Court Watch

The panel led by former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso wrapped up its first weekend of testimony on Sunday, taking brief testimony from two witnesses and then listening to an impressive discussion by Private Investigator Frank Roman who went through the DA’s report blow by blow and raised questions that need to be answered and showed problems and contradictions in other areas.

Not everyone was appreciative of the panel’s efforts however, as both Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig and Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto dismissed the panel as politically motivated and lacking credibility.  However, as far as we can tell, neither attended nor had any of their deputies attend the weekend’s testimony.

Former Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso is chairing a thirteen person commission on civil rights to look into the 2009 shooting of Luis Gutierrez.  Saturday marked the first public meeting of that commission where they took testimony from four witnesses to Gutierrez’s mannerisms and activities of the day, the shooting itself, and the tactics of the officers.  In day one of testimony taken by the Yolo County Independent Civil Rights Commission a number of witnesses were called to testify.  Some of these were direct witnesses to facets of the events of the day that Luis Gutierrez was shot by three Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputies working for the Yolo County Gang Task Force. 

One of the key witnesses, described in great detail what she had seen.  She provided far more detail than what was made available by the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office in their report on the incident.  She described the incident in great detail and told the commission that she had not seen a weapon, and that Mr. Gutierrez was retreating as he was shot.

Last week the Vanguard reported on the second mistrial in the case of brothers Ernesto and Fermin Galvan.  This was a clear case of excessive force on the part of West Sacramento Police.  The Vanguard will continue to analyze the case itself, however, at this time the concern arises about the jury and their handling of this matter.

There were critical questions that had to be determined in this matter, it involved a portion of the law that requires keen judgment a discernment of facts.

Yolo County is facing fiscal crisis on a scale that boggles the mind.  Last year, the county was able to cushion a 20 million dollar blow using reserves and concessions, this year, there will be no cushion for a 21 million dollar deficit.  Vital services that people rely on to survey are going to be slashed.  We’re talking health services, mental health services, and public safety.

In that context, last week, the Sheriff’s Department talked about the release of inmates.  Indeed, across the state, there have been the release of prisoners, essentially people who have committed less dangerous felonies.  Likewise Yolo County under a worst case scenario would immediately release 140 convicts with the closure of the Walter J. Leinberger Minimum Security Facility.

For the second time, 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.

The defendants have alleged excessive force by the police officer.  At that time, they had been unable to come to trial because the younger brother had suffered debilitating head injuries.

Judge Tim Fall declared a mistrial after a juror announced they were hopelessly deadlocked on all six counts.  One juror held out against conviction on all counts, the same thing that occurred in the original trial back in 2007.

On Monday the Vanguard broke the story that Robert Ferguson is facing life in prison for a third strike in part for stealing cheese from Nugget Market.  Quickly the Sacramento Bee also picked up the story.

As a result, Yolo County Prosecutors announced on Thursday that they would no longer seek life for the man who had also stolen a wallet from a woman in a 7-11 convenience store.

For the second consecutive year, Yolo County is having to cut 20 million dollars from its general fund budget.  This is going to take a huge toll as we will discuss later on the vital county services.  It will also result in cutbacks to law enforcement.

Some of the proposed cuts will include the closure of the Walter J. Leinberger Minimum security facility which would result in the immediate release of 140 felons into the community (though it should be noted these are felons housed in a minimum security facility).

A Yolo County Man, Robert Ferguson is facing life in prison for a third strike in part for stealing cheese from Nugget Market.  Prior to that he was convicted for petty theft at a 7/11 for stealing a woman’s wallet.  Sentencing will occur on March 1 to see if indeed he is given his third strike in which he would spend 25 years in prison, essentially a life sentence for a man in his mid 50s.

Mr. Ferguson was previously convicted back in 1982 for three separate counts of residential burglary, at the time he was age 25 years old.  Six years later he pled guilty to a single count of 1st degree burglary.  Finally in 1995, he pled guilty to a single count of petty theft with a prior.

After nearly five years, the trial opens for Fermin Galvan-Magana and his brother Ernesto who face counts of resisting arrest and battery on police officers for an incident that occurred back in 2005.

The Vanguard covered this story back in 2007.  The defendents have alleged excessive force by the police officer.  At that time, they had been unable to come to trial because the younger brother had suffered debilitating head injuries.

A Davis resident and mother of a teenage son was stunned to learn that her son would be facing 10 felonies including 5 gang enhancements for his role in a fistfight in front of her Davis home.  As the Vanguard soon learned, her son would not be alone.  Is this part of a new rising gang threat in Davis or simply a matter of the Davis Police Department and the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office overreacting to relatively minor offenses by tacking on gang enhancements?

The Vanguard, in the first of what could be several installments over the coming weeks and months examines, that question more closely.

