Court Watch

It was not a good day for the defense in the case of Marco Topete.  First Judge Paul Richardson reinstated count five, the stand-alone PC 186.22(A) gang charge against Mr. Topete, and then he admonished the defense counsel of Hayes Gable and Thomas Purtell to properly provide discovery to the prosecution and provide a working witness list by this Friday.

Recently, Judge Paul Richardson had thrown out the gang charges against Mr. Topete. However, the DA argued that the Judge should reconsider the gang charges because the case that apparently was the judge’s sole authority for striking them is being heard by the Supreme Court.

Special to the Vanguard

Editor’s Note: Next week the death penalty trial opens for Marco Topete and they will begin a process known as death qualifying the jury.  The ACLU of Northern California’s Death Penalty expert Natasha Minsker discusses what that means and the implications of it.

The right to be tried by a jury of your peers is a basic right in America. It is one of the innovations enshrined in our Constitution that sets our nation apart from most of the rest of the world. While most of us dread being called for jury service, we know that if it was us who stood accused of a crime, we would want to be judged by a cross-section of our community, not a government official in a black robe.

Editor’s note: Following the February 14 announcement by Sheriff Ed Prieto, the Vanguard’s Alex Clark undertook a comprehensive review of the shooting of Luis Gutierrez and this is the first of three articles based on that review.

On February 14th, Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto announced that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division had concluded it’s investigation into the 2009 officer-involved shooting death of 26-year-old Woodland resident Luis Gutierrez-Navarro.  The officers involved in the shooting were Yolo County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Dale Johnson, Deputy Hernan Oviedo and Deputy Hector Bautista.  All three were working as members of the Yolo County Gang Task Force.  Only Sergeant Johnson and Deputy Oviedo fired their weapons.

In 2008, Ricardo Abrahams had checked into the Safe Harbor, part of the Yolo Community Care Continuum, upon the urging of his family due to a condition where he was increasingly disoriented, stressed and uncommunicative. 

At some point he left the facility.  Concerned about his well-being, the facility alerted the police.  When the police arrived, a confrontation ensued where Mr. Abrahams anxiety escalated to the point where police feared for his safety and their safety.

According to a press release from Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, Leighton Dupree was sentenced on Thursday by Yolo County Superior Court Judge Janet Gaard to 27 years to life in prison for a bank robbery he committed on January 12, 2010.

Mr. Dupree was convicted back in October of second degree burglary.  He had two prior serious felonies as well which contributed to the length of the term.

Last week, Yolo County Supervisor Jim Provenza, DA Jeff Reisig, and Sheriff Ed Prieto announced the beginning of a Family Justice Center.

According to the county’s press release, “The Center would house core services so that family violence victims can go to one place — instead of the multiple locations they must navigate now — to seek assistance.”

It is not a huge shock that Yolo County is moving in the opposite direction of the rest of the nation.  More and more jurisdictions and states are moving away from the death penalty, for a variety of reasons including costs. They are also taking into consideration problems with the judicial system that result in the inequitable application of the death penalty, and also calling into question certainty about guilt and innocence.

Defense Attorneys, in what will likely be our first death penalty case that we will cover, the Topete case, have argued that “The excessive delays in California’s death penalty system constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment and results in a denial of due process. Based on this violation, the Defense respectfully requests that this Court preclude the People from seeking the death penalty in this case.”

After more than two and a half years since the arrest of Marco Topete, accused of killing Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz, the trial is about to go forward in the next couple of weeks.  This week marked the first of several hearings on motions in limine that will help to define the trial.

Recently Judge Paul Richardson threw out the gang charges against Mr. Topete, however, the DA is arguing that the Judge should reconsider the gang charges because the case that apparently was the judge’s sole authority for striking them is being heard by the Supreme Court.

As I told KCRA yesterday afternoon, the announcement  by the Department of Justice that they are not filing federal civil rights charges against the three Sheriff’s Deputies involved in the 2009 shooting of Luis Gutierrez changes nothing.

We do not know more today than we did last month about the shooting.  A day after the Sheriff’s Department released a press release on the matter, we learned little more than we knew at the onset.

On Monday, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department announced that they had received a letter from that the United States Department of Justice stating that the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded their investigation into the fatal shooting of Luis Gutierrez-Navarro. 

