By Judy Kerr - My brother, Robert James Kerr, was murdered in 2003. Today, I am one of thousands of murder victim family members who oppose the death penalty.  I actively work for alternatives to exec ...

In December, Woodland resident Jose Valenzuela faced trial in Yolo County. He was accused of attempted murder of two individuals at a notorious Woodland night club, La Finca, home to numerous homicide ...

Evidence At Trial Shows Neither a Clear Criminal Street Gang nor a Nuisance in West Sacramento - At the core of the Yolo County judicial problem is the gang case.  Time after time, I see these young, ...

Judge David Rosenberg and District Attorney Jeff Reisig have argued that the increased number of trials in Yolo County is due to new court management practices that have streamlined the judicial proce ...

Pedro Ramirez and Johnny Morales were scheduled to be sentenced on Friday in Woodland, after pleading no contest to an attack on a Sikh tax driver and making racial slurs during the attack.However, Mr ...

Judge Stephen Mock said in his thirty years on the bench and working in the criminal justice system, he had never seen a situation like this.  However, when West Sacramento Detective Tate had to rush ...

On Tuesday, Yolo County Superior Court Judge Kathleen White issued her long-awaited ruling on whether to grant a "permanent" gang injunction.  The trial had lasted from July until December 15, and we ...

After months in a trial and several months of deliberating, Judge Kathleen White ruled, as most observers and participants expected from the very start, to impose a seven-year injunction on the "Safet ...

The Veritas Initiative, the research and policy arm of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at Santa Clara University School of Law, today released Preventable Error: Prosecutorial Miscond ...

Yesterday the Yolo County trial of Oscar Barrientos opened.  Mr. Barrientos is accused of burglarizing a West Sacramento home.  Not exactly the stuff that a Judicial Watch is made of, except for the f ...

In August of 2010, Michael Artz was found not guilty of the main charge in his case, forced oral copulation, but guilty of having sex with a minor and contacting a minor for the purposes of having sex ...

The campaign to link the budget with reforms to the criminal justice system got another boost this week, and activists descended on Sacramento to urge the California Legislature to protect critical so ...

Much has been made on these pages about the fact that the DA has a tendency to bring some rather problematic cases to trial.  For the most part the DA loses these cases, but they exact a toll nonethel ...

Jury Ultimately Believes Man over Police Officer, But It Is Ultimately a Costly Experience - Fernando Ortega, on November 6, 2010, was having a belated birthday party at his home when his friend infor ...

After some lengthy discussions about the interrogation process, following the conviction of Bennie Moses for the rape of his daughter over a nine-year period, it seems that there is a need to revisit ...

Jury Acquits Woman of Drug Possession, Transportation, Despite Police Finding Drugs on Her - On the surface it should have been a routine drug case.  After all, police found drugs on the defendant Mar ...

Last week a Yolo County Jury convicted Bennie Moses of 62 counts of rape and a variety of sexual assault and sex with minor charges, stemming from a string of incidents in which the defendant had sex ...

Humberto Morales was arrested in Davis last year.  He was stopped at 7:45 am by the Davis Police Department who found car stereos and CD players with wires sticking out of them in his vehicle.Within a ...