Trying To Restore Integrity To Death Row Defense

Brad Levenson, a deputy federal public defender here in California, will lead the first ever Texas Office of Capital Writs. His new job will require him to represent Texas death row inmates who claim their trials were botched and that they were wrongly convicted.

Texas lawmakers created the office in 2009 after a series of investigative reports and studies of the criminal justice system revealed serious problems with the quality of legal representation for indigent defendants on death row. Some of the lawyers whom judges had appointed to represent capital defendants had no death row experience, some had mental illness, some had abandoned their death row clients, and some of the lawyers chosen by judges were dead.

So lawmakers created the Office of Capital Writs to provide better representation for people on death row who can't afford to pay their own lawyers to challenge their sentences. Levenson, who has extensive experience with post-conviction cases in California, has only tried one such case in Texas, which has the busiest death row in the nation. He must deal with a 5 percent budget cut, he'll have to hire about 10 staffers and work about a dozen cases a year with $991,000, down from what was supposed to be a $1 million budget. But Levenson is up for the challenge.

Levenson said Texas wasn't even on his radar screen until 2008, when his office was asked to represent Texas death row inmate Clinton Lee Young. He was convicted of murdering two Texas men in 2001, and a Midland jury sentenced him to death. But Young and his lawyers claim the prosecution withheld evidence at trial that could have helped him, and last year the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent his case back to the trial court. Working on that case piqued Levenson's interest, which lead to his appointment in his new position.

Quote

"We, as criminal defense lawyers, are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth, people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want, people who do not care who gets hurt in the process. It is our job – our sworn duty – as criminal defense lawyers, to protect our clients from those people."

-Cynthia Rosenberry

Huntington Beach Considers Posting DUI Offenders On Facebook (And No, You Can't Untag Yourself)

In Huntington Beach, driving drunk can lead to unthinkable accidents, suspended licenses and now, if a recommendation is approved, public shame.

Facebook shame.

Which we all know is the worst possible kind. You may want to defriend grandma now. City Councilman Devin Dwyer wants the Huntington Beach Police Department to move forward with a previously discussed humiliation tactic of posting information and photos of "habitual drunk drivers" on its Facebook page, reports O.C. Now. He made the recommendation at Monday's meeting, and the City Council is expected to vote on it next Monday.

Huntington Beach is really Facebook-happy these days, recently using the social network to help solve a 43-year-old mystery.

Police Officer Faked Shooting Story

A Los Angeles school police officer who said he was shot by an attacker last week, prompting a manhunt that shut down a large swath of Woodland Hills, has been arrested on suspicion of concocting the story, authorities said Thursday night.

The startling revelation came at a hastily called news conference by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, who said detectives became suspicious about the officer's story as they investigated the case.

In Other Eatery News

An employee over at Bouchon brings word that Thomas Keller does, in fact, have plans to bring his single menu family-style prix fix restaurant in Yountville....down to LA. This week, an operative dined with Ms. Keller for lunch where she divulged that TK wanted to bring the experience to the City of Angels. All signs point to [Smileyface].

The Roosevelt's Public Kitchen & Bar Opens In February

Public Kitchen & Bar within the Roosevelt Hotel is just about complete. Formerly the Dakota, the entire look and feel of the restaurant has changed thanks to Studio Collective (also designed upstairs newbie The Spare Room), remember how Dakota was separated from the hotel's main lobby? Well now those walls have come down and Public's bar will actually be part of that lobby area to hopefully entice patrons to grab a drink at Public's bar and hang in that center area which is generally pretty dead.

While renovating the space, construction crew discovered original decorative ceiling art dating back to the 1920s, thus management hired art historians to recreate the designs. As for edibles, chef/partner Tim Goodell is working on his American menu, and within the next few weeks upstairs The Spare Room will start to serve Public bites as late as 4AM (booze till 2AM).

Picturesque

Jury Finds Ex-Cop Liable in 2008 Killing of Autistic Man

After deciding this week that a former Los Angeles police officer fired for dishonesty was liable for killing a man, a federal jury Wednesday awarded the victim's family $1.7 million.

Joseph Cruz killed Mohammad Usman Chaudhry early on a March morning in 2008, when Cruz and his partner encountered the 21-year-old autistic man lying in the bushes alongside a Hollywood apartment building.

