Court Watch

Last week a Yolo County jury acquitted Fermin Galvan on one charge and nearly a second.  They also hung on the four charges against Ernesto Galvan, who in 2005 was beaten nearly to death by Officers Schlie and Farrington of the West Sacramento Police Department.

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.

Just when it appeared over for the Galvan brothers, who have had to endure a lifetime of injuries and already three trials as the result of an incident that took place early in the morning in June of 2005 at a dark park in West Sacramento, Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Palumbo announced that the DA’s Office intends to try the case for yet a fourth time.

Right now a trial readiness conference is set for January 31 and a fourth trial set to begin on February 7 – assuming there are no further delays.

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 Vanguard has found four cases in Yolo County: Racimo, Lindeman, Massey, and Morales.  However a source indicates a fifth case might be added, which would be the case of Lawrence James Miranda, which  was overturned because the prosecutor, then-Deputy DA Jeff Reisig, withheld exculpatory evidence and the conviction was reversed on appeal.

This week UC Davis announced that, more than a year after it was acknowledged that the longtime director of the Campus Violence Prevention Program had exaggerated the numbers of forcible sex offenses reported under the Clery Act in 2005, 2006 and 2007, the former director of that program has been arrested. 

The arrest of Jennifer Beeman occurred on December 9, on charges of embezzlement of public funds and eight other felonies in connection with her alleged misuse of public funds as director of the Campus Violence Prevention Program.

For the third time, a Yolo County Jury has hung on charges against Ernesto and Fermin Galvan.  But this time it was different.  The Galvan brothers, who have been prosecuted since 2005 for resisting arrest and battery on police officers, in the two previous trials had seen 11-1 splits in favor of the prosecution.  That prompted the DA to refile charges twice and continue pursuit of the case.

However, this time it was very different.  Fermin Galvan, who was the less active participant and the brother less badly beaten by the police, was nearly completely acquitted.  He was acquitted of the misdemeanor charge of resisting detention by then-Officer Jim Reeder, who dropped him to the asphalt with a leg sweep. The jury hung, 11 to 1 in his favor on the misdemeanor charge that alleged he had caused interference or delay to Officer Donald Schlie’s detention of his brother.

In a strongly-worded response, Inspector General Laura Chick rebuked efforts by the Yolo County Board of Supervisors to attempt to soften the blow of the criticism of the Probation Department for their failure to adhere to the terms of a grant.

Ms. Chick wrote on December 7 to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors Chair Helen Thomson, “It is important to remember that Yolo County received this grant for specific purposes. The innovations and risk-taking you mention in your letter were an inherent part of the grant. Any county seeking this funding was, in fact, being asked to change and improve the way it was dealing with perpetrators and victims of sexual crimes.”

A Woodland resident in his early 20’s, Jose Valenzuela, from a Salvadorian family, was acquitted of attempting to kill one man and was nearly acquitted of attempting to kill the other man, but the jury hung 11-1 for acquittal. 

Nevertheless, the DA is attempting to refile charges and it will be determined in January whether Judge Stephen Mock allows the trial to move forward again.

CASA packed the court with board members and supporters on Wednesday, to hear the sentencing of Claudean Medlock for embezzlement. But after waiting nearly an hour for the case to be called, there was a lengthy discussion between Deputy District Attorney Michelle Serafin, Deputy Public Defender Monica Brushia, Probation and Judge Thomas Warriner.

As it turned out, the trek was all for naught, as Judge Warriner announced that the case would be returned to the judge who accepted the plea agreement.  Judge Warriner was taking all of Judge Kathleen White’s cases for the day, as she was otherwise preoccupied.

In late September into early October, a Yolo County jury hung, with seven jurors voting to acquit and five to convict Jesus Solis. Mr. Solis stood accused of shooting and killing an individual named Jesus Cortez Heredia last September outside Ortega’s West, a bar in West Sacramento.  Another individual standing beside Heredia at the time of the shooting was also hit by the flurry of bullets, following a fight in the parking lot at closing time.

Mr. Solis is now in Mexico, having been deported, but is free after facing, at one point, the death penalty in this case.  Former Deputy District Attorney James Walker had said in the original filing that this was a capital case, unless stated otherwise. Charges were refiled after the mistrial.

Two men accused in the beating of Sacramento cab driver Harbhajan Singh in the early morning hours of November 28, 2010 were arraigned on Tuesday afternoon, charged with hate crimes, according to a release from the Yolo County DA’s Office.

