CDCR NEWS
Nashelly Chavez, Sacramento Bee
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is changing how inmates are housed, saying current separations between general population inmates and those held in sensitive needs yards have been ineffective in eliminating gangs and violence within prison walls.
The agency will instead move toward creating some "non-designated program" facilities, where both groups will be tasked with co-existing. The current system has bred new gangs within the sensitive needs yards, resulting in escalating violence, CDCR Undersecretary of Operations Ralph Diaz said.
“We are going to do behavior-based programs and holding people based on their own behavior," Diaz said.
“These are the individuals that will eventually be returning home," he added.
The transition may not be smooth, however, says Joshua Mason, a south Sacramento resident, gang expert and former inmate within the state's prison system.
Inmates sent to the sensitive needs yards are historically inmates who face threats from the general population for factors like helping prison administration as informants, leaving a gang or being convicted with an unfavorable crime, like child molestation.
The program started more than two decades ago to address escalating violence within the prisons, CDCR Secretary Scott Kernan said.
Over the years, inmates in the general population have thought of those prisoners as "snitches" or lower-tier inmates, according to Mason. Meanwhile, inmates held in the sensitive needs yards have created their own gangs as more inmates were transferred to the special housing units, he said.
“I would be concerned for my loved ones in prison, whether they were in a sensitive needs yard or general population, that they may find themselves, frankly, in an unavoidable situation," Mason said of the reintegration efforts. “To radically throw everything on its head now is pretty crazy."
The system-wide effort to reincorporate the two groups is impacting inmates at the Folsom State Prison, a low-level facility Diaz says the department hopes to establish as a new "non-designated facility." Some family members of inmates there worry that their loved ones could get caught in the crossfire if confrontations between the two groups arise.
North Natomas resident Mary Frances Orduño said she received a worried call from her son's father, who is jailed at the Folsom State Prison, on Tuesday. He told her of a group of 30 protective custody inmates who were moved in with the general population and "immediately walked out and asked to be cuffed," Orduño said.
The guards refused, he told her.
“If you’re in protective custody, you’re there for a reason, and (the other inmates) know it," Orduño said. “They were saying, 'Well it could get ugly.'"
He also mentioned an incident at Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County involving inmates in protective custody, Orduño said
CDCR spokeswoman Vicky Waters confirmed more than a dozen inmates were involved in a fight there on Monday, but said no inmates or staff members were hurt. She could not provide any more details about the who was involved, saying the incident was still under investigation.
CDCR has the largest protective-custody population in the nation, with the group encompassing about 32 percent of all inmates, Waters said. About two years ago, the department's leaders decided to tackle the growing issue and invited former inmates and reentry groups to discuss solutions, Diaz said.
"This is not something that we just did in a vacuum," he said.
Waters added that the non-designated program facilities are intended to increase the number of rehabilitative and vocational programs available to inmates. Prisoners in the special needs yards will undergo a committee review before being referred to a non-designated program facility, she said.
CALIFORNIA PRISONS
Kayla Cash, KSBY
A county grand jury report raised issues about safety at the California's Men's Colony this week.
The prison is separated into a high-security area (the east facility) and a lower-security area (the west facility). The higher-security side is where inmates are locked in cells and generally controlled most of the day.
As required by law, CMC goes through an annual inspection. This year, the grand jury found deficiencies says it's concerned about fire and safety standards in the higher-security area, which has aging buildings.
"The staff and inmates are aware of this hazard and take appropriate precautions," the report said.
However, the grand jury did not make any recommendations on changes that need to be made.
The report also mentioned positive findings, such as adequate incentives for prisoners to participate in programming classes and sessions; sufficient time for programs to be effective prior to prisoner eligibility for release; and a new kitchen is under construction in the west facility.
CORRECTIONS RELATED
Tahoe Daily Tribune
A new partnership between Lake Tahoe Community College and Sierra Conservation Center aims to give inmates a path to a better future after incarceration.
Earlier this month, staff with the LTCC incarcerated student program (ISP) traveled to the minimum and medium custody inmate facility in Jamestown, California to register 55 new students, many of whom are continuing college students, according to LTCC. The program expects to have 100 incarcerated students by fall quarter.
Inmates will have the opportunity to earn an associate in arts degree for transfer in sociology. According to LTCC, this broad-based program will, when complete, give inmates the option to pursue a bachelor's degree as a junior upon release or while incarcerated with a partnering institution in California.
