Wednesday, April 25, 2007

A finding of Factual Innocence

"... Humboldt County Superior Court Judge John T. Feeney found good cause Tuesday — “due to the facts of the case” — to grant a motion that finds (Carol Ann) Yunque “factually innocent” of the charges she was acquitted of following a jury trial in January.

In addition, Feeney found good cause for the “sealing and ultimate destruction of the records in (the) Yunque case.”...:
Yunque trial records to be 'destroyed'

It is a rare thing for a prosecutor to say that a defendant is INNOCENT of all charges, as Roy Cooper did in the Duke Lacrosse case. But those cases were stopped before they went to trial

It is also a rare thing for a motion for FACTUAL INNOCENCE to be applied for and even more rare than that for it to be granted after a full trial.

But that is what just happened in the Yunque case.

This can only happen if the judge finds that there was NO EVIDENCE worthy of going to trial. According to one of my anons "This means there was no factual basis to have charged her to begin with and not that there was not enough evidence to get the conviction."

It means the District Attorney's Office abused it's prosecutorial discretion and brought a case to trial that never should have been pursued.

Since it also means, apparently, that Yunque can sue, we'll have to put this one on the list of cases to watch. After the fact.

Question is, though - who will be sued, and does Paul Gallegos have absolute immunity?

(Thanks for the heads up, anon 2:17)
Addtl info:
Cal Pen Code § 851.8

7 comments:

  1. The really BIG question is why does the DA's Office, specifically Schwartz, take such a loser case to trial yet be so willing to pled out just about everything else? This does not seem to make much sense.

    There was that recent loser case in Ferndale. The child endangerment? Was the DA's Office tryiing to please Ferndale PD? The Chief? The City Council? Or did someone in the DA's Office (or a supporter) dislike the Marsh fellow?

    Seems like a huge waste of resources and an apparent misuse or abuse of power.

    Shouldn't a DA's Office win more cases that it loses?

    It doesn't seem like anything is going to change in the near future.

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  2. Oh, he'll win the slam dunk murder case, just to keep himself in the papers. Again, the issue isnt whether the boss, who can command the resources of the entire office, can win one easy case, it's what goes
    on every day with thousands of other cases. And the picture there isn't pretty.

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  3. omg - the applegate case is about as slam dunk as it gets. Talk about cherry picking to get your name in the press. But as he should be starting to realize, its simply not about getting the slam dunk conviction but having the case survive on appeal. And with that, Gag's is not doing that well. He has got to retry another of his "slam dunks" in which he goatscrewed it up from his stupidity. Just because a humboldt jury will convict "in spite" of Gallegos, doesn't mean that it will withstand the appellate stage.

    What a shame for this county. What a shame for victims and their families.

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  4. Well, maybe he could hire a
    "special" DA, but this time, instead of Schechtman, it could be Allison Jackson, who had the Rollins case all lined up when PVG fired her.

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  5. What other Gallegos case does he have to re-try?

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  6. I believe 9:26 is referring to the Joesph Pierre Rollin case.

    Joseph Pierre Rollin "was convicted only of the enhanced abuse of a dependent adult (Joi Henderson Wright) and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

    But in December, the conviction was reversed on appeal because, court documents show, Gallegos repeatedly used Pierre’s non-Mirandized denial of responsibility for Joi’s death — later refuted by a Mirandized confession — as evidence of his guilt.

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  7. Update. And he can't get Jackson. She is representing Joi Henderson Wright's family.

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