Court Watch

Four individuals approached a vehicle at a Woodland gas station.  They rush to the car, surround the vehicle, prosecutor Robin Johnson argues, for the purpose of preventing the victim from exiting the vehicle.  They attacked the victim – punching and kicking him.

The focus in recent months has been on reducing the costs in the prison system.  But part of what underlined the US Supreme Court decision was the actual conditions in California’s prisons.

In May, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons were so bad that they violate the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

A gathering of perhaps 40 community members met with reporters on Wednesday night in front of the West Sacramento City Hall to chronicle and speak out against what they call an act of police brutality.  Police officials have denied such allegations, stating that they took appropriate action to subdue and take into custody a subject who was resisting arrest.

The Vanguard reported earlier today that West Sacramento resident Jesus Castro was arrested and had his camera confiscated by West Sacramento police while videotaping an incident of police brutality according to Attorney Anthony Palik and other West Sacramento activists.

Activists are complaining that West Sacramento police have arrested an eyewitness to police brutality and took his camera.  Jesus Castro is currently in custody and faces arraignment today on charges of public drunkenness.

According to activists who will be holding a protest outside of the West Sacramento City Hall today at 6 pm, on Sunday July 17th, West Sacramento resident Jesus Castro was arrested and had his camera confiscated by West Sacramento police while videotaping an incident of police brutality.

Witch hunts are nothing new to Deputy District Attorney Ryan Couzens.  He once had his own victim arrested and charged with attempting to influence a juror to acquit the defendant.

Angry that probation was recommending probation in a case involving a stolen gun, he charged the defendant with possession of Pruno, which had never been done before, in an effort to coerce the defense to take a prison sentence.  It did not work, but as the result, inmates in Yolo County are now being periodically charged with Pruno, just so the defense can never again claim it was never done before.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the death penalty became almost a third rail in politics, no one would dare criticize it.  When they did, they got crucified for it as Michael Dukakis clumsily answered a question as to what he would do if his wife were brutality raped and killed.

Given the landscape of two decades ago, it is remarkable that we now see a California legislator proposing a bill that would convert all current death sentences to life without parole.

I am constantly told that we have the best legal system in the world.  I don’t know if that is true or not, but suppose it is true, does that mean it is beyond reproach?  Does that mean that we cannot work to improve it, that we should sit back and not question things when they go wrong?

I have seen dozens of trials over the last 18 months and read intimidate details from dozens of other trials, and on a regular basis I see things that should give us concern.

For the past few years the city of West Sacramento has been placed under various gang injunctions.  Some have said the injunctions have helped reduce violent crime there recently.  Though that may be true, it tells us only about the good, and not the harm, that the injunctions may have done to the people who have to live under them.

Top county law enforcement officials have said that the gang injunction is fair, balanced and effective.  However, lifelong residents of West Sacramento, with whom the Vanguard spoke, who have had first-hand experience at the receiving end of the injunctions, described a different reality.

The supporters of Ajay Dev, who is serving a 378-year sentence that his friends and family believe is unjust, were finally able to provoke a response this week from the powers that be.

On Wednesday, two years after the conviction that his supporters believe to be wrongful, 250 to 300 people hit the streets in protest.  But it was another tactic that appeared to generate the response, in that every time someone filled out an online petition, the petition was set to generate emails to critical politicians and media that had previously ignored the efforts.

It has been two years now since Ajay Dev was convicted of raping his adopted daughter over 750 times over a five-year period and sentenced to 378 years in prison.  Since that time, family and friends have worked tirelessly to prove his innocence.

Usually, when activists will hold a protest, the first turnout is relatively large but the numbers decrease steadily over subsequent protests.  That has not been the case here.  If anything, two years after the verdict, we see more outpouring of support, and by all accounts this may have been their largest protest ever with between 250 and 300 people in attendance.

There is no other way to describe it other than this is just a typical Ryan Couzens case, which apparently can never go smoothly without bizarre and sometimes mind-boggling twists and turns.

On the surface this should have been a straightforward case, whether Ken Woodall cut Bert Lok in the mouth with his knife.  However, by the time the jury came back for a second time with a not guilty verdict on all counts, this case became yet another chapter in the bizarro book being written in Yolo County by Deput  DA  Ryan Couzens.

Are Yolo County’s efforts to impose a death sentence on Marco Topete, when his now three-year-old case comes to trial again next month, running up against a strong current against the death penalty?

Last week, the ACLU reported that just three death sentences were handed down in California from January to June 2011 compared with the same period last year when there were 13.

Those who were around probably remember the sob story from Daily Democrat Jim Smith, who suddenly found himself and his paper under fire when they decided to run verbatim a press release that, at best, distorted a court case and, at worst, outright deceived the public.

In running a story on the Michael Artz trial, the DA’s office sent their typical press release which made it sound like the defendant had been convicted of certain crimes that he was not even charged with, at the same time omitting the fact that he was acquitted of the main charges.

Following a preliminary hearing last week, Yolo County Judge David Rosenberg has allowed the case against Cafe Mediterranee owner Ashot Manukyan to move forward and stand trial on charges that include a felony count of assault with intent to commit sexual penetration, penetration with a foreign object and false imprisonment, and a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery.

The alleged victim had worked at the popular Davis restaurant for five months prior to the January 31, 2011, alleged incident.

The movie “A Time To Kill” I saw for the first time as a new graduate student in the Chemistry Building, back in 1996.  It featured the story of a black man in Alabama, whose 11-year-old daughter was brutally raped by two white men.  Rather than leaving their fate up to an all-white jury, the father shot and killed both men.

Now he faced his own all-white jury, that he derisively asked, “This is a jury of my peers?”  In his closing statement, his defense attorney tried to flip the race card, drawing up a vivid picture of the attack on the daughter.

The trial that will not end is apparently not over, as the jury hung basically right down the middle on all charges against both Dom and Anthony Kalah, while they convicted Saengphet Onsri of all charges.

During the trial, Judge Fall dismissed charges against a fourth co-defendant, Det Kalah, on a 1118.1 motion.  Det Kalah had been in custody for six months, refusing to take a plea agreement that would have released him early, based on the fact that he maintained his innocence.

The traditional view of the death qualification process is that death-qualified juries tend to be more likely to convict.  The death qualification process is one where prospective jurors are put through a rather intensive interview process to gauge their views about the death penalty.

Those who oppose the death penalty are not qualified to serve.  Those who would consider the death penalty are qualified to serve.

Last week, Charles Rios and his codefendant Benito Morales were sentenced to 16 months in prison for their role in an attack on a solider in West Sacramento that left him beaten and robbed on the night of March 12, 2008.

Mr. Rios was just 15 years old at the time and the case lasted so long that Mr. Rios had long since been released on his own recognizance.  The 16-month prison sentence was a mere paper sentence, as both Mr. Rios and Mr. Morales were instructed to go directly to the parole office, a move that was highly unusual.

The media was quick to act as judge, jury and executioner of Casey Anthony.  To them, there seemed no possibility of a not-guilty verdict, no presumption of innocence, no need indeed for the prosecution to actually prove their case.

“The devil is dancing,” said Nancy Grace, the former prosecutor turned commentator on CNN Headline News, who in many respects led the media lynching before the verdict even came in. “There’s no way this verdict speaks to the truth.”