The program exposes students to classes in history, psychology, political science and a number of other courses that can be applied to a wide array of four-year degree programs.
"We're very excited to be working with Sierra Conservation Camp," Shane Reynolds, LTCC's ISP director, said in a press release. "They're very welcoming and open to collaboration, and their line-up of programs and the people who run them are very strong. All of the staff and custody officers we work with there are enthusiastic and supportive."
The Sierra Conservation Center is a parent facility that oversees 20 male inmate camps from central California down to the Mexico border that serve as training facilities for firefighting techniques. Inmates at these facilities are routinely dispatched to help fight wildfires and other emergencies around the state, along with a variety of other community work projects.
The Jamestown facility also provides career and technical education programs in a range of programs intended to help develop meaningful skills and improve inmate hireability after release.
"We are pleased to partner with Lake Tahoe Community College to expand the amount of higher education options available to our inmate population," Hunter Anglea, Sierra Conservation Center warden, said in the release.
The incarcerated student program at LTCC was first approved as a pilot program in 2015. According to the college, the idea was to serve inmates in California's correctional facilities and promote their educational success — a concept that LTCC says is based on a wealth of research showing that inmates who receive education while incarcerated are much less likely to relapse into criminal behavior and return to prison than those who receive no education behind bars.
"There's no doubt a college education can be a huge help to someone caught up in the prison system," said Reynolds. "They're less likely to become repeat offenders. They find meaning in their lives where it might not have existed before. And, an education better prepares them for a life outside of prison, makes them more attractive employees with better skill sets, and all of that in turn helps them to become fully involved community members who are in a position to give back and contribute."
Nearly three years after its launch, LTCC's ISP has grown to serve seven prisons: High Desert State Prison, Folsom State Prison (men), Folsom Women's Facility, Folsom State Prison Minimum Support Facility, CSP Sacramento, the Growlersburg Conservation Camp, and now the Sierra Conservation Center.
ISP uses the "enhanced one-on-one" model, which was initially developed for a unique student population like prison inmates, according to LTCC. It is a pedagogical approach that has the goal of providing effective educational opportunities through one-on-one and large-group tutoring sessions, individualized feedback for each student, a bi-weekly administrative presence, video broadcasted supplemental class lectures, personalized registration and office hour/counseling request documents, and other student success support efforts.
"We can't perfectly duplicate what LTCC's face-to-face students experience, but we get very close thanks to a combination of personalized services and critical interactions with teachers and tutors," said Reynolds. "Our students tell me that they feel like real college students. We go out of our way to create as much of an on-campus experience as we can, and the results show it's working. They feel connected and cared for."
To tackle the failings of the criminal justice system, support systems and job opportunities are essential
Elisa Birnbaum, Reuters
The United States houses 25 percent of the world’s prison population and, according to reports, spends $80 billion a year on incarceration. That means each American resident is paying around 260 dollars annually to maintain the prison system.
In California alone, 9 billion dollars is spent a year on incarceration (five times the amount spent on education) while the recidivism rate sits at 60 percent, often due to lack of opportunities for employment upon re-entry.
But venture capitalist Chris Redlitz was determined to change that. He’s one of many social entrepreneurs focused on tackling the broken prison system, with the realization that it poses numerous debilitating effects on society.
These include increasingly high costs to taxpayers and growing recidivism rates alongside the poverty and homelessness the formerly incarcerated face when they return to society looking for work (often unsuccessfully). Add to that the effects of broken and single-parent families on children and their communities.
Redlitz launched The Last Mile (TLM) in 2010 to combat those incarceration realities on the ground. What began as a simple entrepreneurship program that taught business skills and know-how to inmates, has grown into a powerful tool of change, providing employment and potential for the post-incarcerated.
In 2014, in partnership with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the California Prison Industry Authority (CalPIA), TLM launched the first computer coding curriculum in a United States prison.
Then, in 2016 they started TLMWorks, a web development studio inside San Quentin that provides graduates of TLM with jobs as software engineers. As of 2017, 240 people graduated from the program and are doing well. Over the next five years and beyond, they plan to bring their TLM-branded program to any interested facility.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Molly Baldwin has been battling incarceration realities since 1988 as the founder and CEO of Roca, an organization with the apt tagline “less jail, more future”.
