Court Watch

A behind-the-scenes deal was apparently reached between the Public Defender’s Office and the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.  The deal, which can be largely viewed as a victory for the defense, made the pruno charge against Jesus Arias go away and puts Mr.Arias on schedule to receive probation rather than prison time for his August convictions of possessing a stolen weapon and violating probation, each with a gang enhancement.

Deputy DA Ryan Couzens had pushed for a deal which would involve prison time in exchange for dropping the pruno charges. Pruno, as explained previously by the Vanguard, is the alcoholic beverage made in prisons from fruits and other ingredients. Deputy Public Defender Dan Hutchinson filed a motion charging the DA with vindictive prosecution.

Two weeks ago we had an article on the problematic nature of expert testimony by the gang expert in the case of Michael Romero.  For the last few weeks we have seen the testimony of the plaintiff’s gang experts in the Gang Injunction Trial. 

First, Joe Villanueva took the stand as an expert.  Detective Villanueva currently works on the City of Fairfield gang unit, but up until the end of 2007 headed the Yolo County Gang Unit.

The Vanguard has previously reported on the DA’s Cash for Convictions Program, and now for the first time we may see an example of such a program at work.  We have covered at length the Michael Artz trial, in which the defendant was accused primarily of forced oral copulation with a younger classmate, but acquitted of that charge.  He was, however, convicted of sexual contact with a minor and having a conversation with that minor about sexual contact.

The Vanguard has now learned that prosecutor Tiffany Susz is designated as the Statutory Rape Grant Prosecutor, and 30% of her salary comes in part from a Vertical Prosecution Block Grant. This supplies the DA’s Office overall with $480,000 and funds portions of four prosecutors including Ms. Susz, and also Ryan Couzens (40%), Robert Gorman (45%) and Robin Johnson (45%). Data from the DA’s grant application illustrates this.

The Gang Injunction Trial continued on Monday with a new expert witness, Jason Winger, taking over after last week’s witness Joe Villanueva. Sgt. Winger now heads up the Community Response Team, a team of officers monitoring crime in the community and ineracting with the community.

One of the questions that continue to plague us as we observe this case is how accurate the evidence may be.  With few exceptions, the prosecution has relied upon the testimony of officers, talking about various criminal incidents.  The problem is that in a criminal trial, the defense is able to cross-examine witnesses and cast doubt on the claims of law enforcement.

A Monday release from the Governor’s Office states, “Governor Schwarzenegger announced today the appointment of Daniel P. Maguire to a judgeship in the Yolo Superior Court.  This appointment fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Thomas E. Warriner.” 

It continues, “Since 2005, Mr. Maguire worked as a deputy legal affairs secretary in the Governor’s Office.  He earned a Juris Doctorate degree from Harvard University Law School after completing his undergraduate work at Stanford University.  He was admitted to The State Bar of California in December, 1997.”

Last week the Vanguard reported that the defense in the Michael Artz trial was moving to disqualify Judge Mock, based on his purported non-disclosure of his relationship to retired Chief Deputy DA Ann Hurd – who was in that position at the time this case was initiated.

According to court filings by Defense Attorney Kathryn Druliner, she was seeking to disqualify Judge Mock based on section 170.1 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Judge Paul Richardson denied the motion of Marco Topete, acting as his pro per counsel, a motion to continue the jury trial for an additional six months.  In so doing, he argued that the burden for a continuance was on the moving party to extend the trial and that in his motion Mr. Topete had not shown good cause.

Specifically, he failed to provide a timeline of how much time he would need, he failed to identify specific investigations that were needed and the time it would take to complete these investigations, and failed to identify expert witnesses that would be retained and the work they would need to perform in preparation for the trial.

A Yolo County jury found a Sacramento man guilty in the 2009 beating of a West Sacramento man.  On Wednesday, the jury reached a verdict, convicting Michael Romero of attempted murder along with gang enhancements for a 2009 attack that occurred in West Sacramento.

According to the DA’s press release issued on Thursday, “The forty-seven-year-old victim was attacked by Romero and another gang member in the early morning hours of January 21, 2009. A Good Samaritan who was driving by the attack testified that the victim was being savagely beaten on the ground by the two men. He courageously turned his truck around and interrupted the attack. The beating left the victim comatose in the street. As a result of the attack, the victim suffered permanent physical injuries and mental disabilities.”

It has been more than a month since Davis resident Michael Artz was acquitted of the most serious charge he had faced, stemming from a couple incidents that occurred in high school in which he was alleged to have forced a younger classmate to orally copulate him.  A Yolo County jury acquitted him of that charge, but found him guilty of two lesser charges, having sexual contact with a minor and discussing with the minor his intentions to have future sexual contact.

The case was notable, not only for the acquittal, but for the misleading press release sent out by the DA’s Office that seemed to imply his guilt, both of the main charge as well as of charges that were not even filed against him.

When the District Attorney’s Office was able to gain a preliminary gang injunction, it was based in large part upon declarations from West Sacramento Police Officers.  One of the key officers was the former head of the gang unit in West Sacramento, Joe Villanueva, who left the department at the end of 2007 to go to the DA’s Office and now currently works for the City of Fairfield as a Police Officer and Detective for the Gang Unit.

