Gang Injunction cont’d
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“cool their jets,” that might help explain the precipitous drop in Santa Barbara’s recent gang-related activity. To the extent it can be demonstrated the Mexican Mafia has, in fact, increased its involvement in Santa Barbara affairs, that might offset whatever squish factor the judge assigns the city’s gang stats. Defense attorneys fighting the gang injunction objected that whatever Mister X may or may not have told Anderson, he had ample reason to lie. He is facing life behind bars — temporarily incarcerated in County Jail for spouse abuse — and might be motivated ANECDOTAL ANSWERS: Fresno prosecutor Greg to provide damaging testimony in Anderson insisted his four decidedly unscientific hopes of securing some favors in studies demonstrate gang injunctions reduce crime exchange, they argued. Likewise, and nuisance behavior. they attacked Anderson’s studies, noting that his methodology fell ings in one year than Santa Barbara has seen far short of social science standards. When in nearly 20.) asked point-blank if his studies were “scienIn this context, Judge Colleen Sterne might tific,” Anderson replied, “Not even close,” but find herself challenged to conclude gangs con- he argued that gang injunctions defied any scistitute a current and abiding nuisance of such entific inquiry because there were too many extremity that extraordinary legal steps need variables. He conceded Mister X might have to be taken to limit the rights of the 11 named reason to lie but added he had reason to believe gang members to assemble. (Initially, there were him. It was Mister X who brought up Moreno’s 30, but shortly before the trial started, 19 were name as his contact with the Mexican Mafia, dropped from the proposed injunction because Anderson said. And he knew Moreno, he said. their cases were weak or they were serving He’d prosecuted him personally and sent him to lengthy prison sentences already.) But if Mister prison on gang-related charges. X was indeed told by Michael “Boo” Moreno The trial is expected to last at least another that Santa Barbara gang members needed to week. ■
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long objected that the dams disrupt the riparian environment on which steelhead rely.
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Santa Maria Energy axed its plan to merge with Hyde Park Acquisition Corp. II last week after the New York–based company failed to round up enough votes for the $40 million deal, said Beth Marino, Santa Maria Energy’s vice president of legal and corporate affairs. Marino added that the Santa Maria oil-drilling company — which had its 136 cyclic steam-injection wells approved by the Board of Supervisors in November — will neither try to renegotiate with Hyde Park nor try to merge with another company. Instead, Marino said, the company will seek out a private equity investment to raise the $100 million to $125 million in capital to drill those 136 wells.
Peter Rupert, head of the UCSB Economic Forecast Project
Santa Barbara’s GDP growth is outpacing the rest of the state’s, with the information technology sector growing at a remarkably fast pace. Agricultural employment never fell during the recession, and loans and leases are up from
2013. Santa Barbara’s inequality gap is smaller compared to the rest of the country, but it’s been increasing since 2006. Those were a few of the takeaways from this year’s Santa Barbara County Economic Summit. Read more at independent.com.
EDUCATION Tuesday’s school board meeting marked the last chance this year for the public to weigh in on how the district will spend its money. As part of the new funding model, the Local Control Accountability Plan will detail to the state exactly how the district will use allotted funds. Speakers expressed the need for better assistance for English Language Learners and low-income families. Many talked about visual and arts programs, which will “just be a matter of money,” said Superintendent David Cash after dozens of commenters spoke. One teacher took to the podium to argue money could be saved if teachers weren’t pulled out of school for conferences to create Common Core State Standards assessments, as teachers on special assignment were already released from the classroom for that purpose. The plan will be finalized at the second board meeting in June.
ELECTION Second District supervisorial candidate Roger Aceves scored $138,000 in donations from 4/245/8, increasing his coffers to about $378,000. His donors included former Casmalia toxic-dump owner Ken Hunter ($20,000), the Chumash cont’d page 14 ($15,000, bringing its total
PARADISE LOST: A 15-megaton hydrogen bomb explodes at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954.
Suit Slaps Nukes Santa Barbara Helps Marshall Islands Make Unprecedented Legal Challenge
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BY T Y L E R H AY D E N n a modern-day David-and-Goliath matchup — where David is armed with a lawsuit, Goliath with 17,000 nukes — the tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands is suing the United States and eight other countries for allegedly breaching a 46-year-old treaty to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. The case was filed April 24 in U.S. Federal Court as well as in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. peppered the Marshall Islands with 67 nuclear weapons tests, whose radioactive fallout continue to leave some of those islands unlivable. “Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons,” said Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum,“and we vow to fight so that no one else on Earth will ever again experience these atrocities.” Instead of seeking compensation, the lawsuit aims to compel the world’s nine nuclear nations — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea — to meet the obligations of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Drafted in 1968, the treaty mandates that each country “pursue negotiations in good faith” to end the nuclear arms race “at an early date and to work toward worldwide nuclear disarmament.” (Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea didn’t have nukes when the treaty was created, but the lawsuit asserts that the order applies to them because of “customary international law.”) David Krieger, president of the Santa Barbara–based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said the idea to file suit was hatched when de Brum traveled to the South Coast in 2012 to accept a leadership award from the Foundation, which then consulted on the case. “There were a lot of people in the world who had been discouraged by the lack of progress in disarmament and were looking for a bold and creative initiative,” Krieger said. “The Marshall Islands action fits that description.” The law firm Keller Rohrback LLP — which has an office in Santa Barbara and specializes in constitutional and treaty law — was retained pro bono. The lawsuit is the first of its kind, but attorney Laurie Ashton believes it was properly
filed because federal courts have jurisdiction over such claims.“It’s a matter of treaty law,” she went on, “which in the United States is both an international obligation and a domestic obligation under the supremacy clause.” As Krieger summed up,“The whole point of the lawsuits] is to bring [the nine nuclear nations] into a forum where they need to address the issue of their unkept promises and unfulfilled obligations.” No one from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco would comment on this pending case, but Ashton said that other countries are interested in joining and that a few Nobel Peace Prize winners are already supporting the effort, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Iranian-born rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi. It’s also not the first time a country has sued over nuclear weapons: In 1973, Australia and New Zealand sued France to stop its atmospheric tests over the Pacific and won. At first, France ignored the order, but international pressure eventually forced a switch to underground tests. The Marshall Islands suit argues that rather than scrapping warheads, the countries named are actually ramping up the arms race to the tune of $100 billion a year. But whether the U.S. is complying with or ignoring the treaty remains unclear. “Critical information is still being hidden and access to documents severely restricted by the United States government,” said de Brum. “It is not easy to bargain in good faith absent documentation. … Our nuclear relationship with the United States is fraught with a multitude of promises, some kept, some not, but all negotiated, at least from our side, in good faith.” Krieger pointed to the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, saying it set a bad tone for future disarmament. The response from other governments has so far been minimal and dismissive. Only three of the countries (Britain, India, and Pakistan) recognize the jurisdictional authority of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), so the Marshall Islands is asking all of them to accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction and explain their positions on the case. They have 60 days to reply. “For me,” said Krieger, “the interesting part about this is when two unequally sized and powerful countries meet in court, they stand on level footing.” ■ may 15, 2014
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