Roca targets high-risk young men, gang members and high-risk young mothers with one simple but exhausting mission: to disrupt the cycle of incarceration and poverty by helping those most at-risk who are not ready, willing or able to be a part of any other program.
It serves 21 communities through four locations in and around Boston - three for men and one for women. They also run a transitional employment program that offers work experience with crews, cleaning parks and streets for the state, municipalities and private companies.
And their impact is evident. In 2017, 274 men were enrolled in transitional employment, 84 percent avoided re-arrests and 226 were placed in jobs, with 76 percent remaining employed for over three months and counting.
Job creation is vital to Chicago-based Cleanslate too. Approximately 40,000 post-incarcerated individuals return each year to Illinois, with 20,000 or so converging upon Chicago, all in search of work.
The social enterprise was launched 11 years ago by the Cara organization in the aftermath of the war on drugs that saw an abundance of people coming out of the prison system with no viable employment opportunities. Employers are seldom forgiving of conviction histories.
Led by CEO Maria Kim, Cleanslate provides paid transitional jobs in neighborhood beautification projects. Interns, whose average age is 40 and who share common post-incarceration challenges, perform a range of exterior maintenance work—from sidewalk sweeping to snow removal, landscaping, garbage cleanup and graffiti removal—for which they’re paid minimum wage.
Along with Cara’s second social enterprise—a contract staffing firm - Cleanslate offers 450 new jobs a year, proving instrumental to helping Chicago battle statistics on the ground.
Like Redlitz and Baldwin, Kim is determined to change the status quo. They understand the domino effect of social challenges. And that, to tackle the failings of the criminal justice system, support systems and job opportunities are essential.
Thanks to the insightful approach of these and other social entrepreneurs, we’re witnessing significant steps toward more resilient communities across the U.S.
Elisa Birnbaum is a journalist and the author of In the Business of Change, which profiles social entrepreneurs around the world.
Prisoners love ramen and use it as an alternative to money. One ex-con wants to make it healthier for them.
Gina Tron, Oxygen
For college students, ramen is an easy meal that helps save money.
For prisoners, it is money.
The Japanese noodle dish has become one of the most beloved meals behind bars — not just for its ease and taste, but because it works as an alternative to money for bartering. And one ex-con, Ron Freeman, wants to make the high-sodium snack healthier for the inmates who crave it.
Freeman is the creator of Mama Pat’s Foods, a company that plans to ship low-sodium and salt-free ramen meals to prisoners this year.
Ramen has overtaken cigarettes as the most popular form of currency in prisons, according to a study from Michael Gibson Light, a doctoral student the University of Arizona School of Sociology.
The noodles are used as currency within prisons on a state and federal level, Mama Pat’s sales leader David Taylor told Oxygen.com.
“It’s how you get haircuts and tattoos and anything else amongst inmates," Taylor said.
Ramen can take a toll on the health of prisoners with high blood pressure, hypertension and diabetes. Taylor noted that while prisoners get plenty of exercise, there aren't many food alternatives to help complete a healthy lifestyle in the clink.
Taylor told Oxygen.com the product will launch by early summer and that three commissaries licensed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and privatized jails across the country have committed to buying the ramen. Oxygen.com spoke to Mama Pat's manufacturer which confirmed that the orders are in the work.
The idea came after Freeman saw firsthand how hard it is to eat right while serving time. Growing up in south central Los Angeles, he said his parents tried to keep him away from bad influences, but he "got sucked into the situation in the late '80s when the drugs flooded Los Angeles."
"I was arrested and sentenced to go to prison," he told Oxygen.com. "I wasn’t a high-level prisoner. I was just there for selling a small amount of drugs."
He served three years in Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego for possession of a controlled substance. He worked as a prison cook and saw how inmates would scarf down three or four packs of ramen a day. Then they'd throw in potato chips, dried meat and beef jerky for taste and protein.
Freeman said his sentence forced him to think about what he could contribute when he was out.
"When I walked in that yard and I saw so many people locked up, and it was as big as a college campus, I knew that this was not the place for me. I used that time to start learning about myself: What can I do to make myself better?" he said.
After his release in 1998, he said he couldn't get a job anywhere. "I was turned down over and over again," he said.
So he started cooking up a plan.
In 2010, he opened a restaurant called Mama Pat's Gumbo & Grill in Inglewood, California, which has since closed.
