Most Mondays FIJA hosts a brief Zoom session covering highlights of recent jury-related news and how it intersects with jury nullification as well as FIJA goings on and other related items of interest we come across. It is followed by a short Q&A session to address any questions about the session topics or other jury-related questions. This is an abbreviated summary of the presentation on 19 September 2022, not including the Q&A.
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Community Indicts San Francisco Superior Court in Mock Trial over Speedy Trial Violations
We’ve talked several times in previous sessions of 15 Minutes with FIJA about the zealous advocacy of Mano Raju, the elected San Francisco Public Defender, in defense of those who STILL remain in illegal indefinite detention by the government with the COVID-19 pandemic STILL being used as an excuse to permit these violations of Constitutional rights.
That advocacy continued as part of a recent community protest on the steps of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, consisting of a mock trial in which the government was symbolically put on trial for the abysmal state of its speedy trial violations. Currently there are reportedly more than 550 cases past their trial deadline but not yet heard, with more than 150 people being falsely imprisoned without trial past their speedy trial deadlines.
While the Court reportedly claims that it has fully reopened, another spokesperson from the public defender’s office, Valerie Ibarra, reportedly says that it is not using 5 of its 11 open courtrooms. Ibarra also pointed out that the Court is not holding felony trials at the Civic Center courthouse or looking for alternate venues to ease the backlog.
The mock trial included a variety of witnesses testifying to the gross injustice of the government’s blatant violation of the laws IT is supposed to abide by for the sake of criminally prosecuting more of those of US it sees as its subjects or underlings.
“When the courts are not enforcing trial deadlines, our clients are trapped pre-trial in jail, by a system that violates their rights, jeopardizes their health, and separates them from their families and communities,” said Raju at the protest. “San Francisco shamefully stands alone in violating constitutional speedy trial rights. Other counties all over the state have opened their courtrooms and available spaces to ensure residents, whose freedom is at stake, are given their day in court,” he pointed out.
Stephen Kloster spent 410 days in jail pre-trial, only to be acquitted of all felony charges once he finally had his day in court. He wrote a statement that “As an immunocompromised person, I lived in fear that I would get seriously sick or die while I was in jail. It’s ironic that the stated reason for trial delays is COVID-19 because the people in San Francisco’s jails waiting for their day in court are the most vulnerable to the spread of serious illnesses like COVID-19. It feels like the Court isn’t taking its responsibility to hold trials seriously, and they’re playing games with our lives.”
The mock trial highlights the double standard that has consistently been permitted by the government in how it treats itself and its agents compared to how it treats the rest of us. If any of us falsely imprisoned someone, that would be considered an incredibly serious criminal matter. When the government falsely imprisons people in violation of speedy trial deadlines, it just gives itself pass after pass after pass. The government and government agents can violate the law with few or no consequences, but when non-government people do it, the government will show no mercy.
In conjunction with the mock trial, public defenders have also reportedly filed a number of petitions regarding harsh conditions under which those illegally detained are being held and to free several of the people so detained.
Without trial by jury, there can be no jury nullification, nor is there even a basic standard of justice for those who are factually innocent. People have spent literally hundreds of days in jail in San Francisco pre-trial, without ever having been convicted, only to be found not guilty after a jury hears their case and deliberates for a couple of hours. Yet this is little comfort to someone who has already been punished by months or even years in jail, losing their job, their housing, their property, perhaps even significant others or children.
SF Public Defenders and Community Hold Mock Trial to Indict the Court for Violating Speedy Trial Rights Amid Crippling Backlog, The Davis Vanguard, 17 September 2022
Locked In SF Jails Indefinitely: Release of 150 Demanded as Speedy Trial Rights Denied, The San Francisco Standard, 16 September 2022
De Facto Indefinite Detention of Mentally Ill Pre-trial Detainees in California
In this week’s review of news regarding speedy trial issues, I came across yet another new and horrifying government abuse that was not previously on my radar. Again, I reiterate that without trial by jury, there can be no jury nullification.
What is this latest abuse to pop up on my radar? California is apparently making a regular practice of indefinite detention of mentally ill people who are accused, but not convicted, of criminal offenses. Because they have been deemed mentally incompetent, they can’t go to trial until they are rehabilitated. They have to be treated to the point that they are mentally competent to stand trial before their case can proceed. So what’s the problem?
