More evidence DA Pacheco is swamping the system

Here's another article showing DA Pacheco's swamping of the system. According to the article:

Seven felony cases ready for trial were dismissed Tuesday in Riverside County Superior Court because no judge was available to hear them and the cases had outrun constitutional speedy trial limits.

The court apparently had family, juvenile and probate judges available but would not assign the pending criminal trials to those judges. I suspect the DA will press the issue to have these judges hear criminal trials as well.

But I thought we just had the cleanest summer in recent memory?

Wasn't this summer just deemed the best in air quality on record? In fact, on October 2, 2007, I reported this exact news. Well, that's irrelevant to our senator Barbara Boxer who thinks the pollution is terrible and that it's all President Bush's fault. In this article, Senator Boxer has

"harsh words for the Bush administration.

The EPA, she said, has repeatedly delayed tougher standards for locomotives, ships and other sources of pollution.

"I have suggested they change their name to the Environmental Pollution Agency," Boxer said.

Might Senator Boxer be a "glass half empty type?"

No civil justice system in Riverside County

Here is a must read on the fall out from the DA Pacheco's position on criminal prosecutions. As long time readers IELB know, there is a serious problem going on in the Riverside County courts, i.e., namely, no civil lawsuits are going to trial. DA Pacheco is filing so many cases, and refusing to plea bargain in good faith, that all civil courts are being diverted to hear criminal cases. Because of the speedy trial guarantees for criminal defendants, criminal trials take priority over civil actions. So, if the DA Pacheco files a misdemeanor DUI, it has priority over a wrongful death action against a negligent defendant. So, if a sole provider parent is negligently killed by some defendant, the kids and surviving parent don't get their day in court, while the DA clogs the court with the case against the drunk driver.

Get a load of this:

There were 709 felony and misdemeanor trials last fiscal year in Riverside County, 171 more than the previous year. San Bernardino County had 272 felony and misdemeanor trials last fiscal year, just 32 more than the previous year.

Less than 3 percent of cases go to trial in Riverside County, but each one can take days, weeks or even months. Riverside County and San Bernardino County face heavy court congestion. An estimated 1,300 criminal cases await trial in the western part of Riverside County alone, and a state task force of judges has been sent to help.

I have previously written about the task force of 14 judges chief justice Ronald George assigned to Riverside County. At the time the task force was sent out there were 1200 cases awaiting trials. Now, there are one hundred more cases!! Shouldn't the DA acknowledge that he's swamping the system?

The other amazing part of the article involves Judge Gary Tranbarger's compilation of statistics which show that there have been more "all not guilty" verdicts. This would seemingly support that the DA is bringing more marginal cases to trial as opposed to plea bargaining in good faith. What's DA Pacheco's response?

"What's a judge doing, tracking stuff like that?" Pacheco said. "That exhibits his bias ... he's crafting these numbers to make us look less effective."

What? Resorting to an attack on a sitting judge rather than addressing the issue? Typical.

Great news-More judges

The Governor signed a bill enacting into law increasing the number of judges by 50. Apparently, San Berdoo and Riverside counties are to get seven of the judgeships each. This is in addition to the 15 added last year. Here's the link to the story.

More papering, different county

Here's another article about the disqualification of a judge. As previously discussed on this blog, the RivCo DA is regularly papering Judge Gary Tranbarger for alleged prejudice. The allegation is without any foundation, but I'm glad the DA is doing it because at least we have one judge dedicated to civil trials. At any rate, the San Berdoo public defender is now seemingly disqualifying a San Bern Superior Court Judge.

Interestingly, the judge admitted considering incarceration for bad courtroom conduct of one particularly intransigent attorney. I have never heard of such threats by a judge. The behavior hopefully warranted such punishment. Attorneys are known as "officers of the court" whereby they are supposed to be facilitating the court's effort at doling out justice. I usually like to give attorney's the benefit of the doubt in understanding their role. This is not to say that their isn't bad conduct in court by attorneys, their certainly is, but bad enough to warrant incarceration? That is quite a stretch.

