Yolo County

Maria Pastor was taking her friend to a court hearing in Department 9, which is the arraignment court across Third Street from the main court building in Woodland.  As she went through security, the Deputy at the screening line, Sgt. Batista noticed something suspicious in a purse going through the scanning machine.  He saw something that looked like a smoking pipe.  He found a pipe and a bag of white powder that turned out to test positive for presumptive meth.

Brie Homes was a 20-year-old senior who was charged with battery on UC Davis Police Captain Joyce Souza and resisting arrest.  After deliberating Thursday afternoon, Friday, and Monday morning, the jury deadlocked on both counts.  The final poll had a 10-2 vote for acquittal on the battery charge with a full 6-6 deadlock on the resisting arrest charge.

She argued that she would continue to allow the plaintiffs leeway to “connect the dots” and show the relevance of the testimony in establishing that an individual was in fact a member of the Broderick Boys Criminal Street gang.

According to his mother, Janice Jackson, he did not know anything about Davis.  As he was trying to figure out how to get out of Davis, he went to a store to buy a can of beer.  Mr. Carter suffers from a mental disorder and he often carries all of his items on him.  That includes a pair of clippers and a knife that he used to adjust the clippers.  It is an old knife, worn down and dulled from the use, but it was in his pocket.

The defense wanted to introduce evidence to the jury that the defendant in this case was suffering from a tick-borne ailment, similar to Lyme’s disease, which caused an infection and pressure on his brain.  In addition, an MRI revealed a cyst in the frontal portion of his brain.

Prosecutors claim their experts say those fingerprints could have only have been left by the driver of the vehicle.  If accurate, that would put Mr. Solis in the driver’s seat and lend credence to prosecution’s claims that he fired the shots that killed the victim in this case. However, the case is tricky to begin with and the other suspects have fled to Mexico.

Mr. Magobet had the motive, he had the dispute with Abel Trevino over the girl, he had the explosive temper, he was the one who went on the run after the incident while Mr. Ornales went home to his wife, and the list goes on.

That body language should have been a signal, but when the judge announced that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked on what should have been the most difficult charge, it seemed everything was going according to form.  Then the clerk read the jury’s verdict, and when the first charge came back guilty there was stunned silence. The family of the convicted silently wept.

On June 16, 2007 and again three days later, James Davis, a 46-year-old wrote two checks to Nugget Market that were returned for insufficient funds.  Mr. Davis says in his declaration that he was down on his luck and trying to buy food and necessities for his family.

There are a lot of side issues still to be worked out.  A big issue that needs to be resolved and will be is that of allowing hearsay testimony about unnamed defendants.  I will also discuss in this column, the prosecution’s game plan thus far, and finally a bit commentary regarding a line of questioning on Tuesday pertaining to gang terms and slogans.

We will discuss this issue more fully towards the end of this article and likely into the future as it gets really to the heart of the procedural matters and the rights of individuals.

The plaintiff’s counsel was overheard at one point saying you always have a choice about starting strong or ending strong, certainly as the record will show, Mr. Cedillo who has been married for the last four years to a woman that he has known for 12 years (he is 28).  He has two children.  He has held stable employment installing insulation first for F. Rogers in West Sacramento and then PCI in Sacramento.