Reisig Takes Full Credit For Streamlining Yolo County Court System

In a press release issued on Tuesday, Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig attempted to take full credit for a reduction in court delays that, over three years, have been reduced by nearly 20 percent according to his office.  The local media dutifully reported on this, doing little to no checking with the other key players.

According to his press release, “In 2007, after being elected District Attorney, Reisig started paying attention to lengthy case delays and the many inmates who were in the Yolo County jail for months and years awaiting trial.”

“In 2008, he introduced to his staff a new mission to reduce court delays with the mantra, ‘Justice Finds No Solace in Delay.’ The idea was that when cases are delayed and drag through the court system, victims are further traumatized, memories of witnesses fade or witnesses die, and defendants’ speedy trial rights are violated. Additionally, the countless court appearances seen in the past due to unnecessary continuances wasted both time and money,” the release reports.

According to the DA’s office, “In 2008, on average, felony cases took 144 days from assignment to a prosecutor to disposition. In 2009, that timeframe was reduced to 132 days. And, the average life of a felony case in 2010 further deceased [sic] to 117 days.”

Mr. Reisig praised the efforts of his prosecutors and the Yolo County judicial system. “Although we spearheaded these efforts to move cases through the criminal courts swiftly, the judicial system as a whole was cooperative.” Reisig continued, “My prosecutors have been very driven to avoid continuances. The court has tried to move cases along. And, victims have noticed a difference.”

Mr. Reisig said that he “hopes to continue working in partnership with the courts and defense attorneys to reduce court delays even further. ‘If we all work together, we can continue to shave days and even weeks off these cases while being careful to preserve the constitutional rights of the defendants.’ “

However, while he is quick to grab praise, he is slow to acknowledge the work of others.

Judge Rosenberg, as the Daily Democrat reported back in January 2010, “implemented a new calendar system to address an increasing backlog of cases. The inefficient court calendar of the past meant only 55 criminal trials went through the Yolo judicial system a year, and defendants had to wait more than eight months for their day in court.”

Moreover, Judge Rosenberg “reconfigured court proceedings to a vertical calendar system, in which only one judge is assigned to a case for all major purposes, instead of several. Taking out the middle man, so to speak, more than doubled the capacity for cases and broke an all-time record with 121 trials in 2008.”

“We’ve pretty much eliminated downtime,” doing so with a budget that’s $1 million leaner than the previous year’s, Judge Rosenberg told the Davis Enterprise back in 2010. “We’ve had to deal with that while maintaining the same workload, and maintaining staff morale.”

Back in March, Public Defender Tracie Olson discussed this issue before the county board of supervisors.  Previously, she said, we did have a backlog, and there were people in custody for years before their trial.  But, she argued, that is gone.

Instead, what we have seen now is a large number of jury trials with no corresponding increase in the crime rate.

“It’s absolutely true that we’re having more and more jury trials,” she told the Board.  “I think we had 112 last year, 121 each of the two years prior which prior to that I think we had 50 or 60 jury trials.  So, workload is still very, very high.”

Ms. Olson told the board, “It is my opinion that the number of jury trials has nothing to do with the crime rate.”

In addition to the large number of trials, the District Attorney’s office, while claiming to streamline the process, also bogs it down with a number of cases that could settle if they charged them more reasonably and if they were more willing to deal.

In the last month alone, we monitored and covered the Kalah case, where four defendants from a West Sacramento Asian family were charged with drug dealing and gang charges.  After a six-month investigation produced only 1.4 grams of meth, they nevertheless charged the defendants with enough counts to send them away for life.

The result of the trial was one conviction, one dismissal and two hung juries.  They then settled the two hung juries for minor charges and short prison time, but for all of the time and resources, the case was largely overblown as a gang dealing drugs, when it appears it was a father down on his luck attempting to sell drugs to support his family.

In that case, Deputy DA Ryan Couzens laid out what might be considered the DA’s Manifesto, in essence agreeing that Yolo County charges minor crimes very harshly.

He called this a gang, selling drugs.  He said that it is irrelevant that Sacramento or Stockton would charge this crime as a misdemeanor.  He said that it is on them, and their problem.  He said this is Yolo County and we do things differently here.

He admitted that he is very aggressive about gangs and crimes.  He said the same for his office.  Further, he acknowledged that they did not find evidence of a huge drug operation – that they only found 1.4 grams of meth. 

But he said that if we allow “specks of methamphetamine” to go unchecked, if we allow a fledgling gang to go unchecked, just because it is a fledgling operation, that “that’s throwing in the towel.”

In a case that has been going on since May 2010, two teenagers face at least 13 years in prison for allegedly attempting to sell an ounce of marijuana to what turned out to be undercover police officers.  The case could have been settled a year ago, had the DA simply been willing to charge it as a marijuana case rather than a gang case.

The DA argued that the sellers of the marijuana were two validated Norteno gang members and an associate.  However, Defense Attorney Rod Beede countered that the Penal Code 186.22(b) statute requires a specific intent, “with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members.”

Davis Officer Briesenick was fundamentally unable to articulate the benefit in this case to a criminal street gang, other than the fact that there were two gang members and an associate in the case and the home had ties, apparently, to Norteno gang members.

Recently, in one week, seven individuals were on trial in Yolo County, five were acquitted, there was one hung jury and there was one individual convicted but on lesser charges.

In March, Public Defender Tracie Olson indicated that when the DA refuses to make a reasonable offer, there is little choice for the defense but to take it to trial.  The DA often sees the facts one way and the defense another way.

“We just couldn’t meet on the minutiae,” she told the Board of Supervisors, “so we ended up having a jury trial, we did a great job, and our clients were acquitted.”

The reality is that while the DA can talk about streamlining the process, until he changes both his charging policies and his offering policies, all we have done is push a lot of cases, that do not belong in trial, through the system.

Ms. Olson at the time suggested that the courts do not get involved as much as they used to.  By this she meant that judges need to pre-conference cases “in a meaningful way.”  The sides, in chamber, would lay out their cards and the judges would say, “given this, this is what I would do.”

“Sometimes we don’t have to fight any more if we know [what a judge is inclined to do given the facts presented to him],” she said.  “So the judges need to do more work and the judges acknowledge that.”

Supervisor Jim Provenza indicated that this was brought up last year, and Tracie Olson responded that it has been subject to ongoing discussions.

Supervisor Provenza added, “I don’t want to cut costs by eliminating jury trials where there needs to be one.  But if there are cases that could settle but for the lack of judicial involvement, then that’s something that we need to address.”

Tracie Olson concluded that portion of the discussion by citing shared blame among all of the parties.

In the meantime, juries continue to send the message this year that they are not going to convict on minor cases if the facts are even remotely in question.

—David M. Greenwald reporting