Yolo County

Sikh Culture Expert Testifies

By Charmayne Schmitz

Kevin McCarty, a UCD student, is accused of a hate crime resulting from an altercation with another student at a Davis bar in May, 2012. During a bar fight, he knocked off the turban of a man identified as a Sikh. On Thursday, March 7, an expert was brought in by the prosecution to answer questions about the Sikh religion.

Ashveer Pal Singh is a doctoral student at Stanford and has dedicated himself to studying his own Sikh heritage.  His field studies are carried out in the Punjab region of India, which is 60% Sikh.

by Antoinnette Borbon

The state’s case against Kevin McCarty slowly took a different turn Thursday afternoon as three of the defendants took the stand to tell their account of what happened on the night of May 18, 2012.

First to take the stand this afternoon was Sgt. Ilya Bezloglov of the Davis Police Department. He testified to being called out to the downtown bar, Tres Hermanas, because of an altercation.

by Antoinnette Borbon

On Wednesday the state began the first day of a presumed two-day trial of a young defendant accused of assault and a hate crime. The alleged victim testified, as the state’s first witness, in front of a jury in Judge David Rosenberg’s courtroom.

He told the court that he and the defendant were at a local bar in downtown Davis, Tres Hermanas, when the defendant came past him and uttered racist remarks and hit his turban off of his head. He testified he was extremely angry and felt the defendant had intentions of striking him, so he began hitting the defendant first, in what he called a self-defense mechanism.  Once the two became involved in the altercation, bouncers were summoned to break it up. But no blood or bruises were shown on either the defendant or the alleged victim.

By Jeff Adachi

A group of state judges wants to persuade the public to cash in one of our fundamental rights: trial by a jury of our peers.

The idea, floated by the California Judges Association as a cost-saving measure, requires passing a state constitutional amendment to shrink juries in misdemeanor criminal cases from 12 to eight members. Paring down juries is a dangerous bargain.

By Vanguard Court Watch Interns

On Monday, March 4, an arraignment for the James Mings case was held in Department 9.

In the fall of 2011, Mr. Mings turned himself in following the death of Kevin Seery in Davis, and Mr. Mings was subsequently charged with first degree murder. Jury selection for Mr. Mings’ trial was interrupted last week due to Deputy DA Martha Holzapfel’s unexpected illness.

By Vanguard Court Watch Interns

The trial of James Mings ground to a halt on Wednesday when Deputy DA Martha Holzapfel fell ill, causing Judge Richardson to send the jury home.

When the trial resumed on Thursday morning, Ms. Holzapfel was still ill.  Her supervisor, Deputy DA Rob Gorman was supposed to take her place and select the jury.

Last November, California voters overwhelmingly adopted Prop 36, known as the “Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012.”  Under the new law, which created PC 1170.126, those sentenced to 25 years to life for a non-violent third strike can be resentenced.

On February 15, 2013, Judge Timothy Fall re-sentenced Eliaser Aguilar, who has been in prison since 1999 on a single count of violation of section 11377(a) of the California Health and Safety code for possession of a controlled substance.

by Bessie Samson and Antoinnette Borbon

Today began the first day of paneling a jury for the state’s case against defendant Ming. Ming has been indicted on a charge of first degree murder of a Davis resident, that happened at the College Square apartments on J St back in October 1, 2011.  Ming claims he knew the victim briefly, but the victim was suffering with several illnesses and had asked him to end his suffering.

The victim, Kevin Seery, 42, was reportedly suffering from a number of ailments which included diabetes, chronic pancreatitis, chronic hepatitis and pneumonia at the time of his death.  He stood at 6-1 but weighed just 133 pounds.

The notion of cash for convictions is the idea that fiscal incentives might drive the decisions made by prosecutors as to which cases to pursue.  In the age of declining budgets, prosecutors increasingly are forced to rely on external grants which contain the incentive to arrest, prosecute and convict more people in the targeted category.

That may sound benign, but when the need for funding trumps the need to protect the community or ensure that justice is done from the perspective of the community, the victim and the defendant, we have a potential problem.

By Vanguard Court Watch Interns

The afternoon session of Department 1 on Friday, February 22 included a preliminary hearing regarding the Wayne Cottle case. Mr. Cottle, defended by Mr. Ryan Friedman, was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine. Deputy District Attorney Mr. Jay Linden called the first and only witness, Officer Josh Helton of the Davis Police Department.

On October 6 of last year, 911 operators provided Officer Helton with the phone number of Ms. Pratt, the defendant’s girlfriend, who believed that he was suicidal and possibly in possession of drugs and/or a firearm. Specifically, she said that he had a methamphetamine and Adderall problem, and it was likely that he was using.

California leads the nation in wrongful convictions, according to a 2012 study, but it trails many states, particularly New Jersey, in safeguards and best practices aimed at reducing critical areas where wrongful convictions are likely to occur.

For instance, in 2011 the New Jersey Supreme Court made a ruling that was aimed at resolving what they called the “troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications.”  A year later, for the first time, the New Jersey courts are having judges instruct jurors in order to improve their evaluation of eyewitness identification.

by Antoinnette Borbon

Today we heard testimony in the state’s case against defendant Kyle Hall.  Hall is charged with one count of false imprisonment and another count of attempted kidnapping.

On November 25th, 2012, the alleged victim and her boyfriend were at the Raley’s shopping center in Woodland.

Clinton Parish showed appallingly poor judgment last year in authorizing attacks against incumbent Judge Dan Maguire.  Even if those attacks had been accurate, it is questionable for one to play that sort of politics in a judicial race that is supposed to be about experience and neutrality, not politics.

How easily the charges were systematically dismantled under the least amount of inquiry, however, casts the situation in a very different light.  It calls into question Mr. Parish’s ability not only to be a judge, but also to be a prosecuting attorney.  After all, if you cast baseless charges against your political opponent, why would you not cast the same charges against a poor, defenseless defendant?

by Stephanie Yang

On Friday, February 15, 2013, John Lemus and German Quezada were scheduled for a hearing for substance offense and a gang-related enhancement. They are represented by Mr. Cobb and Mrs. Sequeira.

Opening statements from DDA Robin Johnson said that there is enough qualifying evidence to stipulate that the incident that occurred on December 2012 is a gang-related offense. She called the first witness, Ramón Cuellar, to the stand.

The Vanguard Court Watch has been in Judge Stephen Mock’s courtroom many times since 2010.  Our view of him is that he is a relatively fair judge, though he tends to lean towards the prosecution, and he has a firm grasp of the law.

We firmly believe that most people who go before Judge Mock get a reasonably fair trial.  There are exceptions, of course, but by far the most egregious was the Michael Artz trial.

By Alexandra Rose

On the morning of Wednesday February 13, 2013 in Department 6 of the Yolo County Superior Court, the judge and jury were seated and ready to hear the opening statements in the case of the People of the State of California versus Gurmej Singh.

Charged with six counts of writing worthless checks, dating back to several dates in April of 2009, Gurmej Singh is represented by his defense attorney, Lisa Lance.