Court Watch Archives - Page 236 of 271

Proposition 36 Would Modify California’s Three Strikes Law

By uptownstudiosAugust 29, 20129 comments

By George Gascón

California’s “three strikes” sentencing law enacted in 1994 had the best of intentions – to keep serious and violent repeat offenders off our streets. Eighteen years later, we’ve learned valuable lessons about policing and keeping crime down, but we’ve also witnessed the unintended consequences of that law.

Since the law’s enactment, more than 8,500 prisoners have been sentenced to life in prison for solely nonviolent crimes – as minor as shoplifting or simple drug possession.

Just Verdict or Wrongful Conviction in Woodland Gang Trial?

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 28, 201235 comments

The key witness described the scene that took place at the Woodland Arco AM/PM as one in which she could tell something was about to go down. She saw a number of youths running around and acting rambunctious. However, she was late into a day of driving her daughter to college and wanted to get her gas and move on.

After exiting the gas station, the witness suddenly saw five youths attacking a four-door Honda Accord and the inhabitants inside to the point where the vehicle was rocking.

Why Republicans Should Care About Prosecutorial Misconduct

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 28, 201214 comments

With the Republican National Convention this week, I thought it would be interesting to report on this story I dug up in a blog from the Dallas Morning News, written by their editorial writer Rodger Jones. I keep hearing that this is only a problem with liberals, even though some of the most rabid critics about the misconduct of at least one prosecutor I know are conservative Republicans.

Jeff Leach is a state Representative-elect from Plano, Texas. Mr. Jones jokes his blog will guarantee Mr. Leach “a call from the Texas District and County Attorney’s Association.”

Justice Not Served in Attempted Murder Case

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 27, 201227 comments

Two weeks ago Jose Valenzuela was released from custody, pleading to a single count of attempted murder and taking a strike, but getting time served. His release comes more than 20 months after being acquitted of attempted murder of a man on May 18, 2008 and nearly being acquitted of the second man – one only person held out as the jury hung 11-1 for acquittal.

But that did not stop Mr. Valenzuela from waiting in the Yolo County jail, serving more than four years in custody despite the fact that the majority of jurors believed him innocent of the crimes for which he was charged. In addition to the attempted murder charge, he was acquitted of assault for the first victim and the jury hung 7-5 for acquittal of assault for the second victim.

Another Exoneration Leads to another Black Mark For Eyewitness Identification

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 26, 201224 comments

It seems that every week or so another wrongful conviction is overturned in the courts somewhere in this country. The most recent was David Wiggins, who was convicted in 1989 for a sexual assault of a 14-year-old in Fort Worth, Texas.

Mr. Wiggins was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, despite the fact that neither of the fingerprints at the scene matched his. The girl’s face was covered during much of this attack as the rapist put a towel over her face. However, she testified that she removed that towel during the attack and subsequently would pick Mr. Wiggins out of a photo lineup and then a live line up, saying that he looked familiar.

Charge Stacking: Gambling with People’s Lives

By uptownstudiosAugust 25, 201261 comments

by Bill Pursell

There is a relatively new phrase in our legal system that is still heard all too rarely, but it should be a prime fear of all defendants who enter to the mercy of the courts. The phrase is “charge stacking”. These simple words are creating catastrophic effects in our court rooms. It is this phrase, or this practice of stacking which has enabled a 20 year old first time offender to receive 1,941 months (162 years) in prison without the possibility of parole, reported by Reuters – Tue, Jul 3, 2012.

The idea of charge stacking is simple. The method entails finding as many possible criminal counts to “stack” against the defendant in order to strengthen the core case of the prosecution. This is possible because the main deterrent against stacking charges is the law of double jeopardy. In Blockburger v. United States, the Supreme Court said the government may separately try and punish the defendant for two crimes if each crime contains an element that the other does not. Therefore double jeopardy is so weak a deterrent that a person can be convicted of ten counts of perjury when they were perjuring about one thing on ten different days.

14-Year-Old’s Forced Removal From Davis Home Causes Questions and Concerns

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 24, 201230 comments

Critics Call For New Legislation Protecting Child’s Rights, and the Overhaul of the Family Court System

Last week, longtime Davis resident Fraser Schilling wrote a letter the Davis Enterprise depicting a scene where four Davis police officers “were…dragging a 14-year-old girl to the airport because Yolo County Superior Court Judge Kathy White and the DA’s Office had ordered her forced emigration to Washington, even though the decision was under appeal.”

At the time, he questioned the use of police resources and the show of force, writing, “The two-day drama did answer the question of how many Davis PD officers, judges and attorneys it takes to screw up a 14-year-old girl – at least a dozen.”

District Attorney Declines to File Charges in Glacier Apts Tasering Incident

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 21, 201226 comments

The Yolo County District Attorney’s office declined to file charges against UC Davis students Jerome Wren and Tatiana Bush, who were arrested for allegedly repeatedly resisting arrest after police responded to a call of a disturbance on May 23 at the Glacier Point Apartments in West Davis.

Ms. Bush, a recent UC Davis graduate who served as a member on Cruz Reynoso’s Task Force looking into the pepper spraying, believes that she and Mr. Wren are the victims of police brutality.

Commentary: Prosecutors Increasingly Reluctant to Use Death Penalty

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 20, 20129 comments

A series of reports have shown that the number of death sentences in California have been declining, with only ten such sentences handed down in 2011.

