Yolo County

Yolo County officials have for several years now bragged about an improved efficiency that has allowed the number of cases to the be handled to more than double with 55 trials occurring in 2005 and 121 in 2008.  The number of trials remained high, with 121 again in 2009 and a slight drop to 112 in 2010.

As the verdicts were read, one by one, defendant by defendant, a wave of relief swept over the Niazi brothers and Qumar Ashraf for the first time in seven years.

According to the report, the Coroner’s Office will review the work in five homicide cases handled by the doctor.

Mr. Wilson appealed the verdict that would have sent him to prison for a minimum of 28 years “contending, among other things, that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress a knife (the alleged dirk or dagger) seized from his back pocket during a pat down search initiated after a police officer was dispatched to a public park to investigate “five subjects [possibly] smoking H and S [sic] in the men’s restroom.”

When the trial began, several weeks ago, there were four defendants, facing attempted murder charges among numerous counts of assault.  Now, the attempted murder charge long gone, the defendants down to three, and numerous charges dismissed due to lack of evidence, the picture is clearer but still murky.

According to court testimony, when the store security subdued him by taking him to the ground, the perpetrator indicated that race was the motivation behind his attack on the Latina female whom he had attacked with a hammer.

Mr. Benson, 25, was arrested on January 21 after his family called the police, fearing he was suicidal.  The incident, according to police sources, escalated from there and Mr. Benson was Tasered and finally taken into custody, but not before he allegedly made terrorists threats to police while carrying an assault rifle, shotgun and more than 300 rounds of ammunition in his truck.

We have been critical in the past and will be in the future of Sheriff Ed Prieto, but the Sheriff deserves praise for his handling of the coroner’s office and the firing of forensic pathologist Thomas Gill who worked for the Forensic Medical Group (FMG), a private company the county contracts with for doing autopsies.

What we know for sure is that last Sunday, an Elk Grove police officer shot a handcuffed man in the back seat of his police vehicle.  Initially, the Elk Grove Police Department had provided no explanation as to why the officer fired his rifle at the suspect, which ended up grazing the 32-year-old man in the face.

Most of the time judges are restrained, but occasionally you see in them glimpses of their true spirit.  It was thus as the first of the closing statements were wrapping up in the never-ending Niazi trial that we got just such a glimpse into Judge Stephen Mock.

The Vanguard spoke on Wednesday with Yolo County’s Chief Deputy Coroner Robert LaBrash, who downplayed any concerns that there were problems with Yolo County autopsies, arguing that any autopsy performed by Dr. Thomas Gill would have been overseen by his office and had his findings signed off upon.

According to their report, Dr. Thomas Gill had “been forced out of a teaching position at an Oregon university, and then fired for inaccurate findings and alcohol abuse by the coroner in Indianapolis.”  Moreover, he had been “demoted for poor performance as a fellow for the Los Angeles County Coroner, [and] he resurfaced at a private autopsy company in Northern California.”

Yolo County Superior Court had granted the UC Regents’ summary judgment motion, finding that Mr. Silen had not established that the promotional decision was motivated by discriminatory animus.

Ms. Duffy, who admitted she was high on meth, had been facing charges of kidnapping, child abduction and resisting arrest.

We have all wondered what would have happened had the incident involving the Galvan Brothers been filmed.  We can see the permanent life-altering damage on Ernesto Galvan’s face, but we do not know how it got there and probably never will.  In the coming months and years, a civil court will have to weigh out whether the police exceeded their authority and violated the rights of Mr. Galvan.  Had a video camera been present, we might have had the DA pursue the police rather than the victims in this case.