Court Watch

The launching of the National Registry of Exonerations, a new joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, actually reminds us of just how little we actually know about wrongful convictions, where and when they occur, and how many have occurred.

What we do know ought to alarm and frighten people far more than they are.  The reason we are not utterly alarmed on a global scale is that we are comforted by the relatively small number of false convictions.

Brian Banks was a star linebacker that every major college program in the country wanted to have play for them.  However, it was all taken from him when he was accused of rape and his lawyer convinced him to take a plea bargain even though there was no physical evidence of the crime.

Without that plea bargain, California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks wrote last month, “he might have spend the rest of his life in prison even though the case was built on the shaky testimony of his alleged victim, a fellow high school student.”

Edward Carter was a 19-year-old African-American man.  He was convicted of the rape of a pregnant woman in Detroit in 1974 and sentenced to life in prison.  That conviction, researchers Samuel Gross and Michael Shafer say, was based entirely on the cross-racial identification by the white victim.

But Mr. Carter was one of the more fortunate people to have been wrongly convicted, because there was DNA evidence in this case that would exonerate him.

Clinton Parish’s candidacy for judge effectively ended the moment that he made unchecked and unsupportable charges against his opponent, Judge Dan Maguire.  The fact that they were so quickly and easily brushed aside shows either a level of desperation or just plain amateurism by the candidate.

Mr. Parish wants the voters to believe that he is a good attorney who exercised some indiscretions as a political candidate.  The truth is that Mr. Parish is in fact the person that we saw this week.  That is the view that everyone in the courthouse got, that is why Public Defender Tracie Olson, normally cautious, early on signaled that her office would simply not trust him to preside over their cases.

Clinton Parish Acknowledges Some Accusations Baseless But Does Not Go Far Enough for His Opponent

On Wednesday, Clinton Parish, whose candidacy for judge in Yolo County can only be described as on life support, acknowledged that he failed to properly vet charges that were launched in his mailer.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Parish admitted that he “did not verify claims in an attack mailer that alleged campaign rival Judge Dan Maguire was involved in corporate fraud and bribery while working at a Colorado law firm in the mid-1990s.”

One attack piece, targeted for voters in Davis, attacked Judge Maguire on a number of issues such as the deal to commute the sentence of the son of former Speaker Fabian Nunez, despite the fact that Dan Maguire was already a judge in Yolo County by the time that occurred.

For the second time in less than a week, mailboxes in Davis and probably the rest of Yolo County received an attack mail piece.  This time it was the race for Yolo County Superior Court Judge and Judge Dan Maguire, the incumbent was on the short end of it.

In addition to touting the Deputy DA’s record and endorsements from Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto, and the West Sacramento, Woodland and Winters Police Officers Association, the mailer attacks Dan Maguire as “Arnold’s Bagman,” referring to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Representatives for the defense in the misdemeanor case against bank blockers on Thursday indicated that they were not inclined to take any plea offer in this case, as that would be tantamount to acceptance of the criminalization of dissent.

Tim Kreiner, a media spokesperson for the defendants told the media Thursday morning, “It was rejected in part on the grounds that any continuance of prosecution is a wrongful attempt to prosecute political speech on campus.”

Five attorneys will represent the 12 defendants facing 20 counts of blocking the US Bank Building in UC Davis’ memorial union from January 13 until the bank closed its down on February 28.

This week, Judge Dan Maguire received the endorsements of both the Davis Enterprise and Woodland Daily Democrat.

The Davis Enterprise writes, “Yolo County voters have the opportunity on June 5 to send a rousing vote of confidence to a well-respected member of the Yolo Superior Court bench: Judge Daniel Maguire.”

One of the big problems that we have identified in the criminal justice system is the lack of accountability that prosecutors have when they commit acts of misconduct.  As we have noted in the past, the research done by the Innocence Project in California shows only a small number of  prosecutors are sanctioned, even when acts of misconduct lead to cases being overturned.

California is not alone.  Researchers have found a similar pattern in Texas.

The Vanguard covered the two-week trial of Angel Palacios, Carlos Hernandez and German Martinez, each of them 20 years old, each of them found guilty of possessing a Tec-9 type assault pistol in their car.  They were also found to be Norteño gang members from Woodland and to have been engaging in criminal street activity.

According to the DA’s version of events, witnesses testified at trial that on August 17, 2010, two groups of gang members were in the area of Harris Park near Midtown Elementary in Woodland. Just as school security arrived, a rival gang member challenged defendant Hernandez, who appeared to have an object in his hand.