Los Angeles Times staff writer Kevin Rector summed up their Catch-22, explaining:
”Without the needed beds, mentally ill defendants are being left behind bars and without substantive care for far longer than the courts have said is constitutional. While their criminal cases and rights to a speedy trial are put on hold based on their illnesses, they are denied the services that might restore them to competency and allow their cases to proceed.
In other words, they and their advocates say, they are trapped in the criminal justice system with no access to justice.”
In his report, Rector detailed how the state of California has been ordered to rectify the situation, yet continues to resist and violate orders regarding reducing wait times for those imprisoned. The state continues to request that intermediate deadlines for showing incremental progress in improving the situation be canceled. Yet while it does so, the state is not only not making progress, but rather the situation is getting worse.
Rector points out that: “According to the Department of State Hospitals, the state had 1,768 incompetent detainees in jail and awaiting transfer to a state hospital or other care facility as of June, which was a substantial increase from the 1,443 it had in July 2021. The average wait time for those detainees stood at 141 days, up from an average of 63 in September 2019.”
Again, if any of us falsely imprisoned someone, that would be considered an incredibly serious criminal matter. When the government falsely imprisons people in violation of speedy trial deadlines, where are the consequences?
‘You can’t get out’: Mentally ill languish in California jails without trial or treatment, Los Angeles Times, 14 September 2022
South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Abusive Civil Asset Forfeiture Scheme
Finally, I’m reporting an unfortunate decision for due process and jury rights from the South Carolina Supreme Court. The Court overturned a lower court’s ruling that sections 44-53-520 and -530 of the South Carolina Code, related to asset forfeiture, are facially unconstitutional under both the Excessive Fines Clause and the Due Process Clause of the federal and state constitutions.
Civil asset forfeiture is an abusive scheme by the government to circumvent the right to trial by jury. It is a legal fiction that pretends that a person is not on trial, but inanimate property, which has no constitutional rights. By this “logic”, the government then allows itself to drastically lower its own burden of proof well below the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt and flip the presumption of innocence such that the property is considered guilty unless proven innocent by the property owner.
Near the start of the majority opinion, the Court laid out the exceedingly high standard they would have required the petitioner to surmount to prevail:
“Our precedent imposes a high threshold for finding a statute unconstitutional. “All statutes are presumed constitutional and will, if possible, be construed so as to render them valid.” ... Stated differently, “A legislative enactment will be declared unconstitutional only when its invalidity appears so clearly as to leave no room for reasonable doubt that it violates a provision of the constitution.””
Compare this to the exceedingly low initial burden the state has given itself in civil asset forfeiture cases, in which it must only make an initial showing that there is “probable cause for believing a substantial connection exists between the property to be forfeited and the criminal activity.” This then shifts the burden of proof onto the property owner to show that the property was NOT involved in the crime. In other words, innocent until proven guilty becomes guilty until proven innocent.
Chief Judge Beatty opined in his partial dissent from the majority that:
”I agree with the circuit court that the current statutory scheme places an undue burden on property owners, many of whom are never charged with a crime, to prove they are not guilty of any wrongdoing in order to reclaim their property. This procedure is premised on the antiquated legal fiction that the in rem action is against the property itself and not the property owner, thereby depriving individuals of many of the safeguards that have historically protected their fundamental property interests.”
”Reliance on this legal fiction has allowed courts to dispense with the normal safeguards that would prevent the government from taking the property of its citizens, often when they have not been convicted of wrongdoing, because this legal fiction affects the burden of proof and the rights to counsel and a jury trial.”
”Although I find our current civil forfeiture scheme is unconstitutional because it is burden-shifting, I do not believe criminal forfeiture is unconstitutional unless it is grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense and is not connected to the offense... For this reason, I invite the General Assembly to consider replacing the current civil forfeiture scheme with a forfeiture procedure that is predicated on a conviction, as a number of states have already done, instead of probable cause.”
Editorial: SC civil asset forfeiture law overdue for an overhaul after court upholds it, The Post and Courier, 19 September 2022
SC Supreme Court upholds civil asset forfeiture law, urges legislative reform, The Post and Courier, 14 September 2022
Jimmy A. Richardson, II, Solicitor for the 15th Judicial Circuit v. Twenty Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-One, U.S. Currency and Travis Green, South Carolina Supreme Court, 14 September 2022
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