In a letter dated February 4, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice stated “After careful consideration, we concluded that the evidence does not establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes. Accordingly, we have closed our investigation.”

In December, a Yolo County jury found Jose Valdivia guilty of two counts of drunk driving, plus they found him guilty of evading a peace officer and resisting arrest.  This was not the only set of charges that Mr. Valdivia faced. 

In a separate case, he also faced felony charges for transportation and possession of a controlled substance per Yolo County’s practice of double-charging possession of drugs as both possession and transportation.

It has taken two years and untold amounts of money, but the lawsuit filed by former UC Davis Police Officer Calvin Chang is going forward with the key provisions intact.

In 2009, former UC Davis Police Officer Calvin Chang filed a lawsuit against the UC Regents and UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza, alleging complaints of racial and sexual orientation discrimination, housing discrimination, and retaliation.

Last week, we reported on the death of Evaristo Ramirez, an immigrant who had been arrested for a DUI and held in the Sacramento County Jail.  He became the victim of Richard Harden, who somehow ended up in the same jail cell as Mr. Ramirez despite evidence that his hammer attack on a Latina female was motivated by hatred towards immigrants.

According to court testimony, when the Home Deport store security subdued Mr. Harden by taking him to the ground, the perpetrator indicated that race was the motivation behind his attack on the Latina female whom he had attacked with a hammer.

We have noted in recent weeks the seemingly larger than usual number of cases that have been overturned from Yolo County.  During the course of our reporting of these cases the question has arisen – “out of how many.”

The “out of how many” standard is a difficult number to assess for reversals, just as it is for problematic cases, prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions.  After all, one person in prison unnecessarily is too many.

Last Friday, we sat in Judge Stephen Mock’s court as he began calendaring long cause trials – those trials that will last into a second court week – for this year.  We were stunned to find out that, as of the first week of February, Judge Mock’s calendar was completely backed up until September.

Yolo County officials have for several years now bragged about an improved efficiency that has allowed the number of cases to the be handled to more than double with 55 trials occurring in 2005 and 121 in 2008.  The number of trials remained high, with 121 again in 2009 and a slight drop to 112 in 2010.

It took seven years to come to trial, a month to try the case, but the jury was ready late Tuesday afternoon with their verdict after just over two days of deliberation.

As the verdicts were read, one by one, defendant by defendant, a wave of relief swept over the Niazi brothers and Qumar Ashraf for the first time in seven years.

The California Report today has published a follow-up to last week’s bombshell that was accompanied by NPR and Frontline coverage, which showed the questionable history of Dr. Thomas Gill, who worked with the Forensic Medical Group, a private company commissioned by the Yolo County’s coroner’s office to do autopsies.

According to the report, the Coroner’s Office will review the work in five homicide cases handled by the doctor.

Aaron Ray Wilson this week was ordered free by Judge Arvid Johnson, following a late December ruling by the Third District Court of Appeals which threw out his convictions for carrying a concealed dirk or dagger which constituted a third strike and had him in prison for 28 years to life.

Mr. Wilson appealed the verdict that would have sent him to prison for a minimum of 28 years “contending, among other things, that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress a knife (the alleged dirk or dagger) seized from his back pocket during a pat down search initiated after a police officer was dispatched to a public park to investigate “five subjects [possibly] smoking H and S [sic] in the men’s restroom.”

On Friday, the trial of four Yolo County residents charged with assault and accused of being, at the very least, sympathizers of the Taliban, wrapped up and went to the jury.  A Yolo County jury will have to sort through the four-week long trial and determine whether the three men accused of assault started the fight and were not provoked.

When the trial began, several weeks ago, there were four defendants, facing attempted murder charges among numerous counts of assault.  Now, the attempted murder charge long gone, the defendants down to three, and numerous charges dismissed due to lack of evidence, the picture is clearer but still murky.

Back in 2009, according to the Sacramento Bee’s report, Richard Harden “chased the woman down at the Home Depot on Folsom Boulevard  and bashed her three times with a hammer, sending her to the hospital with injuries to her back, neck and shoulder.”

According to court testimony, when the store security subdued him by taking him to the ground, the perpetrator indicated that race was the motivation behind his attack on the Latina female whom he had attacked with a hammer.