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RALLYING FOR RELIEF “Conviction Review Units: A National Perspective.” Hollway said not to discount the monkey-see-monkey-do marketing impact. As more counties adopted these units, officials in nearby jurisdictions wanted to show that they were just as woke. “There’s close to 50 of them around the country,” Hollway said. “The effect has been both practical and philosophical.” Around the country, the units were involved in a total of 269 exonerations through 2017, including 42 exonerations that year and a record 72 exonerations in 2016, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Conviction review units were responsible for exonerating 40 people last year alone, Hollway noted. But most of these exonerations were initiated by defense attorneys, innocence organizations, journalists and others, the registry found, raising the question of how proactively the units are actually looking for past mistakes or outright corruption. More than a third of the units haven’t been involved in any exonerations, including the two units in Northern California. In the six years it has existed, the Sacramento County DA’s unit has reviewed approximately 50 convictions, deeming none worthy of exculpation, a spokeswoman said in May. Between 2013 and 2017, the Yolo County DA’s unit also hadn’t found a false conviction, according to the registry. Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig and his staff didn’t respond to multiple requests for recent activity. Yolo County Deputy Public Defender Dean Johansson unsuccessfully tried to unseat Reisig last year. He acknowledged he doesn’t have direct knowledge on how—or whether—the DA’s unit operates, but offered the perception that it was just another “of these surface, lip-service operations.” “The bottom line is I don’t know of any time that they’ve ever questioned or overturned a decision,” Johansson said. Around California, conviction review units reflect a mishmash of approaches. The San Diego County DA’s unit has only one full-time staff member, while Orange County’s “Conviction Integrity Function” and the units in Yolo, Nevada and Merced counties have none. Perhaps coincidentally, San Diego County has participated in one exoneration while the other counties have accounted for a total of zero. This is one of the reasons the registry cautions that conviction review units “are not a panacea.”
The story of Williams’ conviction is a an alternate who believed his friends time-tested tale of cut corners and had been pulled over for “driving while hardwired racial bias. A couple of unsure black.” The magistrate determined that eyewitnesses put a man who looked Gold also selectively applied his marital like Williams in a car that resembled preference, as two single non-black his green Mustang on 48th Avenue women served on the jury. and Martin Luther King Boulevard in The judge added that “the totality of South Sacramento, where the Mustang’s the circumstances … support a finding passenger fired a semiautomatic pistol that race was a substantial factor in the at an occupied 1977 Mercury Cougar. strike.” The Cougar’s 17-year-old driver, Marvel A third trial that featured Williams Chase, died from a bullet to his heart. representing himself during jury instrucWilliams’ first trial ended in a tions ended with his acquittal in hung jury when two black November 2015. jurors refused to convict. Today, Gold is an For Williams’ second assistant chief deputy “I sometimes trial, prosecutor DA in charge of have a problem Robert Gold spiked the office’s sex with single people the only eligible crimes and special black juror during prosecutions. who have never … been the selection Williams, with married.” process. a freshly capped Sacramento County prosecutor According to tooth thanks to a hearing transcripts partnership between Robert Gold cited in an appellate the After Innocence on striking a prospective ruling, Gold gave nonprofit and Arden black juror numerous reasons for Modern Dentistry, is back vetoing the juror, including in the Strawberry Manors a 17-year-old shoplifting bust that neighborhood of his youth. A resulted in probation for the woman when misdemeanor domestic violence case was she was in college, an incident when she dropped against him in 2017. The same felt she was unfairly pulled over, her year, the California Victim Compensation strong belief that defendants are innocent Board denied him benefits, finding that until proven guilty, and the fact that she Williams failed to prove his innocence. was 38 and still single. Regarding the “If I had that evidence, I wouldn’t have latter, Gold acknowledged it was “a minor been convicted in the first place,” Williams point” when he addressed a Sacramento said. “It’s hard. I been going through a Superior Court judge in 1998. transition.” “I sometimes have a problem with Still, Williams said he never lost hope single people who have never … been behind bars. Primarily incarcerated at married,” Gold said, according to the Folsom State Prison, he studied the law and transcript. “They may be a very strongly said he