Since the killing, Cruz has insisted that Chaudhry tried to attack him with a knife and that he fired his gun in self-defense. On Monday, however, after four days of testimony, the jury rejected Cruz’s account when it returned a unanimous verdict finding that the ex-officer had used excessive force and acted in “a reckless, oppressive or malicious manner” when he shot Chaudhry.

During the trial, lawyers for the Chaudhry family presented evidence aimed at putting doubt in the minds of the jurors over Cruz’s account. Testing on the knife that Cruz said Chaudhry had used, for example, found one person’s DNA profile on the  handle and blade but showed that the DNA was not Chaudhry’s.

Also, after Cruz claimed he had never met Chaudhry before the shooting, a man testified that he had been present on multiple occasions when Cruz confronted Chaudhry and called him by name.

 

After the verdict, the jury was asked to decide how much money, if any, to award Chaudhry’s parents. Attorneys representing Cruz and the city of Los Angeles had tried to limit the size of the award by arguing that Chaudhry had had a frayed relationship with his parents that lessened their suffering.

Lawyers for the family countered that the parents cared deeply for their son, despite the strain on the relationship caused by his autism.

“We’re very pleased. I think the jury saw the truth in this case,” said Olu Orange, an attorney for the family. “This was about restoring the honor of this family’s son.”

Orange called on the city, and specifically Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to forgo an appeal. “In light of the findings of the jury on the facts of this case, I hope Mayor Villaraigosa would apologize to the Chaudhry family on behalf of the city, accept the verdict and not put the family through further trauma over the loss of their son," he said. "If the city doesn’t, they’ll just be spending more taxpayer money to defend a dishonest cop.”

The award punctuates the awkward role the city played in the case. After the shooting, the LAPD fired Cruz for dishonesty in an unrelated case. At the time, lawyers for the city argued that Cruz had destroyed his credibility.

During the trial, however, the LAPD and city attorney’s office tried to persuade the jury that Cruz was, in fact, credible and that his account of the shooting should be believed.

The City By The Bay

North Coast

Sundance Documentary Raises Questions About D.A. Steve Cooley's Role In Appeal Of 1982 Murder Case

A documentary that presents a withering view of Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley's handling of a controversial murder case premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film, "Crime after Crime" focuses in part on what the filmmakers argue were key errors in the prosecution of a domestic violence victim who orchestrated the killing of her estranged lover, errors they say Cooley was reluctant to admit.

Deborah Peagler spent 26 years in prison for the 1982 killing of Oliver Wilson in South Los Angeles. Her attorneys say her crime should have led to a six-year sentence, if prosecutorial errors had been disclosed and if Wilson’s abuse had been considered.

According to her lawyers, the district attorney should have disclosed an internal memorandum that concluded a key witness against her had perjured himself and that they never intended to seek the death penalty against her.

Cooley's spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons, said he had no plans to see the film.

"Deborah Peagler," she said, "intentionally orchestrated the murder-for-hire of her estranged boyfriend. She lured him to the spot where he was killed. She witnessed the murder and drove the killers away. She profited by receiving money from the victim's insurance."

Gibbons noted that Cooley -- who was elected Los Angeles County district attorney in 2000 -- was among numerous law enforcement and court officials of the opinion that Peagler should remain imprisoned. "Her post-conviction collateral appeals were denied by various courts of record," Gibbons said. "Her claims have been discredited over and over again."

The highly emotional film follows Peagler and her two pro bono attorneys in their years-long fight against Cooley to win her release. In 1983, Peagler pleaded guilty to first-degree murder to avoid a death sentence, but at the time the fact that she had been a battered woman did not come into play. In 2002, California became the first state in the nation to allow women to have murder cases reconsidered if they could show they were abused and that it led to the killing. Peagler’s attorneys believed the change in the law should open the door for her release.

In Peagler's case, police records show that Wilson was arrested for assaulting her with a gun days before she led him to a park where two men beat and strangled him. Peagler acknowledged that she arranged the ambush, but said she meant to scare, not kill Wilson. She said saw no other way out after years in which he forced her into prostitution, beat her with a bullwhip and molested her young daughter.

Her effort to be released won the support of Wilson's own brother and sister. Cooley initially supported his top deputy’s recommendation to offer Peagler a lesser charge and support her release "in the interest of justice,” then changed his mind and filed papers in 2006 to block the proposed release.