While working to get his frozen gumbo sold in grocery stores, a buyer suggested he start selling ramen. Freeman thought about the needs of prisoners, particularly those whose health is harmed by their diet.
"How can I get this to benefit people who are ill and also encourage young people who want to do the same thing I am doing?" Freeman recalled thinking. "Let me lower the sodium and design one that is sodium free."
He said he uses concentrated yeast extracts with his own secret spice blend. Freeman said he invested his life savings into Mama Pat’s Food and the development of four flavors: chicken fajita, chicken taco, seafood gumbo and lamb stew.
He named the company after his grandmother from Arkansas whom he called Mama Pat. She had a knack for cooking from the heart, he said.
Freeman and Mama Pat’s Foods plan to offer mentorships to other people who have left jail and want to whip up their own dishes.
"I want to help these guys coming out of prison with some culinary skills but nobody to help them out," he said.
Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise
Marcelo Dominguez says he and his parents learned their lesson in September when they had to scurry around at the last minute to collect valuables and documents as flames from the Canyon fire approached their hillside Corona home.
Dominguez, 18, and parents Gabriel and Martha, spent 10 minutes grabbing items before they evacuated their San Ramon Drive home.
“Ten minutes sounds like a lot of time, but when the fire is coming over the hill, it’s not a lot of time,” he said. “Since the fire, we’ve definitely corrected a few things.”
Today, their documents and first-aid kits are quickly accessible, and the garage is stocked with water that Dominguez acknowledged should really be stored in the car.
Fire officials in Southern California, as they prepare for the height of what’s now a year-round fire threat, are emphasizing the need for residents — even those not in what would traditionally be considered at-risk areas — to make similar preparations to evacuate quickly, even when only “voluntary” orders are given.
Officials cite faster-moving, more explosive fires that can move through brush the length of a football field in 30 seconds or less thanks to higher temperatures and longer windstorms, such as the conditions that helped the Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in 2017 become the largest in California history at 281,893 acres — even though it burned in traditionally wetter December and January.
“Fires we’d normally catch at a small acreage will grow larger,” said Cal Fire San Bernardino Unit Division Chief Duran Gaddy.
There’s danger everywhere: A huge swath of Southern California is near one or more of four national forests: Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino and Cleveland.
The National Interagency Fire Center predicts warmer and drier-than-normal conditions, and an above-average potential for lightning-caused fires, this summer in the West.
State firefighting officials also noted the blaze that tore through Santa Rosa in October leveled homes in neighborhoods that were not in what’s called the wildland-urban interface. The flames jumped from home to home to home, tragically sometimes faster than people could run.
“Unprecedented is no longer unprecedented,” said Cal Fire Deputy Director Mike Mohler. “The public needs to understand that they’ve seen it first hand, and we’re preparing, and they should prepare too.”
Rethinking ‘voluntary’ evacuations
The need for timely evacuations has prompted internal Cal Fire discussions about changing the phrases “voluntary” and “mandatory” to instill a greater sense of urgency. Officials are concerned that residents given voluntary orders are complacent about their safety and won’t leave. (Residents under mandatory evacuations aren’t required to leave, either. )
A resulting problem is civilian vehicles clogging often narrow roads when fire engines arrive.
A voluntary order, said Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Tony Bommarito, means that flames are highly likely to be approaching the neighborhood.
“You shouldn’t wait until the fire is at your front door,” Bommarito said.
Mohler likened a voluntary evacuation order for a fire to severe-weather warnings in Florida that prompt residents to take shelter.
“When we see a red flag warning or fire weather watch, people should take that as a hurricane and tornado warning. People should have their heads on a swivel, be aware of their surroundings and stop thinking it can’t happen to me.”
How to prepare
Resources are available to help plan evacuations.
The Ready, Set, Go! program at ReadyForWildfire.org provides videos on creating a defensible space around your home and making your home more resistant to wildfires, as well as a checklist of what should be in your emergency kit, among other resources.
There’s even a Ready for Wildfire smartphone app.
Mohler said Cal Fire changed its theme for Wildfire Awareness Week this year to “Self defense is fire defense.”
“If the word evacuation is even mentioned, it’s time to go,” Mohler said.
Changes coming
Firefighting agencies are busy preparing for fires and improving their operations.
Cal Fire, partnering with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has 47 inmate hand crews stationed around the state. The crews, usually of about 15 people whose most recent offenses were judged to be non-violent, cut fire breaks and put out fires using hand tools, do conservation projects and stack sandbags in the case of mudslides.
