The defense in the West Sacramento Gang Injunction Case deferred making oral closing comments and instead opted to submit a written closing comment, which they did last week on January 14.
While we tend to believe that the plaintiffs in the case, the Yolo County DA’s Office, failed to prove their case, we nevertheless believe that they will prevail in court.
It is a case that began in March of 2004. What began as a family feud, ended in a stabbing with attempted murder charges, and federal involvement as allegations of Taliban operatives and sympathies permeated the case.
The case was set to go to trial for the first time, two years later, in March of 2006, when the prosecutor on the case dropped the bombshell about the involvement of Homeland Security and reams of witness statements that will likely never be seen again.
Back in August of 2008, the Yolo County DA’s Office was trumpeting this as a case of “Yolo County’s Own ‘To Catch a Predator’ ” which resulted in 40-year-old Todd Robert Dixon of Elk Grove being convicted of pandering, for his actions on December 27, 2007 when he solicited a seventeen-year-old girl in West Sacramento to have sex with him in exchange for money.
Now, just over two years later, the conviction has been thrown out due to insufficient evidence that Mr. Dixon committed that specific charge of pandering, and Mr. Dixon is free and cannot be recharged for this crime.
In what the San Jose Mercury News is calling “the most sweeping criminal justice overhaul in state history,” Governor Jerry Brown is proposing the elimination of the youth prison system, along with an end to prison terms for thousands of convicts who are in prison for relatively minor crimes. Those individuals would be moved to county jails.
According to the Governor’s budget, such a move would save the state nearly half a million next year, $1.4 billion annually on an ongoing basis, while at the same time dealing with the critical prison overcrowding and prison reform issues.
The big news in the case of Marco Topete, who is accused of shooting Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz back in the summer of 2008, is perhaps that the latest hearing went according to form, no surprises and no big shake-ups.
That has not been the case through much of this case, that began over two-and-a-half years ago and made headlines around the region when Sheriff’s Deputies locked reporters and family members of the accused out of the arraignment hearings. That has prompted charges by the media of favoritism and censorship and led to concerns that Mr. Topete could not receive a fair trial.
It was nearly a decade ago that Governor George Ryan of Illinois, himself embroiled in scandals that would cost his office, put a moratorium on the death penalty. This week, Illinois State House passed a measure by a narrow 60-54 vote that would repeal the state’s death penalty.
Illinois is a microcosm for the rest of the nation, as the history of the Illinois death penalty shows at least 20 people condemned to death have been freed after exoneration or new evidence surfaced which cast doubt on their convictions.
Instead, the group of twenty activists were seeking answers and a restoration of trust as they gathered on a cold morning in front of West Sacramento City Hall.
After five years and three trials it is finally over for Ernesto and Fermin Galvan. They paid a high price, but will now be able to resume their lives without the criminal charges hanging over them from the 2005 incident that has left Ernesto Galvan with permanently disfiguring and brain-damaging injuries.
In a statement released from the DA’s Office late on Tuesday afternoon, the Chief Deputy District Attorney backed away from a previous statement that indicated that the DA’s Office would seek a fourth trial.
Attorney Anthony Palik, representing Ernesto Galvan, the brother most seriously injured and facing the most serious charges including felony assault on a police officer and resisting arrest, is seeking dismissal of the case that would have to be brought to trial for what may be an unprecedented fourth time.
His brother, Fermin Galvan, was acquitted on a charge of resisting arrest, but the jury hung 11-1 for acquittal on the second charge of allegedly delaying Officer Schlie as he attempted to apprehend Ernesto Galvan.
With hundreds of worthy choices for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to choose to commute their sentence or to outright pardon, Gov. Schwarzenegger instead commuted the sentence of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, Esteban Nuñez, who had pled guilty to participating in the killing of a college student.
Mr. Nuñez was sentenced to 16 years in prison for aiding and abetting the stabbing death of a college student near San Diego State. His sentence was reduced to seven years by the Governor.
The Contra Costa Times reported in early December that Yolo County was among four counties that had not provided data at all on 2009 salaries of all judges and employees in the court. This followed a request by the Bay Area News Group to apply California’s new judiciary adopted transparency rules.
It may be recalled that the Vanguard reported on this on December 18, 2010 and asked why Yolo County was stonewalling.
In January the Vanguard launched a project to monitor court cases in the Yolo County court system. The purpose of this program was to look into problematic cases, monitor them through the court system, and report about any abuses, overcharging, and other problems in the system.
By analyzing individual cases, we hoped to be able to determine, on a more systematic basis, the problems facing the Yolo Judicial system. While this report does not represent a comprehensive review of the court system or the DA’s Office, it does provide some insight into problems that we face.
While the Gang Injunction trial wrapped up and we eagerly await Judge Kathleen White’s decision expected in May, we have further evidence that despite claims to the contrary, any gang problems in Yolo County hardly register as a blip on the radar of statewide gang concerns.
The DA’s Office argued in their closing that the Broderick Boys gang represented a clear nuisance to the West Sacramento community to the extent that they needed additional remedies not already available under the law.
In a time of financial crisis, when all government agencies are crying poverty, in a lot of ways Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig is operating as though it were business as usual. Yolo Judicial Watch has now been covering the courts for about a year, and some of our findings are appalling.
DA Reisig and his staff may be able to write off the efforts of the Vanguard, but some of his antics have caught the Sacramento press’s attention. Two of his worst offending cases – as in waste of taxpayer money – made top ten lists for the year 2010 in both the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento News and Review.
Under the best of conditions it is difficult to defend oneself, particularly in a capital murder case. But the system conspired to make the task impossible for Marco Topete, accused of the 2008 killing of Deputy Sheriff Tony Diaz.
Faced with inadequate time to research the case, lack of hours in the law library, lack of privacy and protection for legal product, Mr. Topete finally had enough last week and reluctantly took back the two attorneys he had dismissed just three months ago.
What if Rodney King were not beaten on video camera? You may have a case that looks very much like the Galvan case. As more than one person has stated in the last week, we may never know fully what happened on that dark June night in 2005 in a park at 3 am in West Sacramento.
Last year, California’s judiciary adopted new transparency rules that allowed access to spending records on personnel, including salaries.
The Contra Costa Times have obtained court information that includes includes all California judges and employees of appellate courts, the supreme court and the administrative office of the courts, and totals more than $1 billion in salaries for 15,377 employees.
After nearly five months of on again-off again testimony and hearings, the Gang Injunction trial has finally wrapped up as the plaintiffs presented their closing statement on Wednesday. The defense deferred theirs, and will submit written arguments only.
The plaintiff’s case rested on combining a number of crimes that seemed at times to be almost random and scattered throughout the safety zone, involving individuals that were said by police officials to be gang members.
Use of Force Expert is An Interesting Character in This Case As Well – On Monday, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office stunned many legal observers in pursuing a fourth trial in the case that has seen two hung juries in the 2010 calendar year alone.
On Monday, the Vanguard presented the Innocence Project’s report that flagged over 700 cases statewide. On October 5, 2010, the Northern California Innocence Project came out with a report, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997–2009,” that uncovered over 700 cases in which courts had found prosecutorial misconduct during an 11-year period. Of all of those cases, only six prosecutors were disciplined.
The misconduct covered in the report ranged from failing to turn over evidence to presenting false evidence in court. As a response to their research, the Northern California Innocence Project is calling for legal reforms requiring courts to report all findings of misconduct to the State Bar, which they currently are not required to do. When a court decides the misconduct was harmless, those cases often go unreported.