The film, which won a standing ovation at its premiere, chronicles the community protests that followed the district attorney's flip-flop, Times columnist Steve Lopez's call for her release and the descent down a bureaucratic rabbit hole as Peagler’s attorneys continued to lobby for her freedom.

In 2009, she was released after the Board of Parole Hearings recommended her for parole. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could have overturned this finding, but in the end chose not to and thereby allowed Peagler's release to go forward. Ten months later she died of lung cancer.

The film's director, Yoav Potash, a longtime friend of one of Peagler's attorneys, said, "This film is the public complaint, and Cooley can't hide from it." Many viewers hissed when the district attorney appeared on screen.

True Believer

Pardon Me

Is a governor's power to pardon criminals a valuable tool to correct unjust sentences or does it undermine the rule of law by allowing politicians to forgive offenses as personal favors?

End-of-term clemency is a centuries-old, often vilified tradition.

Clemency grants at the end of a governor's or president's term have become a routine departure ritual, gaining attention only when they offend the public's idea of fairness, as did President Clinton's 2001 intervention to forgive fugitive financier Marc Rich and President Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's commutation of the 16-year sentence for Estaban Nuñez, the son of political ally and former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, spurred outcries of cronyism and threats to challenge the reduced penalty as an assault on justice.

But the authority of a state or federal executive to overrule a court's judgment is immutable, leaving the citizenry without recourse beyond the right to denounce it as an abuse of power.

Michael Jackson's Doctor Ordered To Stand Trial In Pop Star's Death, Stripped Of Medical License

A judge stripped Dr. Conrad Murray of his medical license Tuesday after ruling that prosecutors have sufficient evidence to try him for manslaughter in the death of pop star Michael Jackson.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor said testimony presented during a six-day hearing into Murray's treatment of the singer had convinced him that allowing the cardiologist to keep his license "would constitute an imminent danger to public safety."

Evidence presented by prosecutors, the judge said, showed "a direct nexus in connection between the acts and omissions of Dr. Murray and the homicide in this case."

Pastor's decision to send the case to trial was widely expected, including by Murray's attorneys, but his defense had strongly contested the loss of his license, calling it a "nuclear option" that would destroy the 57-year-old doctor's ability support his family and mount a criminal defense.

Murray is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 25.

No Charges Filed Against Lenny Dykstra In Alleged Sexual Assault

Former professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra's housekeeper accused him of sexual assault, according to law enforcement records, but prosecutors declined to file charges this month citing a lack of evidence.

According to a rejection memo by Los Angeles County prosecutors, the 41-year-old woman alleged that Dykstra forced her to give him oral sex on Saturdays. Prosecutors said they closed the case because of a lack of evidence that the activity was forced.



People v. Kelly (2010)

In a unanimous January ruling, the California Supreme Court said lawmakers cannot impose limits on how much cannabis qualified patients may possess or cultivate.

The published decision in People v. Kelly struck down plant and possession guidelines established by the state legislature in 2003, declaring the limits to be an unconstitutional change to the Compassionate Use Act approved by voters in 1996.

Under the ruling, California patients are entitled to quantities consistent with their reasonable personal use. The court left intact the legislature’s voluntary ID card program, which provides protection from arrest and prosecution for card-carrying patients who are within state or local guidelines for personal-use quantities.

Californians who exceed those guidelines may still have to go to court to prove their compliance with state law.

Memories

                       Central America. 2005

Installations

                       One of the installations on display at the Gallery for Arts and Culture

Kamala Harris Takes Oath Of Office

This week was a week of many “firsts.” It was the first week of Jerry Brown’s 2nd stint as Governor of the Golden State. Kamala Harris became the first woman and first person of color to serve as California State Attorney General. She was sworn into office this week promising “to do whatever it takes and catch hell if necessary,” in her role as the state’s top law enforcer. Having served as San Francisco’s district attorney and with close ties to the Obama administration, Harris is seen as a rising political star. After a tough election campaign against Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, Harris pulled away with a razor thin margin weeks after election day.

I worked with Ms. Harris when I lived in San Francisco. Even though we had competing interests I must say she has a profound sense of justice and fairness. Even in light of her position as SF's District Attorney, I found her to be an individual with great perspective as well as compassion for the less fortunate. Frankly, those are traits rare to a prosecutorial office. I am thrilled about her election to office.

