Spanish Speaking client charged with 2 separate counts of child molest and sexual assault involving 2 alleged victims, which carried a potential 2 life sentences. Met client and discussed taking a poly...graph test, which is NOT admissible as evidence absent the stipulation of the parties in the State of California. I advised my client that if he should pass that I would give his test result to the Deputy District Attorney handing the case.
My advice to my client was that if he passes the Lie Detector Test that the District Attorney would not immediately dismiss the case. However, it would force the Deputy District Attorney to re-evaluate his case.
My client passed the polygraph a copy of which and a video was given to the Deputy District Attorney. The Deputy District Attorney spoke to my polygraph expert, Ron Hilley, and then proposed that my client take a second polygraph test with a Spanish Speaking Polygraph Expert. He passed a second polygraph test and the case was dismissed before preliminary examination.
Cases such as this often go to jury trial with a very high degree of exposure and a great likelihood of either a conviction and subsequent life sentence or pressure from the trial attorney for the client to plead guilty to avoid a possible life sentence to a reduced sentence that still involves life-long sex registration.
Polygraph examinations are not inexpensive, but put into perspective, the cost of the two polygraphs cost approximately the same as one day of attorney's fees in jury trial, that would otherwise take weeks or months.
Criminal defense
People versus Wendell Leroy
Jan 01, 2004
OUTCOME: Dismissed
The Defendant, Wendell Leroy and his wife, were charged with 22 felony counts of real estate fraud and elder fraud. They were facing many years in California State Prison if convicted of the charges. ... The complaining witness was represented by a civil attorney and had filed a civil lawsuit against the Leroys before the case was referred to the District Attorneys Office. The DA's office investigated the case. Thus, it was the DA's investigator, who interviewed the witnesses to build a case against the Leroys and who ulitmately confiscated all of their computers and files from their office.
The complaining witness complained that the Leroys had defrauded her out of her family home. The Leroys said that all that they did initially was to tell her how she could refinance her home, which at that time was fully owned, but for the property taxes owed. The only profit to them was the loan generation fee. The homeowner/complaining witness never made a single payment on the loan and defaulted on the loan. She obtained another loan on her own paying off the amount that she defaulted on and in each case borrowing more money on three successive occasions. When she returned to see the Leroys, she had defaulted on 3 successive loans. She only qualified for a high interest cash loan. The Leroys helped her to obtain this private party short term high interest loan to keep her from losing the home. Then, they tried to get her sons to qualify for a bank loan. Finally, they offered to purchase her duplex. The plan was that they would evict one of the residents of the smaller unit and have she and her sons live in the larger back unit and pay a reasonable rent. Some of the money from the sale of her property would be used to improve the property. They would then rent the smaller unit and cover the cost of her mortgage. And, the property would be sold back to her and/or to her sons when they qualified to purchase the home. But, neither she nor her sons ever paid the rent. Worse than that they annoyed and harassed the new renters of the smaller unit and interfered with the improvement construction on the home.
I spent the time to understand the complexities of the case. Each time I learned a new twist to the case, I said to my clients, if that were true there would be supporting documents that would help us. On each occasion, Mrs. Leroy searched the computer discs to find the supporting documents.
I hired a forensic accountant, Shelley Lamar to create a defense financial analysis of the case. She and Mrs. Leroy were critical to organizing volumes of evidence for the defense case.
At the Preliminary Examination of this case, the alleged victim claimed that in each transaction the Leroys handed her documents to sign and that she trusted them and simply signed her name without reading them. She accused the Leroys of having forced her to sell her property to them without her knowledge. Each morning of her testimony, her civil lawyer drove her to the courtroom. But, on the second day of her testimony her son came to pick her up. I had been trying to subpena him for weeks. I asked the Judge to order that he return the next day for examination, which Judge Lee did.
The next day the complaining witness' son maintained that the Leroys cheated his mother out of the family home. However, on cross examination he finally admitted that the Leroys had attempted to get him qualified for a loan and that he did not qualify. When questioned about "the plan" that the Leroys purchase the home to keep it from being repossessed by the bank, that he and his mother and brother, pay rent on the back unit and use money from the proceeds of the sale to improve and rent the front unit to pay the mortgage on the home and, that the Leroys agreed to sell the property back to them when they could qualify for the loan. He also admitted that his mother never paid the Leroys any rent.
The Deputy District Attorney dismissed the case, all 22 felony fraud counts.
Criminal defense
People versus Shanandoha Garcia
Feb 09, 1997
OUTCOME: Defendant, Shanandoha found not guilty
Murder case in which my client was accused of a drive-by shooting in which a gang member was shot and killed. The coroner's report and the angles of the bullet paths helped to establish that the fatal... shots were in self-defense. It was the first Animated Forensic Reconstruction ever admitted into evidence in Santa Clara County that helped to establish that the client acted in self-defense and an acquittal.
Criminal defense
People versus Kenneth Foley
N/A
OUTCOME: Defendant Kenneth Foley was released and his conviction reversed.
Defendant Kenneth Foley was wrongfully convicted on an early 3 Strikes Case and was serving a 25 year to life sentence on a Robbery that he did not commit due to a combination of things involving prose...cutorial misconduct. I had called the actual perpetrator to the original trial and he ultimately confessed to having committed the crime. The Deputy DA argued that the Defendant and his lawyer were perpetrating a fraud on the court. When the San Jose Mercury News was running the series of Tainted Trials Stolen Justice on the front page and the local section, I contacted the then Assistant District Attorney, Karen Sinunu. She in turn assigned now Special Assistant District Attorney David Angel to re-investigate the case. He discovered some evidence previously unavailable to the defense and with the help of the Northern California Innocence Project and Lead Attorney Linda Starr, the defense filed a writ of Habeas Corpus, to which the District Attorney's Office Stipulated and was granted by Judge Douglas Southard. Kenneth Foley was released and his conviction and the conviction of the Co-defendant, Michelle Bullington were both reversed.