became adept at drafting complaints opinionated person that may not work against prison guards and his own habeas well in a group setting.” corpus appeal. Trial Judge Jeffrey L. Gunther upheld “Now you find yourself spending [time] the juror’s dismissal and Williams was in the law library, being a bookworm,” he convicted of murder and attempted said. “Now I’m law enforcement. It flips murder charges on Aug. 3, 1998. Williams on you.” appealed his conviction while serving a It was in the library that he discovered life sentence and said his first appeal was a love for baroque monetary policy. dismissed on Sept. 11, 2001. He then filed He interpreted and riffed, inventing an a writ of habeas corpus, which the U.S. alternative currency system he calls Eastern District Court of California evendigitherium. Williams described it as tually granted in 2013 over the objections “Bitcoin on steroids.” of then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, Outside the dental office, standing now running for president on a justice behind his black Chrysler sedan, he tried reform platform. to explain it by pointing at his license Magistrate Judge Allison Claire found plate. It read: “MCXIXCM.” Gold’s barrage of reasons for keeping the “My plate is the monetary structure,” black woman off the jury to be undercut Williams said. Then, noticing the blank by multiple non-black jurors Gold didn’t stares, he shrugged. “Nobody gets it,” he object to, including one who had been said. “But it’s OK, I get it.” Ω arrested or charged multiple times and
San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu is making a final push to get his landmark rent control and tenant protection bill across the finish line before the legislative session ends Friday—and a host of working-class Californians descended on Sacramento on Monday to help him. Chiu’s Assembly Bill 1482 is very similar to the Tenant Protection and Relief Act that the Sacramento City Council passed Aug. 13. AB 1482 would prevent landlords from raising rents annually more than 7% plus the cost of living, and no more than 10% under any circumstances. Neither Sacramento’s ordinance nor Chiu’s bill can affect rents at apartments built after Feb. 1, 1995, or single-family homes or condos, which are protected from regulation by the state’s Costa-Hawkins law. In terms of tenant protections, Chiu’s bill would eliminate nocause evictions for renters with more than 12 months of tenancy, which is the same as Sacramento’s ordinance. Two years ago, Chiu co-authored a bill with Assemblyman Richard Bloom to repeal Costa-Hawkins, but couldn’t even get it out of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee that he leads. Yet with wide-scale evictions and displacement plaguing California, Chiu was able to wrestle his latest effort through the committee process. He’s now hoping for a final vote before the legislature’s Friday deadline to send bills to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Representatives from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment said they believe the governor will sign the bill if it makes it to his desk. More than 100 renters marched through every floor and hallway of the state Capitol Monday, promising to vote out any member of the legislature who opposes the bill. Yesenia Miranda Meza, who drove all the way from Pomona in Southern California, said it’s easy for her describe why AB 1482 is important. “My survival depends on it,” the single mother stressed. (Scott Thomas Anderson)
PLEA AGAINST PLASTICS A plush stuffed turtle sat on a podium in front of the state Capitol, reminding attendees at an Aug. 21 press conference just exactly who is getting hurt by single-use plastic and why Senate Bill 54 and Assembly Bill 1080 should pass. Supporters held plastic bottles, but the bills also aim to rid landfills and oceans of other plastic refuse, including hotel shampoo bottles and takeaway containers. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez from San Diego, author of AB 1080, called her bill important “for all of California” and not just a “coastal issue.” “It’s time we hold manufacturers responsible,” she said. State Sen. Ben Allen of Santa Monica applied an economic perspective to his companion bill, saying that “our cities stand to lose literally billions as a result of the crap in our recycling system and waste management system.” Attendees not only heard from lawmakers but from business owners such as Sloane Read of Refill Madness, a Sacramento soap refillery and gift shop, as well as from Eric Potashner from Recology in San Francisco. Opponents argue that the bills require manufacturers and businesses to have only recyclable packaging but don’t address the “needed collection and processing infrastructure needs to ensure collected material is actually recycled or composted,” according to a legislative bill analysis. Versions of both bills are alive but must pass by Friday to be sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom to decide whether to sign them into law. (Deana Medina)
09.12.19
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