A story in the Oakland Tribune tracks the decisions of District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, who has not sought the death penalty in any cases since she took that position back in 2010.

Former District Attorney Speaks Against Death Penalty

By uptownstudiosAugust 16, 201215 comments

by Gil Garcetti

My office sought the death penalty in dozens of cases when I was the Los Angeles County district attorney for eight years, and chief deputy district attorney for four. The cases had horrific and compelling facts; I had no problem seeking death sentences. But though I never was squeamish, I now fully support Proposition 34 to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole. Here’s why.

California’s death penalty is broken beyond repair, hideously expensive, and inevitably carries the risk of executing an innocent person. The hundreds of millions of dollars we throw away on this broken system would be much better spent on solving and preventing crime and investing in our kids’ schools.

Extreme Sentencing

By uptownstudiosAugust 15, 201225 comments

By Rachel Myers

Snatching a purse off the arm of an elderly woman is one of the nastier offenses I can think of – the kind of thing that might make you shake your head and say to yourself “I hope whoever did that gets what’s coming to him.” And then you think for a second about just what he ought to have coming to him: community service, maybe – or even a night in jail. Stealing from an old lady is pretty mean, after all, and you’d want whoever did it to learn a lesson.

I guess that’s what the state of Texas was thinking when it sentenced Willie James Sauls last week for that very crime. Except in this case, apparently the lesson Texas wants us all to learn is “we don’t believe in rehabilitation” – for the crime of stealing a purse, Sauls was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The prosecutors in the case justified the long sentence by pointing out that Sauls has prior convictions and that he “already had chances to address the issues with his behavior.” And with that, they decided this purse snatcher should be locked in prison until he’s 82.

Sunday Commentary: Obsession? A Look Behind the Numbers of Vanguard Coverage of DA Reisig

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 12, 201267 comments

It has become a noteworthy phenomenon in and of itself. Every time we run a story critical of Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, a handful of people defend the DA, not on the merits but by attacking the messenger, in this case the Vanguard.

In recent columns we have one reader deploring the Vanguard‘s obsession: “Please get help for your sick obsession about the district attorney,” they write. Another, “This was a nonstory that highlights the Vanguard’s bitter animosity toward the local DA.”

250 Protest Against Wrongful Convictions Mark Third Year Anniversary of Ajay Dev’s 378 Year Sentence

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 9, 201212 comments

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.

Sac News and Review Column Smokes Reisig Over Death Penalty Op-Ed’s Plagiarism

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 9, 201218 comments

Last week the Vanguard noted that Jeff Reisig had lifted sections of his death penalty column from DA Jan Scully’s April Sacramento Bee column.

The Vanguard was not the only one complaining, as Deputy Public Defender Richard Van Zandt wrote: “Reisig goes one step further by extensively plagiarizing Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully.”

Commentary: Daily Democrat Skews the News

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 7, 201212 comments

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.

Daily Democrat’s Endorsement of Prop 34 and Deputy Public Defender’s Response to Reisig Send Strong Message on Death Penalty

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 6, 201222 comments

When District Attorney Jeff Reisig submitted his op-ed in support of the Death Penalty, he probably had no idea the response it would trigger. Oh sure, the Vanguard‘s response was a given. But unlike his string of unanswered press releases, many of which have distorted the facts of the case and even the jury’s verdicts and were reprinted verbatim without response, the op-ed generated considerable response.

First, Yolo County’s Public Defender, then two letters to the editor from citizens, then a brief commentary by Cosmo Garvin in the Sacramento News and Review. This weekend we saw and pointed out commentary from Deputy Public Defender Richard Van Zandt and an editorial from the Woodland Daily Democrat, which does not mention the Reisig piece, but comes out decidedly against the death penalty.

Guest Commentary: Reisig’s Death Penalty Piece Misses the Mark

By uptownstudiosAugust 4, 201225 comments

by Richard Van Zandt

When Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s hand-picked judicial candidate, Clinton aka ‘Clint’ Parish, sent out a toxic mailer to Yolo County residents a few weeks before the June primary, it took less than a day for Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto to withdraw his endorsement of Parish. The mailer was a blatantly dishonest series of charges against Judge Dan Maguire, whom Parish was challenging.

In contrast to Sheriff Prieto, Mr. Reisig waited until the Bee issued an “anti-endorsement” before withdrawing his own. Reisig was at the top of Parish’s endorsement list, and was one of Parish’s first and biggest financial supporters.

Wrongful Convictions and Jury Findings on the Eve of Another Anniversary of Ajay Dev’s Conviction

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 3, 201211 comments

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.

Commentary: What to Make of Reisig’s Op-Ed

By David M. GreenwaldAugust 2, 201228 comments

The Vanguard published an afternoon piece on Wednesday showing that Jeff Reisig had not originally written large segments of his op-ed that was released the previous week in the Woodland Daily Democrat.

While many readers drew inferences from the article, the article itself only reported what we knew at the time. It did not make accusations.

Progressives Debate Prop 34 – Show their Divisions

By uptownstudiosAugust 2, 20126 comments

by Dick Price –

Sunday, on the final day of its three-day executive board meeting held in Anaheim, the California Democratic Party overwhelmingly endorsed Prop 34 — the November ballot initiative that would commute all the state’s death sentences to life imprisonment without possibility of parole (LWOP).

Saturday night, though, a lively five-person panel session organized by the party’s Progressive Caucus paired Prop 34 proponents with prisoner rights advocates to debate whether the Prop 34 remedy might be worse than the ailment.