"This Is A Court Of Law, Young Man, Not A Court Of Justice." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Humanizing Cities Or Vandalism?

For every commissioned piece of public art there are countless unlawful works - scrawled spray-painted initials, cheeky visual pranks, massive murals soaring up buildings and across rail cars, shrines tucked into unused corners. Street artists have become figures of global recognition, even acceptance. Artist collectives in Berlin take over buildings; London-based Banksy puts on pop-up exhibits around the world and debuted a film at Sundance; Shepard Fairey papered the U.S. with his Andre the Giant sticker campaign and went on to create a much-copied campaign poster for Barack Obama. But street artists also remain the subject of controversy, forcing cities to consider what art is acceptable, who should be allowed to create it, and where.

As the Fowler Museum launches its show of Larry Yust's photographs of street art in Los Angeles, Berlin, and Paris, Fowler Museum curator Patrick Polk and Aaron Rose (co-curator of MOCA's forthcoming street art exhibit) ask how street art humanizes cities.

A Favorite

                         Singer/Songwriter Tristan Prettyman. House of Blues.

United States v. Steele Smith

Steele Smith is the central figure in what could be the most significant Federal Marijuana case in US history, the first allowing a medical defense based on State law.

A Medical Marijuana patient and his wife face ten years in Federal prison in a fight to uphold the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, States' rights allowing safe, legal access to medical marijuana.

The story of a patient diagnosed with a rare disease, embroiled in a fight for his life and the rights of medical marijuana patients nationwide.

The following is a timeline of events that led to Orange County residents Steele and Theresa Smith's battle with the federal government over medical marijuana:

Summer 2001: Steele Smith – husband, entrepreneur and owner of an Orange County marketing company for 14 years -- suddenly doubles over with excruciating pain and finds himself in an emergency room. It’s his first of several such visits over the next four months. Each time, emergency room doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong, so they prescribe him pain meds. Steele loses 40 pounds. Finally, a rare-diseases doctor orders an invasive scope that finds 11 ulcers in Steele’s duodenum – between the stomach and upper intestines.

The disease is called Zollinger-Ellison (Z-E) – it’s so rare that the doctor, who’d practiced for over 50 years – shakes Mr. Smith's hand and says he’s the doctor’s first patient ever to have the condition. Steele is prescribed high levels of the newest and strongest acid-reducer known as Protonix. Due to the gut-wrenching pain, the doctor further prescribes high doses of morphine and sends him to a 'pain' doctor for a follow-up morphine regimen.

Mid-2004: Steele and his wife, Theresa, begin to realize that Steele has become terribly addicted to morphine. Following research on the internet and many phone calls, the couple decides to rapid-detox Steele, a procedure that nearly kills him. He spends several days in ICU, while most patients walk out of the hospital after a day or two – not in ICU. As it turns out, he isn’t completely detoxed due to the high levels of opiates he had been ingesting – the rapid-detox failed to work. Over the next year and a half, the couple tries over and over to detox Steele on their own, but it doesn’t work. The Smiths search the Internet and discovered a new detoxification drug known as Suboxin. With the help of a certified physician, Steele begins to use Suboxin and over several weeks of this specialized drug therapy became drug-free.

Steele is still experiencing pain and nausea and, therefore, cannot function completely – nor can he eat. About his time, the couple begin to gather information about Proposition 215, Senate Bill 420 and Health & Safety Code 11362.5 – the state’s Medical Marijuana Program. Steele is given a medical-cannabis recommendation and then obtained his medicine from one of the many L.A. dispensaries. This was a second miracle drug for Steele: Medical marijuana took away his pain and nausea, enabled him to eat and to become healthy once again.

No dispensaries exist in Orange County at this time, so over the next few months and several visits to L.A. dispensaries, Steele and Theresa decide to open a small collective, California Compassionate Caregivers (C3), to assist patients. They open their home to local medical-cannabis patients and begin to grow cannabis for safe access. The next few months pass in a whirlwind as, over the next few months, OC patients seeking safe access find C3 -- the patient base reaches over 1,000 by 2006.