Pedro Ramirez, 41, and Johnny Morales, 33 have been charged with felony assault and hate crimes, according to the release.  In a statement released by Mr. Singh through his spokesperson Amar Shergill at the Shergill Law Firm in Sacramento, they say that the Felony Assault charge also includes a Great Bodily Injury enhancement, and there was an additional charge of criminal threats.

I have sat in Judge Fall’s courtroom as he handed down an implausible sentence of 378 years to Ajay Dev.  I have sat in Judge Fall’s courtroom as he berated a young public defender, demeaning her not only in front of her colleagues, but in front of a jury.

He makes attorneys nervous.  He acts in an arrogant and condescending fashion at times.  But privately I have had more than one attorney tell me no judge in Yolo County knows the law better than Judge Fall, and Judge Fall makes them a better attorney.

On Friday, former West Sacramento Police Officer James Reeder took the stand.  Mr. Reeder testified that he arrived a couple of minutes after the altercation began between Ernesto Galvan and Officers Schlie and Farrington.

He said it was pitch black and all he could see was the amber lights of the police “overheads.”  He then saw the skirmish and called out, asking if there were anyone else involved.  Officer Farrington said, “just him. ” That would be Fermin Galvan.  Mr. Reeder admitted under cross-examination that Fermin Galvan was 30 feet from the incident, not participating, not yelling to his brother, but nevertheless he considered him a threat.

The DA’s office is seeking to prison time now for a former Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Executive Director who had pled no contest to one felony charge of grand theft from an employer. 

Last week, the Vanguard reported that the DA’s Office would be attempting to overturn a plea agreement reached with former CASA Executive Director Claudean Medlock.  Ms. Medlock had allegedly embezzled more than $46,000 from the non-profit agency and used the money to gamble at casinos.

Early on Sunday morning, November 28th, Sacramento cab driver Harbhajan Singh was attacked by two of his passengers in a neighborhood in West Sacramento.  According to eye witness reports, during the beating the two men repeatedly threatened to kill him, while calling Mr. Singh ‘Osama bin Laden’. 

This assault left Mr. Singh with multiple facial lacerations requiring stitches, bone chips in his nose, eye injuries and bruising along his rib cage.  Mr. Singh, a Sikh-American, believes that had he not gotten away, his attackers would have killed him.

Opening statements began on Wednesday in the third iteration of the trial of Ernesto and Fermin Galvan, charged with resisting arrest and battery stemming from a West Sacramento incident in 2005.  Both earlier trials – one in October 2007 and the other in February of 2010 – ended in hung juries.

Jury selection on this case began on Monday, but on Tuesday things got interesting as both sides, after reviewing the lengthy questionnaire, began the process voir dire.

Whether the death of Wayne King, a ranch hand at the Historic Nelson Ranch north of Woodland, was ultimately determined to have been at his own hands or at those of another, one thing is clear, this is one of the strangest, most interesting,  and most unique incidents one could envision.

Family and friends are not accepting the official word from the Sheriff’s Department that it was a suicide and that the case is closed.  Instead they have hired their own investigator, Frank Roman, a former Santa Clara Sheriff’s detective who invited CBS 13 and the Vanguard to the ranch to see the scene for ourselves.

In February the Vanguard, in one of the first cases under the fledgling Yolo Judicial Watch Project, reported that a Yolo County jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Ernesto and Fermin Galvan, brothers who were charged with resisting arrest and battery for an incident that occurred back in 2005.

Ernesto Galvan was beaten into a class-3 coma by officers during an incident that occurred on June 14, 2005 at 3:20 am in West Sacramento.  Photographs shown at trial show Ernesto Galvan lying face down in a pool of blood.

An Inspector General’s report, which came down last Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving, hit two area organizations, the Yolo County Probation Department and CALCASA (California Coalition Against Sexual Assault) for misappropriation and misuse of federal grant money.

According to a letter dated November 24 from Inspector General Laura Chick, money that first became available in the mid-1990s through the Violence Against Women Act, and was increased through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  (ARRA) which awarded the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) a total of $13.3 million, were misused.

For two years, ranch owners Ted Wilson and Brenda Cedarblade have complained about a bizarre series of events that includes harassment and even a shooting on their land.  They believe it has to do with their opposition to county land use policies that has made them a target.

At the same time, authorities found it somewhat easy to ignore these complaints.  But the shooting death of Wayne King, an employee on the Historic Nelson Ranch, will likely change all of that.