PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The Habeas case has stalled in part due to the pandemic, it could resume next month potentially. Meanwhile Dev and others in California will have an opportunity to petition for resentencing under a new law, AB 1540. Assemblymember Phil Ting’s law will give people a right to counsel and petition the court for resentencing. There are so many of these absurd sentences, it is good that Aguilera-Mederos case caught people’s attention, but we need to have a way to fix some of these sentences that are absurdly long."
----------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENTARY: "Public outrage worked in the Aguilera case," by Editor David Greenwald, published by The Davis Vanguard, on January 3, 2021. (David Greenwald is founder, editor and executive director of The Davis Vanguard.)
GIST: "Rory Fleming’s column today noting the turn of events in the case of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos who was absurdly sentenced to 110 years in prison when his brakes failed and he killed four people crashing his truck into other traffic.
Governor Polis commuted his sentenced to the still harsh but much more reasonable 10 years with parole eligibility at the end of 2026.
Rory notes in today’s column, “Alexis King, the DA in charge of the case, protested the decision, preferring a sentence of 20-30 years because that is the harshest concrete recommendation she heard from a victim’s family member.”
Rory points out this is not some sort of unusual occurrence, “there are many other cases very similar to his: accidental car crashes leading to felony convictions and vastly disproportionate criminal sentences.”
He noted the case of Kenneth McDaniel, “Hearing the news of Mr. Aguilera-Mederos’ receiving clemency, Virginia McDaniel, his wife, tweeted “Yes my husband doing 100 years for accident but nobody want talk about that I’ll post it and maybe one person will comment.””
As Rory points out, “So what makes one case viral and another irrelevant?”
I will go a step further and point out that there are all sorts of just absurdly long sentences. As many know, the first case I ever covered was Ajay Dev. I was in the courtroom in Yolo County when Ajay Dev received 378 years for allegedly raping his adoptive daughter over about a five year period.
I have since come to believe that Dev was wrongly convicted. But let’s say he wasn’t, there are a lot of factors here that should lead us to question the length of the sentence.
First, the overall paucity of the evidence -there was no physical evidence, it came down to he said, she said, and a very questionable judicial decision allowing the victim to translate a key segment of a pretext phone call for the jury. Later evidence suggests that she mistranslated it into an incriminating statement when it was benign.
Second, the man had no criminal record. He has a good record in prison.
Third, we allow people who murder to be eligible for parole after a certain length of time, and yet, this man is sentenced to de facto LWOP.
The Habeas case has stalled in part due to the pandemic, it could resume next month potentially. Meanwhile Dev and others in California will have an opportunity to petition for resentencing under a new law, AB 1540. Assemblymember Phil Ting’s law will give people a right to counsel and petition the court for resentencing.
There are so many of these absurd sentences, it is good that Aguilera-Mederos case caught people’s attention, but we need to have a way to fix some of these sentences that are absurdly long."
The entire column can be read at:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGmtFJRVkJwWSWJgVSWxzRNgjnJ
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
