Court Watch

In a remarkable editorial in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Ron Briggs, the son of Senator John Briggs, admits they were wrong in 1977.  “We believed the Briggs initiative – the death penalty measure we wrote in 1977 – would bring greater justice. We were wrong,” he writes.

“In 1977, my dad, former state Sen. John Briggs, my brother-in-law and I got together to discuss California’s death penalty. We agreed it was ineffective and decided a ballot initiative was needed to expand the number of murder categories eligible for capital punishment,” Mr. Briggs recounts in Sunday Op-Ed.

I made a conscious decision to go to the Yolo County Courthouse yesterday morning, but not to attend the Topete sentencing.  I decided that I believe the process illegitimate and I did not want to legitimate the process with my presence.

Sometimes January filings confirm what you think you know about the races, sometimes they do not tell you much of anything, and sometimes they outright form your conclusions.

For example, Dan Wolk has a healthy lead in finances, drawing money across the political divide in Davis.  His filing tells you that he is the odds-on favorite to become the city’s next mayor pro tem, to succeed Joe Krovoza and become mayor.  But aside from that, we do not know a lot about who else will emerge as a candidate and who will ultimately make up the Davis City Council.

It is early but if Deputy DA Clinton Parish thought that Judge Dan Maguire was vulnerable, he may be sorely mistaken.  The judge has surged out to a tremendous monetary advantage – holding a nearly 5 to 1 advantage in contributions, an advantage that narrows only slightly on a percentage basis by the fact that both men have dumped their own money into the race as well.

Yesterday, the Assembly could not even a pass a measure that would have placed the measure to alter three strikes legislation before the voters.  It failed 36-34 with ten members not voting.  The sponsor, Mike Davis, is going to attempt to get reconsideration in the next week, in hopes that some of the absent members vote and push the measure over the top.

On the surface it seems to be an easy case and relatively straightforward.  On May 1, 2011, Richard Rodriguez broke into the storage closet in an inhabited residence.

According to Deputy District Attorney Robin Johnson, he went in there with the intent to steal, however, the burglary was thwarted before he had the chance to take anything.  The light went on outside, he ran off and was subsequently arrested and charged with first degree burglary.

Deputy Darrel Johnson told KCRA that during a meeting with a number of deputies and other high-ranking officials in the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department in September of 2011, the Sheriff singled him out using possibly racially inflammatory names such as “gravy” and “dark one.”

Last week Judge Timothy Fall granted a Pitchess motion in a co-defendant case involving the Davis Police Department.  Pitchess is a motion that grants discovery of citizen complaints against law enforcement officers, and the disciplinary records concerning the officers’ records in terms of propensity to commit acts of violence or other problems.

To obtain peace officer personnel records, a defendant need only make a “good cause” showing by affidavit, setting forth the materiality of the information sought and an allegation about the governmental agency identified in the request.

When California originally put in the Three Strikes Law, back in 1994, judges had little to no discretion at all to remove past strikes.  However, a Supreme Court decision in 1996 changed that.  In what became the Romero Decision, the sentencing court was granted the discretion to strike prior conviction allegations (strikes) “in the interest of justice.”

While a Romero motion gives judges the right to strike prior strikes, depending on the judge, that discretion may rarely be exercised.  Last week, Yolo County Judge Timothy Fall, in ruling on a Romero motion, noted that since 1996, the year after he was appointed to the bench, he had granted a Romero motion just once in a contested hearing (meaning the prosecution opposed the motion), and that decision was later overturned by an appellate court.

In a brief statement, the DA’s office said, “District Attorney Jeff Reisig announced today that there was insufficient information contained within the police reports submitted by the UC Davis Police Department to justify the filing of criminal charges against those individuals arrested during the November 18, 2011, confrontation with UC Davis Police during the ‘Occupy UC Davis’ protest.”

The facts of the case can be found in the Vanguard’s original article back in December.  The two men had a confrontation that resulted in the shooting of Mr. Robinson by Mr. Smith.  Mr. Smith would claim self-defense, but critical errors in judgment by the defendant leading up to and following the shooting led the jury to a second degree murder conviction.

However, the defense has filed a new motion this week, after the California Supreme Court for the second time in a month struck down a death sentence due the improper removal of a juror.  The next hearing and sentencing date has been moved to early February, with legal experts mixed, at best, as to whether Judge Richardson ruled properly in this matter.

Arguing that this is not simply a return to business as usual by replicating the failure of CDCR at the county level, the County Board of Supervisors approved the application for the full 148-jail bed expansion, with the understanding that this money would go toward upgrading existing facilities and with the further understanding that Leinberger would be repurposed and, in fact, decommissioned.

The Board was assured that the operational costs of maintaining the smaller Leinberger was equal to the costs of operating the additional 148 beds called for in recommended Option 4.

On Thursday, Judge Paul Richardson will formally sentence Marco Topete in a case that has been anything but routine.  Back in November, a jury reached a unanimous verdict in the penalty phase, recommending the death penalty for Mr. Topete.  However, under 190.4(e) of the California Penal Code, the trial judge makes an independent determination regarding imposition of the death penalty.

At issue was the dismissal of Juror No.11, who sent the court a hand-written note asking to be excused from further deliberation and replaced with an alternate juror.  Following the brief inquiry, Judge Richardson made the decision to replace Juror No.11.

Many perhaps forget, from three years ago, that the carrot for the placement of the state’s re-entry facility was a promise of jail expansion to meet the expanded needs of Yolo County into the future.  When the economy collapsed, that funding source fell apart, but it has now been revived without the attachment of the re-entry facility.

The Yolo County Board of Supervisors will decide on Tuesday whether to apply for grant funding to expand the current jail capacity by up to 148 beds.  The grant would require a more than $4.6 million county match with an ongoing operational cost of nearly $2.5 million annually.

As the Vanguard reported on Wednesday, there are now questions as to whether Juror No.11 was properly dismissed on November 14 by Judge Paul Richardson from the penalty phase of Marco Topete’s trial for the murder of Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz. This occured after a brief inquiry, in which he determined the request for dismissal was based on a language barrie

Juror No.11 sent the Court a hand-written note asking to be excused from further deliberation and replaced with an alternate juror.  Following the brief inquiry, Judge Richardson made the decision to replace Juror No.11.

On November 14, Judge Paul Richardson dismissed Juror No.11 from the penalty phase of Marco Topete’s trial for the murder of Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz, after a brief inquiry in which he determined the request for dismissal was based on a language barrier.

Juror No.11 sent the Court a hand-written note asking to be excused from further deliberation and replaced with an alternate juror.  Following the brief inquiry, Judge Richardson made the decision to replace Juror No.11.

Originally, Judge Shockley had held Mr. Foster and his co-defendant Pamela Logan, who faced similar charges but not 25 to life, to answer on both counts for two different incidents, one on March 26, 2011 and the other on June 12, 2011.