Yolo County is middle of the pack in terms of crime rate, but near the top in the state in per capita incarceration rate – much of this is due to charging policies from the DA’s office and their unwillingness to reduce charges in pleas which has led to the highest trial rate in the state.
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In May Judge Dan Maguire wrote in an op-ed expressing appreciation for juries: “According to the latest statistics from the California Judicial Council, available at www.courts.ca.gov, Yolo County has significantly more jury trials per capita than most California counties. For the fiscal year 2013-14, Yolo County had 144 criminal jury trials and six civil trials, while Sacramento County had 297 criminal trials and 25 civil trials during the same period.
“Yolo’s population is about one-seventh that of Sacramento’s, but our jury trial load is almost one half (46 percent) that of our much larger neighbor.”
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So the cause is that they don’t plead cases out as much which leads to more trials and higher incarceration rates?
The cause is that the DA doesn’t offer reasonable offers pretrial, so the defendants are more likely to risk trial.
I guess “reasonable” is in the eye of the beholder. The county has no penalty for taking up spaces in the corrections system so I guess the cost of trials is the rate limiting factor? Perhaps they calculated that it’s cheaper to try certain people and give them to the state rather than arresting them repeatedly?
This is a bad thing why?
Don’t we want Yolo County to send a message to take your crime elsewhere? Or better yet, if you chose to live here you should behave or else there is a bigger probability that you will spend jail time.
Wasn’t there a recent article on the DV that lamented that defendants were being forced to plead guilty and not getting their day in court? Seem to member something like that….
What I think you’re remembering is the bail issue of pre-trial custodial situations.
Except I don’t believe that’s what’s happening.
So if you don’t bail people out then they have an incentive to plead which pads your conviction rates however leads to more jail time and probation and less prison time. If you bail people you have more trial expenses and more prison sentences. If you bail/OR people and then offer them deals they still have less incentive to take the deal as they have less of a pressing need. In addition people have a right to a jury trial and if you say something like “either take the deal and get probation or face trial and get 10 years if you lose” aren’t you making a mockery of their right to a trial?
Not necessarily. Bail puts pressure on the defendant to take a less favorable deal than they might have without bail. And it disadvantages those who can’t afford to bail ou
“Bail puts pressure on the defendant to take a less favorable deal than they might have without bail.” however counties with stricter bail policies have lower trial and incarceration rates. Does not sound like it works out the way you think.
“however counties with stricter bail policies have lower trial and incarceration rates. ”
Show me because Yolo has strict bail policies, high trial and higher incarceration rates. I don’t think the data back you here.
Why are the trial rates so high? The incentive to take a plea bargain is a function of what your exposure is in trial (how much you will get if a jury finds you guilty) and the difference between the exposure and the offer. In Yolo, the offers are either not made or often very high, so the incentive to cop a plea is lower than other counties.
” In Yolo, the offers are either not made or often very high, so the incentive to cop a plea is lower than other counties.” Why do you believe that is?
Re: Frankly 6:07–Yes, one way to interpret the data is that Yolo does a better job of finding, convicting and jailing the bad guys and keeping them off the streets and out of the nieghborhoods, consequently the crime rate is relatively low. On the other hand, the standard DG interpretation is that the incarceration rate is unfairly high; and that lowering the incarceration rate would have little effect on the crime rate. Without more information, it is difficult to discern which interpretation is more accurate (or they both may be partly right).
I agree with the quoted portion, and particularly with the parenthetical phrase…
That certainly does not gibe with our observations in the courtrooms. What I see are overcharged cases where minor crimes are turned into felonies and with the exposure in some of those cases, they get pleas and every so often they get a conviction on a questionable case. One example that was fairly recent, two guys stole a $20 toolbox out of someone’s truck. That should have been misdemeanor petty theft, but the DA added a felony conspiracy (to commit a misdemeanor). The judge ended up reducing it down to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge and the case settled, but that’s pretty rare for a judge to do in Yolo. My view is not that they are doing a better job of finding and convicting, but rather the DA is overcharging consistently and getting away with it often enough.
“overcharged cases”. Whether that is consistent or not consistent with practice in other counties would depend on the jacket of the perps. If it was a first offense then I would completely agree. In other counties if they had several priors it would be common to do this and then plead it out.
I can you talking to lawyers who work in other counties, Yolo is very unique in charging. For instance for years they double-charged drug cases as both possession and transportation for sale, they went away from it for a while, but now that Prop 47 has come into play, they have gone back to that scheme because it’s a way to get the charge to the felony even in cases where it clearly was not an intent to sell. There was a case where the Deputy DA went on this rant about how this is YOlo and we do things differently. One of thoughts is that there actually isn’t a huge amount of violent crime in Yolo, so the DA’s office overcharges on minor crimes to make up for it.
Can you explain (or hypothesize) why our Board if Supervisors is willing to fund this outrageous waste of taxpayer money?