Last week, Detective Villanueva, considered an expert on gangs, testified.  Deputy DA Ryan Couzens created a PowerPoint in which each defendant in the gang injunction case had his own page, and Detective Villanueva offered his “expert” opinion that each of them were gang members and represented a public nuisance to the City of West Sacramento and the residents of the safety zone.

For those who missed it, Jake Dorsey’s swan song last week at the Daily Democrat was a hit.  He managed to, at the same time, both praise and criticize the Vanguard and Jeff Reisig.

The biggest news perhaps was buried in the middle, in which Mr. Dorsey wrote, “Here’s what I don’t understand: Reisig and the county are said to be discussing taking some kind of action against Greenwald.”

While taking a break from watching the West Sacramento Gang Injunction case, I walked into the trial of Michael Romero, who is on trial accused of severely beating his victim in an incident that stemmed apparently from a robbery for a pack of cigarettes.  His co-defendant, Antonio Delgado, has already been convicted and sentenced to nearly 25 months in prison.

Mr. Romero may well be a gang member and may well have committed this rather heinous crime that has left his victim with permanent injuries and scars.  However, watching the gang expert testify yesterday was revealing, in a lot of ways, about what is wrong in general about expert testimony.

A lengthy Yolo County murder trial ended on Friday morning, with seven jurors voting to acquit and five to convict Jesus Solis, who stood accused of shooting and killing an individual named Jesus Cortez Heredia last September outside Ortega’s West, a bar in West Sacramento.  Another individual standing beside Heredia at the time of the shooting was also hit by the flurry of bullets, following a fight in the parking lot at closing time.

According to all witnesses who testified, it was at closing time at the popular bar on a Saturday night in September of 2009 when a fight broke out in the parking lot between two groups of drunk people.  It started when Martin Ventura confronted Heredia after Heredia had approached and made advances to Martin’s wife Rosie, who had been waiting beside a taco truck.  The two began fighting and Heredia beat up Martin.  Security broke up the fight and the parties went to their cars.  Martin and his group got into their red Ford Expedition.  That vehicle remained stationary for a minute, after which it drove towards the exit.  Heredia taunted and shouted out to the vehicle, and removed his shirt with his arms raised.  This act may have cost him his life because the vehicle stopped on the road outside the parking lot, reversed towards Heredia and shots were fired from within it towards Heredia.  Mr Heredia was hit in his torso and neck, and died at the scene.

The defense of Marco Topete, accused of the 2008 shooting of Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Diaz, suffered another blow when the motion to disqualify Judge Paul Richardson was denied Friday by Judge Terrence R. Van Oss.

Judge Terrence R. Van Oss, a San Joaquin County Judge, was assigned the case last month when Marco Topete, who is representing himself pro per, alleged that a meeting between Judge Richardson with other parties of the case outside of his presence was improper.

Deputy Public Defender Dan Hutchinson has filed a motion in Yolo County Court asking for a dismissal of additional charges against Jesus Arias on grounds that Deputy DA Ryan Couzens was engaged in malicious prosecution for attempting to leverage pruno (prison wine) possession charges into prison time.

Writes Deputy PD Hutchinson, “The overwhelming objective evidence proves that the Yolo County District Attorney’s prosecution of defendant in the above action is a vindictive prosecution motivated by a desire to punish defendant for exercising his constitutional right to a jury trial…”

It was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who issued a reprieve to Albert Greenwood Brown for a day, to resolve conflicting legal deadlines.

The state’s 1st District Court of Appeal last week overturned a judge’s order that had halted lethal-injection executions, but that order will not take effect until Thursday, which gives defense attorneys time to appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.

In March of 2010, District Attorney Jeff Reisig made the startling announcement that nearly a third of the DA’s Office is funded by grants designated for investigating and prosecuting different areas of crime.

In 2008-09, the entire criminal prosecution budget for the Yolo County’s DA’s Office was 9.37 million dollars.  In 2009, Yolo County received 6.27 million dollars in grants for sexual assault and gang suppression.  That money does not exclusively go to the DA’s Office, but is shared by the Sheriff’s Department and three police agencies.

For the first time in four years California is likely to execute an inmate on death row, as the final hurdles were cleared Friday when U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel refused to block the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown. He has been on death row since 1980.

Judge Fogel, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench, expressed concern about the limited time in which he had to evaluate the state’s revised execution procedures. He gave the condemned inmate the choice of being put to death by a single injection, as opposed to the state’s three-drug method.

In March 2008, a Bench-Bar-Media committee was formed by California Chief Justice Ronald M. George,  in order to foster improved understanding and working relationships among California judges, lawyers, and journalists.

Chaired by Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno of the Supreme Court of California, the committee includes appellate court justices, superior court judges, attorneys specializing in the First Amendment, a prosecutor, a criminal defense attorney, journalists, an academic, a superior court executive officer and a superior court public information officer (PIO).

The Yolo County Superior Court announced yesterday a new program that will encourage citizen participation on juries, increasing the pool of potential jurors jurors by contacting those residents who have failed to respond to their jury summons and encouraging them to fulfill their obligations as citizens.

We have been observing juries now since January, and one of the huge features of the Yolo County Court system is that largely non-white defendants’ cases are heard by white juries.  Perhaps one of the problems is that a large percentage of citizens fail to appear for jury service.