefs, Judge White found that the Broderick Boys is a criminal street gang, the Broderick Boys has created a public nuisance in the Safety Zone by its conduct and activities, and the public nuisance caused by the Broderick Boys has created irreparable harm to those who live and work in the Safety Zone.”

U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell wrote a study released last week entitled, “Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle.”

They examined a combination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases over three years to estimate the additional costs of capital trials over and above the cost of a standard murder trial.

Amid the prison reform debate and concerns about prison over-crowding is an understanding of the role that the war on drugs has played in creating the prison issue.

In this article we will examine the conservative case for ending the war on drugs, the fear tactics and why they don’t make sense, and the cost-benefit analysis of the criminal justice system.

In the year and a half of covering trials, by far the most interesting time is during the break when the judge and jury are outside of the courtroom, and the attorneys are talking amongst themselves.

Add in four defense attorneys in a four co-defendant gang case and the always-volatile Deputy DA Ryan Couzens, and you have the recipe for something extraordinary.  Thursday afternoon did not disappoint as the defense took exception to Mr. Couzens’ failure to disclose key evidence that seemed to threaten to derail the case for the time.

Among the provisions passed by the California legislature was another $150 million in cuts to the courts. 

Yolo Superior Court Presiding Judge Rosenberg openly criticized the proposed budget plan which was being pushed through the Legislature on Wednesday.   The proposed reductions would impose an additional $150 million, on top of a $200 million across-the-board cut already incurred by the judicial branch, and follows years of reductions to the Judicial Branch budget.

The Woodland Daily Democrat reported Tuesday that investigators with the California Alcoholic Beverage Control revoked La Finca’s liquor license.  La Finca is a popular bar and club in Woodland that has been the location of fights, stabbings and, in March, a shooting that resulted in a murder.

According to ABC officials, the official reason for the liquor license suspension has been that the bar has been operating what they call a “disorderly house” and has been a drain on law enforcement.

A Yolo County Jury went out just after lunch and came back before 5 pm to convict Oscar Barrientos of two counts – one of first degree burglary and one of grand theft.

Despite these convictions, Mr. Barrientos still likely faces probation, given his age at the time of the crime and his lack of priors.  Nevertheless, his conviction was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, most of the pieces extremely flawed to the point where Deputy DA Sulaiman Tokhi suggested that the defense would be that he is the most unlucky person around.

This week, Yolo Judicial Watch covered a typical Yolo County trial in which an Hispanic defendant was judged by a nearly all-white jury that contained no other Hispanics. 

We have been trying to get good data on Yolo County juries and defendants, but we can safely, from observation alone, draw one conclusion: Latinos as defendants are over-represented in this county as compared to their population.  And Latinos in terms of their representation on juries are under-represented.

The case that would never end may have just ended with Michael Artz in custody serving what would appear to be a 270-day jail sentence.

Last August, Michael Artz was convicted of the two lesser counts in his case stemming from oral copulation  with a 16-year-old female student, a year behind him at Davis High, and from his ill-advised attempts to reconnect with her nine months later.

The “war on drugs” has had a devastating impact on women and families, who have been greatly affected by policies like mandatory minimum sentences, prosecution of low-level drug offenses, increased conviction and imprisonment of those with relationships to drug dealers, and criminalization of women with drug addiction and mental health problems and histories of sexual abuse.

Having battled sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor for more than a decade, cancer patient Joseph Casias is used to fighting for his life. But now the War on Drugs has forced him to fight for his livelihood, too.

The trial of Tim Kinser began this week in Department 8 in front of Judge Janet Gaard. Mr. Kinser was accused of inflicting corporal injury upon his wife of the time, and endangering the health of their two young daughters.  The incident occurred on July 31, 2010, at their Woodland residence.

Prior to the trial, Mr. Kinser had informed the Vanguard that his wife was a heavy drinker and had attacked him.  He claimed he was bringing this to trial in an effort to retain visitation rights with his children and keep them away from their drunken mother.

Opening statements begin today in the case of Oscar Barrientos, accused of burglarizing a West Sacramento home.  Mr. Barrientos had originally faced trial back in late March and early April, but the trial was cut abruptly short when Detective Tate from the West Sacramento Police Department had to rush to Florida for a family emergency.

One good thing about the Supreme Court’s ruling two weeks ago that California had to reduce its prison population is that, for once, we are getting a relatively honest debate on crime and incarceration.  Part of that is due to the relatively low crime rates, so the population is not automatically convulsing into knee-jerk reactions.

Dan Walters in his column this morning writes, “While liberal critics of the state’s criminal justice system hailed it as a long overdue wake-up call for reform, conservatives raised the specter of felonious hordes being released to prey upon the public.”

The Contra Costa Times has a very interesting story on a California Supreme Court case that will decide whether Contra Costa prosecutors (and by extension all DA’s) should be required to run criminal background checks on police officers so defense attorneys can prepare to challenge their credibility before they are called as witnesses in court.

The article, “Should DA run rap sheets on police witnesses?” is probably mistitled, as we are not talking about police witnesses here, but rather arresting and investigating officers.

Judge Timothy Fall sentence Pedro Ramirez to 13 years in prison for the beating of a Sikh Taxi Driver back in November 2010.  This followed an extended attempt to withdraw from his plea, based on ineffectual counsel.

At the hearing, Aman Kaur spoke on behalf of the family.  She proclaimed it was not a happy day but the family was satisfied that laws were followed and grateful to the efforts of law enforcement for the quick apprehension and resolution of this case.

The war on drugs has been a war on communities of color. The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.