On Thursday, Jonathan Raven from the Yolo County District Attorney’s office announced that the Yolo County DA’s Office had declined to file charges against James Marchbanks, a graduate assistant who had allegedly made a bomb threat to his students on the last day of class back in December. 

He cited a lack of evidence to proceed with charges and obtain a conviction.  This ended a long and strange saga that has generated outrage and bewilderment among many on the UC Davis campus and in the community.

Yesterday, the People’s Vanguard of Davis proudly launched its newest project, Vanguard Court Watch.  Vanguard Court Watch is a focused effort to monitor and track cases that go through the Yolo County Judicial System from arrest to adjudication. 

Yolo Judicial Watch will be located on the Vanguard but available on its own separate page: yolojudicialwatch.org .

Last night at Dingle Elementary School  in Woodland a large audience of at least 150 people gathered to listen to what was billed as a townhall meeting with the county and city’s leadership.  Apparently organizers for this event entitled, “Protecting Our Children’s Public Safety” organized by the Yolo County Justice Coalition, had invited leaders ranging from the members of the Woodland City Council, the Woodland Police Chief Carey Sullivan, Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto, District Attorney Jeff Reisig, and members of County Board of Supervisors.

Of these invitees only two showed up.  Woodland Police Chief Carey Sullivan sent his Lt. Don Beal and Woodland Mayor Skip Davies came and graciously and patiently addressed a group of questioners that seem to grow more frustrated as the night went on.  The crowd was very grateful to Lt. Beal who was actually on duty as the scene commander and to Mayor Davies, but they were frustrated at the lack of attendance of other political leaders.

It was a fact first mentioned in the December Sacramento Bee article on District Attorney Jeff Reisig that the number of felony trials in Yolo County has risen from 30 or 40 a year to 120 a year since Reisig took over.  The result of that is that Monroe Detention center is no longer heavily backed up and the process has been streamlined.

The Daily Democrat wrote a story on this January 3 and the Enterprise on January 10.

The Sacramento Bee yesterday ran a story on Sunday on Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig where the DA defends his anti-gang campaign.  Unfortunately the article reads more like a puff-promo piece than a piece that critically examines Mr. Reisig’s gang record or whether Yolo County faces the problem that the DA claims.

Perhaps in another publication, the writer would have immediately realized the absurdity of it all, comparing Jeff Reisig to famed gangster-hunter Eliot Ness.

A pretty good article earlier this week in the Davis Enterprise on the rape case of three men who had been accused of rape, sodomy, kidnapping and charged with 63 counts.  Sound familiar?  Except this time the accused facing near certain life times, were found innocent by a court of law that issued the verdict on Tuesday.

We did not sit through the trial and we only know press accounts of the case, but it has all of the familiar elemnts.

This past weekend, the Woodland Daily Democrat printed an op-ed of mine on the issue of the District Attorney’s Office report on the shooting of Luis Gutierrez.  I did not replicate the article here due to the fact that I have said everything on these pages that I did in the op-ed and more so.  The op-ed generated 144 comments on the Daily Democrat site. 

Today, Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad, a former Mayor of Woodland, has written a response that was published on the Daily Democrat site.  When I first met Mr. Rexroad, I told him that he and I would likely be adversaries quite a bit.  What I have found is that there are times when I disagree with him, but there have also been times when we have been on the same side of the issue.  This is probably the issue of the biggest disagreement between the two of us.

It was just last week, prior to the Thanksgiving break that the District Attorney finally released their report and the concurrence by the Attorney General’s Office on the more than six month old shooting of farm worker Luis Gutierrez as he walked on Gum Ave following an appointment at the DMV.

If you missed it last week the Vanguard embarked on a lengthy analysis of the District Attorney’s report, concluding the findings in the report are not nearly as clearcut as the District Attorney claims.  Given the circumstances involved, it seems reasonable that the shooting may have been justified, but the situation from the beginning was escalated by questionable actions by the officers involved.

Recently obtained court documents show that the Yolo County District Attorney’s office is currently prosecuting outside of county jurisdiction.  Official court records and transcripts reveal that Deputy District Attorney Garrett Hamilton is actively prosecuting a case in Colusa county. The case has numerous complexities.

In People of The State Of California vs. Santiago Rodriguez Ochoa, the Yolo County District Attorney’s office charged an 18 year old with six criminal counts; one of the counts being subject to a gang enhancement. The case was first prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Hamilton in the Yolo County Court.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office has cleared three Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputies of any criminal conduct related to the April 30, 2009 shooting of Luis Gutierrez.

A 37 page District Attorney report concludes:

“When considering all of the facts and circumstances known to them at the time, the use of deadly force by the deputies was objectively reasonable and justified and therefore does not warrant the filing of criminal charges against Sgt. Johnson, Deputy Oviedo or Deputy Bautista.”