Proposition 47, which reduced the penalties for some offenses, has decreased the number of inmates with non-serious offenses in state prisons, so CDCR is recruiting harder for volunteers, spokesman Bill Sessa said. Videos are shown in prisons and counselors suggest participation as a way to get outdoors, be paid more for work ($2 per hour) and get their sentences cut short.
There are about 3,500 inmates in the camps this year, about the same as in past years, Sessa said.
Cal Fire, after Gov. Jerry Brown put $96 million in the next budget targeted for limiting the threat of wildfires, will be doing more controlled burns to thin out vegetation, which includes millions of dead trees.
Orange County Fire Authority’s board of directors on Thursday discussed almost 100 recommendations born out of acknowledged mistakes that led to the Canyon 2 fire damaging or destroying 80 structures and burning more than 9,200 acres in Orange and Riverside counties.
The fire was started by an ember from the Canyon fire. Dispatchers downplayed 911 calls from people reporting flames and smoke and failed to send appropriate resources, according to a report commissioned after the fire. Dispatchers sent a lone engine on a “smoke check.”
Those mistakes, the reports found, delayed the agency’s full response by up to 70 minutes. By the time the calvary arrived, it was too late to stop the fire.
Now, OCFA Battalion Chief Marc Stone said, dispatchers will send more resources to any report of a wildland fire and later determine the size of the blaze.
“If the same fire occurred today, it wouldn’t happen … our same mistakes,” Stone said.
OPINION
Michele Daughtery, Fox & Hounds
If only the issues held more interest for the public, they might stir more outrage.
What Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) and pre-apprenticeship training programs lack in eye-grabbing and ear-riveting attention, they more than make up for in unintended consequences for thousands of working Californians. If Senate Bill 825 becomes law, there will be serious consequences worth every taxpayer’s concern.
SB 825 affects not only the jobs related to the construction and maintenance of all state prisons and correctional facilities but also the aspirations of the people inside them, the people looking for a second chance at life once released.
First, SB 825 commands the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to sign a 10-year community workforce agreement (Project Labor Agreement) for all construction of $500,000 or more. PLAs are not related to ensuring quality wages because prevailing wages are already a condition of state projects. Instead, they are exclusive construction contracts between public agencies and labor unions for projects.
The exclusive nature of PLA contracts prevents local contractors and small-business owners, who already have proven track records of success building for the state, from competing fairly for future projects. This limits the number of qualified proven bidders and raises the cost of construction for us taxpayers.
Traditionally, PLAs require the use of union labor, even when the successful bidding company is non-union. So, when a non-union company is granted a contract, it’s not able to use all of its own skilled and trained journeyworkers and apprentices (including those employees formerly incarcerated, minorities, and veterans). Instead, a company must attempt to perform the work using only workers sent to it by a union hall that the company has no previous experience with.
When non-union contractors bid work, they bid based on what they know their crews can perform. Their bids are based on their crew’s talent, training, experience, commitment to quality, and track record of performing work safely and ethically. It is wrong for the state to mandate contractors to have their skilled, trained, and certified workers miss out on work that they have spent their careers performing, by forcing the contractor to use someone with a different (potentially lower) skill set or ability, or with no history with the company.
Unions represent less than 20 percent for the construction workforce. If the state needs urgent work done and union labor can’t handle it, prisoner health and well-being are imperiled because of the restrictive bidding nature of the PLA.
Second, SB 825 prohibits use of the National Center for Construction Education and Research’s (NCCER) CORE curricula, curricula that 18,000 individuals have completed in the past 10 years at one of 108 locations throughout California. The California Department of Education, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the California State University system, and the state’s community college system have all partnered with NCCER.
Instead, SB 825 would take all the quality programs with high success rates, terminate them, and turn all pre-apprentice training over to labor organizations.
Let me pause here, lest anyone think this editorial is an anti-union. My association has many union firms in it, and we support all responsible contractors’ rights to bid regardless of labor affiliation. The issue is not unions, it’s about whether or not California should be erecting barriers to 82 percent of the construction workforce in the state that has chosen to work non-union, and it’s about whether unions could handle the elimination of 170 NCCER programs in 33 of the 35 institutions run by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In my opinion, they cannot, and society will pay a price. The vacuum SB 825 creates by eliminating NCCER programs will lead to recidivism and a return to prison for many.
