Court Watch

Braving the triple-digit August heat of Woodland, 250 protesters  not only listened to an hour of speeches but marched down to the courthouse in a protest that marked the third year anniversary of Ajay Dev’s conviction on dozens of charges of raping his adoptive daughter.

“I’m here today because I know without a doubt, with 100 percent certainty that my brother, Ajay Dev, is innocent,” Sanjay Dev told the crowd on Wednesday evening at Woodland’s Freeman Park.

For years we have complained that the Daily Democrat has simply taken a press release from the DA’s office and re-printed it verbatim.  There is no fact-checking for accuracy.  They simply take the word of the DA’s office and print it as fact, usually under the deceptive byline of “Democrat Staff.”

On Wednesday, family and friends of Ajay Dev, who believe he has been wrongly convicted of the rape of his adopted daughter, will mark the third-year anniversary of his sentencing with a protest march and vigil.  They have done this for every year, and the event usually attracts a few hundred people.

Saw a reference to an article by Karen Boudrie Greig, “Last Call From Death Row,” in the August issue of New Orleans Magazine.  In it she recounts the trial of Carlos DeLuna, who would be executed in 1989 for a crime that he did not commit.

Our keynote speaker from last week’s event was Maurice Possley, and his work with the Chicago Tribune was critical toward exposing that wrongful execution.

The Vanguard has learned that Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig lifted huge portions of his op-ed last week from an op-ed entitled “Justice for crime victims demands death penalty,” written by Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully with Phyllis Loya, the mother of a Pittsburg police officer whose son was murdered.

While the piece written last week by Mr. Reisig is twice the length, at least six paragraphs are directly lifted and another six are slightly altered from the piece written by Jan Scully.

One of the more interesting debates that is emerging is over the issue of stop and frisk as a crime control policy.  The policy began in New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Depite the controversy and complaints from rights groups and minorities, the mayor continues to support it, arguing as he did in June, “that it had helped make New York the safest big city in the country, while acknowledging that the police needed to treat those whom they stopped with greater respect.”

You will have to forgive us for focusing a bit on the death penalty this week. After all, this evening five of the leading spokespeople on the issue will be coming to Woodland for a Vanguard event.

In any event, Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig gave us a month’s worth of material.  Mr. Reisig was making the argument that the system works, after all, as he writes, “Each of them received due process through the many checks and balances of the criminal justice system and were justly convicted and sentenced to death.”

Franky Carrillo spent two decades in prison after he was convicted of a drive-by shooting in 1992 and sentenced in 1992 to one life term and 30 years to life in prison.  Critical to his conviction was the testimony of five eyewitnesses who said that they saw him pull the trigger.

Had we known then what we know now about the fallibility of eyewitness identification, particularly under poor lighting conditions, this travesty of justice may have been avoided.

Last week, the Davis Enterprise kindly ran a story about the Vanguard‘s Death Penalty Event on their front page.  That apparently was enough to prompt former Judge Jim Stevens to object.

He wrote in a letter to the editor, “Your recent article on the meeting of death penalty opponents was interesting but full of humbug. I respect the right of others to work for and express their opinion but reserve my right to tell them they are full of garbage.”