Appellate ruling: Santa Cruz to Dismiss homicide charge in 2018 slaying
https://www4.courts.ca.gov/opinions/archive/H050669.PDF
From the court’s opinion: “In this mandamus proceeding, the petitioner, Milton Jonas Arias Molina, was held to answer on charges of special circumstances murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and street terrorism after a preliminary examination at which he and his two codefendants, Jose Leonard Alfaro Juarez and Elmer Ernesto Mendez Lopez, were required to share a single Spanish-language interpreter during the presentation of evidence. Molina seeks writ relief after the trial court denied his subsequent Penal Code section 995 motion to dismiss based on the failure to provide him with his own interpreter throughout the preliminary examination.
As we explain below, based on the circumstances of this case, we conclude that the failure to provide an individual interpreter for Molina at his preliminary examination reasonably might have affected the outcome. Accordingly, we will issue the writ of mandate instructing the trial court to vacate its order denying Molina's motion to dismiss and enter a new order granting that motion, without prejudice to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney refiling the charges and conducting a new preliminary examination.”
At issue in the appellate proceeding was the trial court’s denial of Mr. Hewitt’s section 995 motion to dismiss. The appellate court directed the trial court to enter a new order granting the motion to dismiss.
Convicted killer Dennis Oates granted early release into home hospice
OROVILLE — Dennis Oates, the man convicted of killing Tom Trotter in
1997, was granted compassionate release Thursday as part of
California’s Assembly Bill 960.
Oates, who was originally diagnosed with cancer in 2009, had received
treatment while incarcerated over the years. It was in 2023 when the
metastatic squamous cell carcinoma progressed further and no longer
responded to treatment.
Dr. Allison Pachynski, the Chief Medical Executive at San Quentin
State Prison, testified on Oates’s condition in court during the
hearing Thursday afternoon. Pachynski described a growth that had
manifested from behind his ear and said his condition had diminished
considerably in recent months.
“He will die within the next few weeks I would guess,” Achynski said
of his prognosis.
Dr. Michele DiTomas testified as well saying she believed Oates met
the requirements for the release.
“He clearly falls within the intent of the law,” DiTomas said.
Judge Virginia Gingery oversaw the hearing and in her ruling, which
was bound by state law based on the evidence provided, read quotes
from Oates’s parole hearing in 2022, when parole was denied. Gingery
said it was noted that Oates lacked remorse and continuously shifted
blame toward Trotter and others.
Gingery said she granted the release with a heavy heart and with no
compassion toward Oates.
Oates was represented at the hearing by Davis Hewitt while Butte
County District Attorney Mike Ramsey represented the people of Butte
County.
Early in the hearing, both men approached the bench to confer with
Judge Gingery though it was unclear what the conversation was about.
Members of Trotter’s family including his daughter, brother, sister,
mother and niece also spoke during the hearing testifying against
Oates’s release. The family has been adamant in speaking out against
both the release and AB960 itself.
Ramsey asked for stipulations to Oates’s release which were
consistently granted by a judge. Oates will be released to a family
member’s home in Oroville and will not be allowed to leave the home
with the exception of emergency medical situations. Additionally,
Oates cannot be left alone in the home for any amount of time. Ramsey
initially requested that there be no guns in the home but it was
modified so that guns can be allowed as long as they are locked in a
safe in a different room from where Oates will be staying.
After the hearing, Hewitt said he was pleased with the overall outcome.
“I thought that the judge had fully considered the evidence and ruled
in accordance with the law, and I was very pleased with the outcome,”
Hewitt said.
An additional court date was scheduled for Aug. 15 despite doctors
saying Oates likely would not live that long. Ramsey said the date was
established in case he did make it that long so that he could be
resentenced.
“We will approach it in 90 days and we will confirm whether or not his
condition has changed in any way,” Ramsey said. “If suddenly he is
touched by something and is miraculously cured it would be our
intention to put him back where he deserves to be.”
Criminal trials, jury duty resuming in Santa Cruz County
SANTA CRUZ — No, the summons arriving in the mail is not administrative incompetence or someone’s idea of a joke.
Criminal trials in Santa Cruz County, and with it the public’s obligation to show up for jury duty, have resumed.
In late August, the court system was gearing up to resume trials well into the health minefield of the coronavirus pandemic. Then, Santa Cruz County offered its own brand of delay, with the massively devastating CZU August Lightning Complex fires stretching more than a month, during which more than 80,000 residents were displaced. The court’s last emergency order to issue delays to expedited trial timelines expired this week.
Late last month, the court convened its first start-from-scratch jury panel in seven months, before Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati. The case did not get far, with the defendant ending up resolving with a plea deal mid-trial. The case, which took a day and a half for jury selection from a pool of 49 respondents, offered a preview of challenges the county’s legal community will face moving forward in the near future.
Of 360 juror summons mailed for a scheduled upcoming trial, 48 people responded and close to half were expected to be excused immediately. In an effort to streamline a newly complicated process, each juror had been asked to fill out and return a specially designed questionnaire mirroring typical jury selection questions and additional COVID-19 related concerns ahead of their day at the courthouse. Early response juror rates consistently appear to be in the 15% to 20% rate, rather than the pre-coronavirus standard of 35% — “It’s gotten much worse,” Presiding Judge Paul Burdick said this week.
Paraphrasing President John Adams, Burdick said jurors — and voting — are vital to this country’s democracy, that they are “the lungs of liberty.” He said the court is working tirelessly to ensure the experience is a safe one for all.
