Yolo County

Kamala Harris is arguing that her office must first review the names and only after going to court for permission would her office alert defense attorneys to the officers’ problems.

Does that mean that defends are not being well-represented?  Tracie Olson, the County’s Public Defender, says no, but at the same time the resource gap between the District Attorney’s Office and public defense is perhaps too large to ignore.

“Navarro fue Sureño. Fue drogado. Tuvo un cuchillo. Sacó el cuchillo ante un agente de la policía. Otra vez, todos hechos.”

“Navarro was a Sureño. He was high. He had a knife. He pulled the knife on an officer. Again, all facts.”

Nevertheless, the Yolo County DA’s office, apparently overruling the judgment of Deputy District Attorney James Walker, who was assigned to this case, is pursuing this as a three strikes case and seeking to put Mr. Poirier in prison for life.

The settlement was announced on Monday by the district attorneys from Yolo, Sacramento, Placer, San Joaquin, Amador, and Monterey counties.  Yolo County DA’s office will receive $100,000 as part of the settlement.

After a potluck meal and election of new Yolo board members for 2010-11, special guest Abdi Soltani, Executive Director of NorCalACLU will provide a brief update of current ACLU activities, followed by Merin’s presentation.

A year ago there were two hundred people that showed up to march in solidarity, this time if it was a quarter of that, they were lucky.  But this is a process that cannot be marked by numbers alone, it has to be marked by passion, compassion, and a bit of fortitude.

On April 15, the Vanguard ran a story that UC Davis

The Vanguard has learned in that in a tentative ruling, the judge has awarded UC Davis 20,756.25 dollars for attorney fees and 407.39 dollars in costs for a total of 21,163.64 dollars.  We argued two weeks ago that this represented an abuse of anti-SLAPP legislation and the extension of SLAPP to include civil rights cases that it was never intended to cover.

According to the Yolo County Elections office the 2006 battle between Deputy District Attorney’s Jeff Reisig and Pat Lenzi was the first of its kind in Yolo County since 1990.  Dave Henderson was elected five times to office, was unopposed in 1994, 1998, and 2002, and drew opponents in his first two elections in 1986 and 1990.  In other words, only one of the last five DA elections has been contested.

Meanwhile, we had more witnesses testify last weekend, depicting the Gutierrez shooting.  One of the witnesses apparently saw the badge of a Sheriff’s Deputy, but never saw a knife in Mr. Gutierrez’s hand.  The investigator believes there is another witness, who thus far has refused to come forward out of some sort of professed fear, that he believes actually saw the shooting.

Requests for a disclosure of the full investigation have resulted in both claims of privilege and claims that it is an ongoing investigation.  When the DA wants to release information from ongoing investigations they do so.  They released a statement of probable cause and the coroner’s report within a week of the shooting.  Why?  Because they believe it showed justification from the shooting.

That 30 days had extended to nearly two months, but finally in a letter dated April 19, 2010, the Sheriff’s Department released their findings.  They had three findings that were unfounded including Standards of Conduct, Display and Handling of a firearm, and DIsplay and Discharge of Firearm.

Meanwhile a toxologist told the Justice Reynoso that he needed to actually examine the blood  in order to make any definitive determinations about Luis Gutierrez’ level of intoxication.  Thus he did not come forward as a witness Sunday . The Justice indicated that while requests have been made for evidence, the County has informed them that the DA has partially re-opened the investigation.