Court Watch

SPECIAL TO THE VANGUARD

The office of District Attorney Steve Cooley has failed to disclose public documents on the costs of prosecuting capital cases, according to a lawsuit filed today by The American Civil Liberties Union of California (ACLU of California) on behalf of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ) at Harvard Law School. The lawsuit is for public records on expenses related to homicide cases, and discretionary spending generally, by the D.A. of California’s most populous – and murderous – county.

According to FBI statistics, there were about seven hundred murders and non-negligent homicides in Los Angeles County in 2009, accounting for approximately 35% of the homicides in California and nearly 5% of the homicides in the entire United States. The Los Angeles County D.A.’s office (LADA) handles the vast majority of prosecutions arising out of murders in Los Angeles County. But in response to a broad request for records showing how much the office spent on these cases, the D.A.’s office claimed that it had no such records.

Judge Paul Richardson lowered the bail of Ashot Manukyan to one hundred thousand dollars, following a hearing on Wednesday.  Mr. Manukyan, who owns the popular Cafe Mediterranee in Davis, faces three felony charges stemming from an arrest last week on a warrant.

The charges include penetration with a foreign object, assault with intent to commit penetration with a foreign object and false imprisonment in addition to a misdemeanor sexual battery charge.

Back in March, the Vanguard reported that Yolo County had become the focus of a nationwide gun debate as a federal court on Thursday heard arguments in a case where gun-rights advocates have challenged the courts to determine how much discretion California’s law enforcement officials have in issuing concealed weapons permits.

County Sheriffs, the plaintiff argued, who handle the bulk of these situations, must issue permits to anyone who completes a training course and has no mental health problems or criminal background.

Judge Stephen Mock called them the most complicated sentencing issues he had ever seen, but after spending over an hour privately and then an hour publicly, he finally sentenced Bennie Moses, convicted of 62 felonies back in March, to 830 years in prison.

He cited four different provisions under the law that guided the sentencing structure.  One of the key issues was the extent to which he could concurrently sentence for separate crimes that were committed basically simultaneously.

The Third District Court of Appeal has denied the writ filed by the California Attorney General’s Office on behalf of the Yolo County District Attorney’s office, appealing the decision by Judge Gaard ordering the phone sought by the defense to be viewed with unfettered access in the DA’s office today, May 16.

Defense Attorney, Dean Johansson from the Public Defender’s office had believed that the previous order was to turn over the phone so that an expert could examine it in his lab.  Mr. Johansson may himself file a writ arguing that the defense is entitled to the evidence as a matter of law.

I have seen Judge Stephen Mock handle quite a few trials in the last year and a half.  His is now the long cause trial court, which means any trial that lasts more one week goes to his department.

I have seen him handle some cases well and others less well.  It is important to understand that Judge Mock was a prosecutor prior to becoming a judge, and it is also important to understand that he is married to Ann Hurd who was at one point the supervising District Attorney and now, though technically retired, is still in the leadership.

Judge Fall ruled that there was no evidence duress, and thus no legal basis for Mr. Ramirez to withdraw his plea.

The prosecutor grabs the alleged weapon, a gun, points it over the heads of the jury and suddenly shouts, “What color are my shoes?  What color are my shoes?”  He is making the point that an officer who is being fired at may not correctly recall details of the event.

Deputy DA Clinton Parish likes to brag that he saves his best arguments for what is supposed to be the rebuttal closing argument – the argument that the DA gets due to the fact that they have the burden of proof in the case, when the defense attorney cannot respond.

In West Sacramento were a group of youths, most of them 14 or 15 years old.  They were drinking heavily, apparently.  Late at night they walked up to a man walking through a neighborhood and one of them reportedly asked where the individual was from.

The individual, with headphones on, listening to his Ipod, did not respond immediately, so the kids jump him, beat him up and rob him.  He was struck in the side of his face and went down almost immediately.

Last week was the latest in a series of volleys back and forth between those questioning the timing and the need for the construction of the Yolo County court project, which is scheduled to be completed by 2015, and Judge David Rosenberg, who has made the new courthouse a centerpiece of his legacy as presiding judge.

Financing the more than five billion dollar statewide project are fines to convicted felons and traffic violators.  Roughly $178 million is going to Yolo County at a time when Yolo County is being forced to lay off and furlough employees, and cities like Davis have huge and growing unfunded liabilities.

Twenty six yeras later, on March 29^th, 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Connick v. Thompson that a district attorney’s office was not liable for its prosecutor’s failure to turn over evidence, which proved the innocence of a Louisiana man.

One of the biggest barriers to timely court coverage is the unavailability of court files to members of the public or journalists, while hearings are in progress. 

This has proved to be a big hindrance to timely reporting.  What it means is that if one of our Court Watchers in the Yolo County courts sees a case of interest, we have to wait three or four days for the file to be moved from the courtroom where the case was heard back to the clerk’s office where we can peruse the files.

Judge Janet Gaard finally showed up Friday to explain her ruling in the Arreola matter and instead she only added to the confusion, as neither the DA or public defender’s office are pleased with her ruling or the seeming inconsistencies along the way.

Judge Gaard is now ordering that the DA’s office turn over a cell phone whose data is sought by Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson to the defense, but said that it can be viewed only at the DA’s office.  This angered Mr. Johansson, who believed that the previous order was to turn over the phone so that an expert could examine it in his lab.

The facts are staggering, as laid out in a recent brief in Yolo County’s death penalty case.  California has over 700 people on death row and yet, since the death penalty was reestablished in California in 1977, only 13 offenders have been executed.

Recently, the Marco Topete case has been delayed another four months at least, due to the illness of one of the defense attorneys and his subsequent replacement.  The typical death penalty case costs over a million to prosecute, and this one will be over three years old when it starts – if it does – in August.

Judge Stephen Mock granted Michael Artz probation on Friday. However, he imposed very strict probation requirements and imposed a 270-day county jail sentence for after Mr. Artz completes his college finals. 

It has been, as Judge Stephen Mock reminded the court yesterday afternoon, been eight and one half months since 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.

Davis City Councilmember Sue Greenwald finds herself in the middle of an unusual debate, in the sense that the Yolo County Courthouse on the surface does not directly involve her elected position with the City of Davis.

Nevertheless, in Thursday’s Davis Enterprise, the councilmember argued, “My concern is not merely with the $173 million cost of the replacement courthouse. It is with the entire $5 billion cost of the statewide courthouse construction bonds, which are currently under the radar screen.”

On Thursday, the ACLU of California sent an open letter  to Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez, asking that two key reforms targeting waste in prison spending are included in the May revised budget.

They claim that these two reforms alone would save the state hundreds of millions annually: making possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use a misdemeanor instead of a felony and making low-level non-violent property offenses – like vandalism or writing a bad check – a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

A man is arrested for the rape of his daughter over a nine-year period of time.  He is taken into an interrogation room at six p.m., he is told he can freely leave but then not allowed to exit, he may or may not know that he should contact an attorney, and somewhere around nine hours later he confessions to something short of raping his daughter, but nevertheless incriminating enough to be arrested and convicted.

The question before us is whether this was a legitimate confession and whether we should be doing more than we have already to prevent false confessions, which lead to long imprisonment for innocent individuals.

A Woodland man faced petty theft, with a series of prior convictions which enhanced the charge to a felony, for stealing a candy bar from JC Penneys in the Woodland Mall. 

The defendant, Ovan Taylor, apparently suffers from schizophrenia and has a long history of mental illness.  Following a preliminary hearing, Judge Paul Richardson reduced the charge to a misdemeanor in the interest of justice, over the protests of Deputy DA Jennifer Davis.