“My message to them is they are failing in their responsibility of citizenship. They are failing in their obligations to be part of the democratic process,” Burdick said of jurors who do not reply to their summons. “If they are complaining about how our system works, then they need to part of our process and be a participant in holding the government and an accused individual accountable, and listen to the evidence in the case and be part of the solution.”
Superior Court Judge John Salazar temporarily conducted his court proceedings from a podium on the courthouse steps in late March, as the county practiced early social distancing.
On the other end of the spectrum, for the previous case, some, believing the questionnaire was only an application to waive jury duty, did not fill out the form but still showed up at court.
Instead of the usual courtroom scene, where some 60 to 80 community members would normally pack in shoulder-to-shoulder at a time, only 15 were allowed in at once — three in the juror box and the rest spaced out in the audience. The remaining potential jurors looked on from live-streamed cameras in the jury assembly trailer outside the courthouse and a spare courtroom. Attorneys were locked in front of their stationary microphones, instead of being able to pace, approach the jury box or otherwise move around freely, and prospective jurors walked up to a fixed microphone one at a time to answer questions individually. Jurors in other rooms were rotated into Cogliati’s courtroom in waves — having been asked to respond to court at separate arrival times to avoid mass a gathering.
Standard safety procotols — air filtration, mask-wearing, accelerated cleaning of public spaces, social distancing, hand sanitization stations, physical barriers between court personnel and witnesses and other protocols — also have been implemented. The court has access to a supply of some 500 clear plastic masks to use upon request during trials, Burdick said.
Defense attorney Davis Hewitt, who represented the client in last week’s case, said he was pleased with the coronavirus health precautions the court staff had taken, saying it was clear that the community was a priority. He said that “it was definitely an adjustment” for all during courtroom proceedings, but that it was safety and clients’ need for justice.
“In this particular case, although it settled in the middle of the trial, I felt it was a righteous case to go forward,” Hewitt said.
Each would-be participant was asked to watch a Santa Cruz County Superior Court-produced instructional video at santacruzcourt.org/divisions/jury. Respondents also were asked to fill out a post-jury duty questionnaire after their obligation was complete.
Digging into its backlog of cases ready for trial, the court has prioritized cases that will jump to the front of the line, Burdick said. In-custody felony case defendants who have not waived their right to a speedy trial are first, before the less common in-custody misdemeanor defendants who have not waived time. Then, out-of-custody felony cases. Civil cases, Burdick said, are unlikely to resume before next spring.
“It’s unfortunate, and we’re not happy about it,” Burdick said of the delay in trials.
For cases that share the same timeline, they will stack up back-to-back, with one beginning on the heels of the previous trial’s completion. Burdick said it seems infeasible right now to run multiple jury trials at the same time, based on the need for multiple rooms and heavy staff time needed for each. Potentially, once a jury is selected for a case, a second case could inch forward, he speculated. What worries Burdick, however, is the hypothetical behemoth high-profile homicide case with multiple defendants. A process that previously would have taken five days could stretch months, he said.
Public Defender Larry Biggam said he is grateful that the county can start up again with trials, if only in a limited basis. In-custody clients, he said, need access to a jury trial and closure in their cases. Biggam did express some concerns about witnesses’ faces being obscured by masks during testimony because “assessing witness credibility is critical for jurors and masks impede that assessment.”
“I have concerns that the courthouse jury pool does not represent a true cross-section of the community since so many potential jurors are understandably not coming in because of COVID or child care concerns,” Biggam added.
District Attorney Jeff Rosell said that he, too, was happy to see justice being carried out with the resumption of cases, despite the challenges.
Would-be Space Traveler Acquitted on Several Charges of Robbery and Assault
*Mr. Hewitt was not counsel in this matter. Rather, he sat “second chair” in his final year as a law student.
“In an astronomical case, a man who thought the apartment he allegedly broke in to was actually a spaceship was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced.
Santino Aviles, 41, was found not guilty Tuesday on charges of robbery, attempted robbery, assault with force likely to cause great injury and battery with serious injury, said spokeswoman Tamara Barak Aparton of the Public Defender's Office. Aviles was convicted of two misdemeanors for battery and assault. And a mistrial on a burglary count was declared after the jury hung on the charge.
Aviles was accused of sneaking in to a Mission apartment that he thought was a docking bay to a spaceship that would take him away from Earth while he was reportedly in a meth-induced psychosis, Aparton said.
He faced up to 14 years in prison if he had been convicted on all counts.
The epic odyssey began May 31, 2014, when Aviles started experiencing hallucinations and false perceptions associated with methamphetamine psychosis, Aparton said. He thought he was being pursued by an unknown enemy and that the Earth's destruction was imminent.
Once Aviles spotted the apartment building that he believed looked like a spaceship docking station, he rang the buzzer and a resident let him in. He immediately tried to get to the roof, but the resident who buzzed him in grew suspicious and told Aviles to leave.
Aviles then went out on the fire escape and entered an apartment through an open window. Once inside, he passed out on the couch.
When he woke, he began packing for space, Aparton said. During court testimony, Aviles said he put an inflatable exercise ball onto the fire escape that he thought he could use to float through the galaxy. He also used the resident's backpack to stow a “passport” and earthquake kit. The passport was a picture of a woman who had long black hair like Aviles, and Aviles believed the “passport” would guarantee a seat on the spaceship.”