Pool contractor, wife guilty in theft case

Here's an article about the fine line between criminal and civil conduct. The article describes a pool contractor who in one instance took $90,000 for a pool and proceeded to dig a big hole and did nothing else. Apparently, he did this or a variation of it 19 times. Normally, an aggrieved home owner's only option is to sue in civil court. The district attorney thought that this rose above the norm sufficiently to bring a criminal action. As an aside and as the IELB's astute readers know, there are no civil cases in RivCo, only criminal ones.

The Browns defended themselves by stating that employee salaries and worker's compensation in combination with poor management ate them up. I'm sure there is some truth to this, but it's hard to imagine circumstances justifying Brown's receipt of $90K and doing nothing except digging a big hole.

It is common for contractors to get behind projects where they use their downpayments on future projects to complete current projects. The Constractor's STate Licensing Board is supposed to ensure this doesn't happen by enforcing the law limiting down payments to $1000 or ten percent. Brown should never have gotten a $90,000 down payment. Still, I'm troubled by the district attorney's action here. Let's ask the question why did the contractor need to use funds from the future project for the present projects. Like I said, this is very common, and is usually the result of some unforeseen contingency. On construction projects, problems are the rule rather than the exception. Someone, either the architect, the general contractor or a subcontractor will miss something they were required to handle. When this happen, the party at fault starts blaming everyone else. The result is that everyone loses, even the parties not at fault. I've seen general contractors able to avoid their own mismanagement at the expense of subcontractors. So what of these subcontractors, victimized by the Goliath's? They use funds from other projects to make payroll, pay payroll taxes, and pay worker's compensation. It would be very unfortunate for the DA to prosecute these individuals, but something tells me that it may become the norm.

At any rate, let's close on this: Let this be a lesson to any consumers out there. Pay only the minimal downpayment required by law. You cannot rely upon the contractors having fear of the district attorney. They're too busy trying to rescue earlier projects.

Guiliani back in the IE

The IELB's inaugural posts covered the Mayor's visit to our very own Coffee Depot back in August. Well, the Mayor is back in the IE. This time though in Palm Springs. Here's the PE's report. The Mayor's speech was a little partisan:

"Democrats think business is the enemy," Giuliani said. "They want to tax it. They want to regulate it. ... We want to give business more flexibility."

This being the PE, there was of course the obligatory quote from someone who's opinion is absolutely meaningless to me. For instance, Marcella Roth, a book vendor, said:

"I don't want to hear their opinions on their opponents," said Roth, a Palm Springs resident. "I want to hear what they care about and what they are going to do."

Gee, that's exactly what I feel about Roth's opinion.

"Don't taze me Bro."

These guys apparently didn't say the magic phrase:

"Officers use Taser on two at nightclub

Police used a Taser to stun two people involved in a large fight early Sunday at The Ville nightclub.

About 2 a.m., police went to the club on University Avenue to break up a fight, according to police. Two of the people involved did not stop fighting so officers shocked them with Tasers."

Another non-legal post

The Press Enterprise reports that "This year's Southern California smog season likely will be the cleanest on record." Great balls of fire, who knew? Perhaps our current federal and state leaders aren't destroying the environment after all.

Adverse Possession in the news

Here's a rare article. It's about adverse possession which is a legal process whereby a squatter can obtain title to someone else's real estate by openly and notoriously claiming and using said real estate. Where this is done for the statutorily prescribed period, the squatter becomes an owner. This process was common in the wild west where the government wanted to encourage the use of real estate as opposed to allowing absentee owners to stifle economic development by tying up the real estate.

Breaking news

Judge Spitzer was removed as a judge by the state Commission on Judicial Performance. For a history of the allegations of misconduct see the posts below. For an article on his removal, go here.