Also at this time, officers with the Placentia Police Department pay a visit to Steele and Theresa's apartment and seize 18 plants, patient records, 4 pounds of medical marijuana, a small amount of concentrate and $1,000 in cash -- no charges are filed at that time. Steele tries on several occasions to contact the Placentia officers that had seized C3's property, however they refused to return anything to him. He then consults an attorney and the two decided that they should file a lawsuit against the City of Placentia to return to him all that was confiscated. It seems that the city of Placentia is unhappy with the lawsuit filed and so elevate the case to a federal level. This causes Mr. Smith to lose standing in civil court.

Nov. 1, 2007: At approximately 6 a.m., federal agents raid the Smith’s two homes using paramilitary-style tactics – several officers wearing masks and dressed from head to toe in black break down the front door and hold the couple (who moments earlier were asleep in their bed) at gunpoint. A fire extinguisher is sprayed at their two dogs -- one dog dies four days later. The officers then begin to destroy the home while they look for guns, drugs, or anything else that could incriminate the Smiths. The couples' home is completely ransacked and the front door broken down, left wide open for any and all of the public to take furniture and belongings at will. At the same time, the police go to C3's medical dispensary located a few miles away and proceed to confiscate 2 pounds of medical marijuana and a small amount of concentrate – again, leaving this door open to the public to take anything left.

Steele, Theresa and two other defendants, from the second grow-house; Alex Valentine, a 21 year old patient with Elephant-man's syndrome and thirty surgeries by his twentieth birthday, and Dennis La Londe, a friend of a friend and homeless man that was given a bed only three weeks prior, would be incarcerated and spend most of the next year in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles – a maximum security, level-five Federal prison. The four defendants were charged with conspiracy to manufacture or grow medical marijuana and are facing ten years each in a Federal Penitentiary for said "crime".

Theresa is released after 60 days on $200,000 bond – her dying mother's home and two signatures, while all three of the other defendants languished in federal prison for nearly a year. After 10 months, Steele is finally released back to his wife, an electronic ankle bracelet attached to him for the next year. All four defendants currently report to federal pre-trial services officers regularly until trial.

April 2010: The Honorable Cormac J. Carney, who presides over this case, rules that the medical marijuana issue will be heard as testimony – the first time in a federal court in U.S. history. The case has been continued over a dozen times

Couple Killed In Crash With A Car Being Chased By Police

A husband and wife returning home from a New Year’s Eve party were killed in a collision with a car that sped through a red light in South Los Angeles while being chased by police, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Officers began chasing a white Geo Prism after seeing it speed through a red light at Van Ness Avenue near Florence Avenue just before midnight Friday, Los Angeles Police Lt. John Romero said. The Prism -- which police say was driven by Jorge Alberto Molina, 27, of Culver City -- sped through another red light at the intersection of Florence and Crenshaw Boulevard and hit an Infiniti going south on Crenshaw, causing the Infiniti to roll and strike a pole, police said.

The driver of the Infiniti, Demetria Dorsey, 50, and her passenger, husband Kelvin Dorsey, 54, both of Los Angeles, were killed in the crash, police said. They had been going home from a party. Molina ran from the scene but collapsed nearby, police said. Authorities said he had been driving under the influence of alcohol and booked him on two counts of murder. He is being held on $1-million bail.

Romero said it was not clear whether Molina was aware that police were pursuing him.

Christmas Is Over And Business Is Business

Father Outraged Schwarzenegger Reduced Sentence Of Politician's Son In Murder Case

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to reduce the prison sentence of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, who had pleaded guilty to participating in the killing of a college student, has been harshly criticized by the victim's family.

 "We are totally outraged," said Fred Santos, father of Luis Santos. "For the governor to wait until the last day in hopes it would fly under the radar is an absolute injustice."

Santos, a software engineer in Concord in Northern California, said Esteban Nuñez "had already gotten lucky once" when prosecutors accepted a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid standing trial on murder charges, which could have led to a life sentence. "The governor did not even have the courtesy to notify the victim's family," he said. "This is dirty politics: cutting backroom deals. I guess if you're the son of somebody important, you can kill someone and get all sorts of breaks."

Esteban Nuñez, now 21, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the stabbing death of Luis Santos. Schwarzenegger cut the prison term to seven years, noting in a statement that Nuñez, although involved in the fight that ended in Santos' death, did not inflict the fatal knife wound. Schwarzenegger cited a finding by the court that it was Esteban Nuñez's friend Ryan Jett who stabbed Santos, "severing his heart."

"I do not discount the gravity of the offense," the Governor's statement said.