Finally, SB 825 will be a financial hit to the state and taxpayers when both can ill-afford it. An analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee warned of the “potentially significant project cost increases if CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] entering into a community workforce agreement results in few contract bids or higher associated construction costs for projects over $500,000.”
At some point, good public policy must rise above the bidding on behalf of narrow special interests. As Californians, we should be opening, not slamming, doors of employment opportunity and strive to ensure our prisons are safe, sound, secure and reducing recidivism. SB 825 does the exact opposite, which is why we hope legislators do the right thing and soundly reject it when it comes before them.
CALIFORNIA INMATES
Ryan Hoffman, Tahoe Daily Tribune
Nearly 10 years after the death of a 3-week-old boy in South Lake Tahoe, the baby's father is being accused of killing the infant.
The El Dorado County District Attorney's Office filed charges against David Paul DeMartile Sr. Tuesday in the 2008 death of David Paul DeMartile Jr.
The DA's office announced the development in the cold case earlier today.
The case dates back to Nov. 14, 2008, when the elder DeMartile called 911 for a medical emergency involving his 3-week-old son.
South Lake Tahoe police and medical personnel responded and treated the baby at the scene before transporting him to the hospital, where the child was pronounced dead, according to Assistant District Attorney Joe Alexander.
The initial cause of death was believed to be sudden infant death syndrome. However, there were some unexplained circumstances that ultimately led authorities to conduct an autopsy.
The results of the examination revealed that the cause of death was consistent with child abuse, Alexander told the Tribune. The autopsy results launched an official criminal investigation into the death.
At some point the investigation was labeled a cold case, meaning that obvious leads had dried up. That kicked the case to the El Dorado County Cold Case Task Force, a team comprised of the DA's office, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, the South Lake Tahoe Police Department and the California Department of Justice.
Eventually staff changes on the task force led to the case being reexamined.
Through continued work, investigators reached a point that they felt they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that DeMartile was guilty.
There was no single piece of evidence that led investigators to that point, Alexander said. Rather it was the totality of the investigation over nearly 10 years.
Alexander, though, would not comment on the status of the baby's mother, who was at the residence when DeMartile called 911.
"She is not charged but beyond that I don't have any comment as to the mom's status."
DeMartile is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence related to a burglary charge in 2017 in El Dorado County.
DeMartile has a lengthy criminal record, including eight different criminal cases with El Dorado County Superior Court, according to court records.
In December 2008, DeMartile was charged with assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury; battery with serious bodily injury; and two additional counts of battery, according to court documents.
DeMartile also was charged in 2016 with injuring a spouse, cohabitant, fiance, boyfriend, girlfriend or child's parent; and false imprisonment by violence. The "dating partner" identified in court documents is different than the baby's mother.
DeMartile is currently in prison out of state on a contract between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and an outside party.
The DA's office is asking he be returned to El Dorado County so he can be arraigned.
DeMartile, who is innocent until proven guilty, faces one count of murder and one count of felony child abuse resulting in death or great bodily injury.
Jess Sullivan, Daily Republic
FAIRFIELD — A former Vacaville man serving a 58-years-to-life prison sentence had his conviction reversed Thursday in San Francisco because of a mistake made by Judge Wendy G. Getty during his jury trial.
Lorenzo A. Escalera, now 32, was found guilty in 2016 of multiple felony child sexual assault charges for what he repeatedly did to the children starting when they were 5 and 6 years old.
Getty’s mistake occurred after the jury panel had been selected but before they were sworn in for the trial. In that gap of time, a juror advised Getty for the first time that she was a volunteer court-appointed special advocate for the court and was currently advocating on behalf of 7- and 8-year-old siblings in a juvenile dependency case. The juror also told Getty she had recently been certified as a sexual assault victims advocate for adults at a military base.
The Court of Appeal ruled Getty was wrong to have refused a defense lawyer’s request to reopen jury selection and to allow the attorney to use one of her remaining peremptory challenges to dismiss the juror.
Jurors in subsequent days heard one victim describe the sexual assaults he endured starting in 2010 that ended in 2015 when Escalera was arrested. A second victim recounted Escalera assaulting her in the middle of the night when he came home from work to his apartment at the Lincoln Corner complex off of Callen Street.
The Court of Appeal ordered a new trial for Escalera, who is currently locked up in Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.
No date has been set for Escalera’s return to court in Solano County.
