Court Watch

We spend a lot of time talking about the district attorneys on these pages, but just as important are the judges.  Most of the time, the judges are sitting back and making their legal rulings.  However, these rulings profoundly shape the cases and the evidence admitted.

Most of the time judges are restrained, but occasionally you see in them glimpses of their true spirit.  It was thus as the first of the closing statements were wrapping up in the never-ending Niazi trial that we got just such a glimpse into Judge Stephen Mock.

Yesterday the Vanguard learned of a California Watch/ Frontline investigation that discovered that a man who had performed potentially hundreds of autopsies for Yolo County had his qualifications to perform autopsies called into question by an investigative report.

The Vanguard spoke on Wednesday with Yolo County’s Chief Deputy Coroner Robert LaBrash, who downplayed any concerns that there were problems with Yolo County autopsies, arguing that any autopsy performed by Dr. Thomas Gill would have been overseen by his office and had his findings signed off upon.

A report issued on Monday from a project called California Watch, from the Center for Investigative Reporting calls into question some autopsies that may have been performed for Yolo County by forensic pathologist Dr. Thomas Gill, whose qualifications have been called into question by the project’s investigative report.

According to their report, Dr. Thomas Gill had “been forced out of a teaching position at an Oregon university, and then fired for inaccurate findings and alcohol abuse by the coroner in Indianapolis.”  Moreover, he had been “demoted for poor performance as a fellow for the Los Angeles County Coroner, [and] he resurfaced at a private autopsy company in Northern California.”

Friday marked the third time in two weeks that the Third District Court of Appeal (3rd DCA) has overturned the ruling of a Yolo County judge.  This time it was in a civil matter brought forward by Arthur Silen, a contract analyst, who sued the university after being passed over for a promotion that went to a much younger, much less educated and vastly less experienced candidate.

Yolo County Superior Court had granted the UC Regents’ summary judgment motion, finding that Mr. Silen had not established that the promotional decision was motivated by discriminatory animus.

A Yolo County jury has acquitted Heather Duffy of charges that she attempted to kidnap a toddler from outside his family’s home in Woodland last spring in an effort to replace two children who had been removed from her custody.

Ms. Duffy, who admitted she was high on meth, had been facing charges of kidnapping, child abduction and resisting arrest.

Can we imagine what might have happened had someone not pulled out their video camera that they had just purchased to film the beating of Rodney King back in 1991?  It’s not difficult to imagine, Mr. King’s claims of police brutality would have fallen on deaf ears and the officers involved never would have been held accountable, such as they were.

We have all wondered what would have happened had the incident involving the Galvan Brothers been filmed.  We can see the permanent life-altering damage on Ernesto Galvan’s face, but we do not know how it got there and probably never will.  In the coming months and years, a civil court will have to weigh out whether the police exceeded their authority and violated the rights of Mr. Galvan.  Had a video camera been present, we might have had the DA pursue the police rather than the victims in this case.

A key question that we must grapple with in society is when has someone paid their dues.  In a fairly balanced account of the proceedings, Lauren Keene, reporter for the Davis Enterprise, describes the interesting case of Bruce Young who has been in prison since a conviction for a crime he committed on August 9, 1982.

She calls it “one of Yolo County’s more horrific crimes” and describes the kidnapping of then 3-month-old Brandon Huff who was “dangled out of a van window as the suspects led police on a high-speed chase.”

For the second time in ten days, the Third District Court of Appeals threw out a conviction in Yolo County, this time due to juror misconduct as a juror performed a home experiment on a crucial piece of evidence.

A Yolo County jury convicted 17-year-old Kyle Vigil for his role in a drive-by shooting in Woodland.  Mr. Vigil was sentence to a 15 year to life sentence in prison, after being acquitted of the first shooting but convicted of aiding in the drive-by gunfire.

UC Davis Student Nicholas Allen Benson pled not guilty to making terrorist threats, among four charges, as well as denying enhancements he faces after being arrested in Davis on Friday night.

According to the police’s account, at approximately 6:00 PM on Friday evening, Davis Police Officers were dispatched to the downtown area to search for an armed suicidal 25-year-old UC Davis student, Nicholas Benson.

When a hot button cools off with voters, it is worth a second look, especially after elected officials took office in the New Year.

Take the recent nail-biter contest for attorney general between San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley.

It is something that you do not see everyday in Yolo County, but the Niazi trial contains all of the elements of a full-blown spy novel, except without the spies.  What was a commonplace assault with attempted murder charges, as factions of a family fought, has become much more than that.

Charges have flown that part of the family had Taliban ties and sympathies, and this apparently brought Homeland Security and the US Marshall’s Office into the investigation of an incident that is now nearly seven years old, having occurred in March of 2004.

Did the Davis Police Department help prevent a suicidal UC Davis student, heavily armed, from going on some sort of tirade, or did they unnecessarily escalate a tense but ultimately non-threatening situation with a student suffering from serious head injuries?

According to a releaase from Public Information Officer, Lt. Paul Doroshov, at approximately 6:00 PM on Friday evening, Davis Police Officers were dispatched to the downtown area to search for an armed suicidal 25-year -ld UC Davis student, Nicholas Benson.

We continue to look into the closing statement by the defense on the Gang Injunction case.  The defendants argue that that the plaintiffs here failed to substantiate the allegations which led to the original issuance of the preliminary injunction.

One of the key witnesses was Detective Joe Villanueva, who was the original police officer in West Sacramento assigned to the Community Response Team and charged with working on the anti-gang unit.

This week I spent my Tuesday night watching the Davis City Council finally deal with their economic situation and make a move towards a more sustainable future, as they faced dead-on the reality of a decade that saw unfunded liabilities soar while we kept increasing salaries and retirement benefits.

On Thursday it was the school district’s turn, as they listened to one of the most ominous budgets one could imagine and then voted to ask the voters to help.

On Friday was the first step in the sentencing hearing for Michael Artz, who was 18 at the time he had sexual relations with a 16-year-old classmate.  The DA’s Office had attempted to convict him on a charge of forced oral copulation, but the jury acquitted him of that charge.

He ended up being convicted of two lesser charges, one a statutory rape charge because, as an 18-year-old adult he had sexual relations with his 16-year-old classmate.  And the other charge was that of having contact with a minor for the purposes of having sex.

Last summer, to the shock and dismay of many volunteers and board members of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), an organization that advocates for foster children as they move through the court process, the former Executive Director was given a plea agreement of no prison time after pleading no contest to embezzling $46,000 from the non-profit.

Deputy DA Michelle Serafin filed a motion with the Court to reject the no contest plea entered by the defendant on October 14, 2010, arguing that the plea offer “was based on the belief that the defendant had only one prior arrest that resulted in a misdemeanor embezzlement conviction in Sacramento County.”

“This case is unprecedented,” the defense begins the first of ten briefs submitted, in closing the challenge to the gang injunction case. “No court has ever issued an injunction under the circumstances presented here.”

Do crimes exist in the “Safety Zone”?  Yes they do.  Are they committed by individuals who are either self-identified or police identified as “Broderick Boys”?  There is no disputing it.

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.