Yolo County

It was supposed to be a press conference and rally that asked District Attorney Jeff Reisig to drop the charges against Ernesto and Fermin Galvan.  However, late Tuesday afternoon the District Attorney’s Office announced that there would not be a fourth trial against the brothers, accused of resisting arrest and battery against several West Sacramento police officers in the early morning hours of June 14, 2005.

Instead, the group of twenty activists were seeking answers and a restoration of trust as they gathered on a cold morning in front of West Sacramento City Hall.

After five years and three trials it is finally over for Ernesto and Fermin Galvan.  They paid a high price, but will now be able to resume their lives without the criminal charges hanging over them from the 2005 incident that has left Ernesto Galvan with permanently disfiguring and brain-damaging injuries.

In a statement released from the DA’s Office late on Tuesday afternoon, the Chief Deputy District Attorney backed away from a previous statement that indicated that the DA’s Office would seek a fourth trial.

Attorney Anthony Palik, representing Ernesto Galvan, the brother most seriously injured and facing the most serious charges including felony assault on a police officer and resisting arrest, is seeking dismissal of the case that would have to be brought to trial for what may be an unprecedented fourth time.

His brother, Fermin Galvan, was acquitted on a charge of resisting arrest, but the jury hung 11-1 for acquittal on the second charge of allegedly delaying Officer Schlie as he attempted to  apprehend Ernesto Galvan.

With hundreds of worthy choices for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to choose to commute their sentence or to outright pardon, Gov. Schwarzenegger instead commuted the sentence of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, Esteban Nuñez, who had pled guilty to participating in the killing of a college student.

Mr. Nuñez was sentenced to 16 years in prison for aiding and abetting the stabbing death of a college student near San Diego State.  His sentence was reduced to seven years by the Governor.

In January the Vanguard launched a project to monitor court cases in the Yolo County court system.  The purpose of this program was to look into problematic cases, monitor them through the court system, and report about any abuses, overcharging, and other problems in the system.

By analyzing individual cases, we hoped to be able to determine, on a more systematic basis, the problems facing the Yolo Judicial system.  While this report does not represent a comprehensive review of the court system or the DA’s Office, it does provide some insight into problems that we face.

While the Gang Injunction trial wrapped up and we eagerly await Judge Kathleen White’s decision expected in May, we have further evidence that despite claims to the contrary, any gang problems in Yolo County hardly register as a blip on the radar of statewide gang concerns.

The DA’s Office argued in their closing that the Broderick Boys gang represented a clear nuisance to the West Sacramento community to the extent that they needed additional remedies not already available under the law.

In a time of financial crisis, when all government agencies are crying poverty, in a lot of ways Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig is operating as though it were business as usual.  Yolo Judicial Watch has now been covering the courts for about a year, and some of our findings are appalling.

DA Reisig and his staff may be able to write off the efforts of the Vanguard, but some of his antics have caught the Sacramento press’s attention.  Two of his worst offending cases – as in waste of taxpayer money – made top ten lists for the year 2010 in both the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento News and Review.

Under the best of conditions it is difficult to defend oneself, particularly in a capital murder case.  But the system conspired to make the task impossible for Marco Topete, accused of the 2008 killing of Deputy Sheriff Tony Diaz. 

Faced with inadequate time to research the case, lack of hours in the law library, lack of privacy and protection for legal product, Mr. Topete finally had enough last week and reluctantly took back the two attorneys he had dismissed just three months ago.

What we do know suggests something very wrong happened that night, and the people most responsible for that were not the defendants who may have to stand trial in two months for a fourth time, but rather the people that we entrust to protect us and keep us safe – police officers.  Unfortunately the DA’s Office is more concerned with protecting the financial interests of West Sacramento than they are in seeing that justice is done.  The statute of limitations has long since run on a state charge of felony assault.  And likewise a federal civil rights charge, for which the statute is five years, and which ended six months ago.

Last year, California’s judiciary adopted new transparency rules that allowed access to spending records on personnel, including salaries.

The Contra Costa Times have obtained court information that includes  includes all California judges and employees of appellate courts, the supreme court and the administrative office of the courts, and totals more than $1 billion in salaries for 15,377 employees.

After nearly five months of on again-off again testimony and hearings, the Gang Injunction trial has finally wrapped up as the plaintiffs presented their closing statement on Wednesday. The defense deferred theirs, and will submit written arguments only.

The plaintiff’s case rested on combining a number of crimes that seemed at times to be almost random and scattered throughout the safety zone, involving individuals that were said by police officials to be gang members.

Last week a Yolo County jury acquitted Fermin Galvan on one charge and nearly a second.  They also hung on the four charges against Ernesto Galvan, who in 2005 was beaten nearly to death by Officers Schlie and Farrington of the West Sacramento Police Department.

On Monday, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office stunned many legal observers in pursuing a fourth trial in the case that has seen two hung juries in the 2010 calendar year alone.

On Monday, the Vanguard presented the Innocence Project’s report that flagged over 700 cases statewide.  On October 5, 2010, the Northern California Innocence Project came out with a report, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997–2009,” that uncovered over 700 cases in which courts had found prosecutorial misconduct during an 11-year period.  Of all of those cases, only six prosecutors were disciplined.

The misconduct covered in the report ranged from failing to turn over evidence to presenting false evidence in court.  As a response to their research, the Northern California Innocence Project is calling for legal reforms requiring courts to report all findings of misconduct to the State Bar, which they currently are not required to do.  When a court decides the misconduct was harmless, those cases often go unreported.