DEATH PENALTY
Josh Thompson, Chino Champion
San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos, a former Chino court prosecutor, called last week’s New York Times story on the Kevin Cooper murder case “uniformed and misleading” and filed a 94-page formal opposition report Monday to Gov. Jerry Brown on Cooper’s request for clemency.
Mr. Cooper has been sitting on death row in San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco since 1985, two years after he was convicted by a San Diego County jury of killing four people, including two children, and slashing the throat of an 8-year-old boy at a home on English Road in Chino Hills.
He had escaped from the California Institution for Men in Chino a couple of days before the murders and investigators learned he was hiding out in a home close to where the murders took place.
“The guilt or innocence of any defendant charged with murder should be determined by a jury in court of law where the rules of evidence apply, not by an uninformed or deliberately misleading editorial in the New York Times,” Mr. Ramos said Monday.
The editorial reviewed Mr. Cooper’s murder case with the headline “One test could exonerate him. Why won’t California do it? Was Kevin Cooper framed of murder?”
Authors Nicholas Kristof, Jessia Ma and Stuart A. Thompson suggest Gov. Brown should allow advanced DNA testing on hairs, a T-shirt and a hatchet believed to be used in the murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old house guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryen’s 8-year-old son Joshua, survived the attack despite a slashed throat.
Mr. Ramos said DNA testing was conducted in 2001 and 2002.
“The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office agreed in 2001 to give Mr. Cooper the benefit of post-conviction DNA testing,” he said. “Mr. Cooper’s own DNA expert participated in the selection of items to be tested. The defense expert selected items that he represented had the best chance of excluding Mr. Cooper as the perpetrator of these horrific crimes.”
He said the defense attorney claimed the DNA testing would show innocence, “it proved the exact opposite.”
“The results of the testing proved Mr. Cooper was in the Ryen home at the time of the murders, that he smoked cigarettes in their station wagon after he stole it, and that his blood and the blood of at least one victim was on a T-shirt found by the side of a road leading away from the murders,” Mr. Ramos said.
Mr. Cooper and his legal team have requested “Touch DNA” testing on one of the murder weapons, the hatchet, the hatchet sheath, the T-shirt and a prison button. Touch DNA was not available during the 1983 trial.
Mr. Ramos said those items underwent serological testing in 1983 and 1984 and DNA testing in 2002.
“Additionally, the hatchet and protective sheath were touched by the owners of the hideout house, their families, visitors and guests whenever the hatchet was used to chop firewood,” Mr. Ramos said. “Many people have touched the exhibits outside of the laboratory conditions. DNA data bases, unlike fingerprint data, contain the profiles of certain convicted felons, but not law-abiding citizens. Therefore, DNA testing cannot provide relevant information in this case and cannot exonerate Mr. Cooper as claimed.”
He added it’s “simply an attempt to avoid punishment.”
Two years ago, Paulette Brown, the president of the American Bar Association sent Gov. Brown a letter asking for clemency for Mr. Cooper.
She asked the governor for an executive reprieve for Mr. Cooper “so that there can be an investigation to fully evaluate his guilt or innocence.”
“We recommend that this investigation include testing of forensic evidence still available to be analyzed to put to rest the questions that continue to plague his death sentence. This is the only course of action that can ensure that Mr. Cooper receives due process and the protection of his rights under the Constitution,” Mrs. Brown wrote.
Four months prior to the letter, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an earlier court ruling declaring California’s death penalty unconstitutional, giving the state the right to continue executions.
In the years since the murders, evidence has emerged that casts doubt on Mr. Cooper’s conviction, evidence that has not been comprehensively examined in court, Mrs. Brown wrote.
She admitted that only a small percentage of questions have gone unanswered in Mr. Cooper’s case, but asked the governor to ensure a full investigation before an execution is scheduled.
Mr. Ramos said Mr. Cooper has already received post-conviction scientific DNA testing, and each time, the testing has “shown his claims of innocence are false and instead confirm the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
“The families of the victims and the surviving victim have waited patiently for 35 years for justice in this case,” Mr. Ramos said. “They have endured not only the loss of their loved ones, but also the repeated and false claims from Mr. Cooper and his propaganda machine designed to undermine public confidence in the just verdict.”
Mr. Cooper was scheduled to be executed in 2004, but was granted a stay just hours before to allow scientific examinations of some of the evidence.