So I got a call from Manuel, wanting me to represent his cousin, Jose C, who was in custody in Long Beach PD, along with two other cousins, booked into jail on a murder warrant, no bail, serious charge. The warrant was issued out of Santa Barbara County and the case filed in the Santa Maria branch Court of Santa Barbara County, where the main courthouse, a historical beauty, is located.
So, off I go to meet with the potential client, but soon discovered my Spanish language was very limited and the client spoke no English. I was able to communicate poorly, but managed to let him know how I was contacted, that I would get a Spanish-speaking associate, an investigator, and would see him in Court on the assigned date and instructed him to not talk to the police unless I was present. We managed to get through the first meeting. The client’s two brothers were also charged. I had never been to the Santa Maria Court and knew very little about the area, nor the DAs and the judges, but I must say I have been extremely successful in non-local courts, even though I have preached to other lawyers not to take cases out of their jurisdiction and to get a local lawyer who knows the territory and local idiosyncrasies. If one is going to take a case in an unfamiliar jurisdiction, then associate with a local to keep one informed
So, after my first contact in the case I had to arrange a retainer agreement, so I dealt with my old client, Manuel C. I would need a Spanish-speaking associate and investigator, plus travel and room and board expenses. All was agreed. I contacted the local public defender’s office, got a hold of the attorney representing one of the accused brothers to get a referral to a local Spanish-speaking criminal defense attorney and Steve Belasco was recommended. Got in touch with Belasco, and made arrangements to meet before the next appearance to work out his fee for associating with the case.
Santa Maria is located at the extreme north end of Santa Barbara County. It is primarily agricultural with many horse ranches. Very beautiful and homey. One gets there generally by automobile from Orange County north through through LA and the Ventura Freeway, north through Oxnard and Ventura then up the coast through the City of Santa Barbara cutting inland through Las Olivas, which is a horse ranch area (President Reagan and Michael Jackson had ranches in the area,) continuing where the road intersects again with the coast freeway, then to Highway 101, north to Santa Maria where you get off the freeway and go west into the town . I found a very neat place to stay called the Santa Maria Inn, a rather rustic, but very nice hotel/motel which had country music performers every night in their lounge as well as some dining facilities.
I arranged to meet Steve Belasco at the Santa Maria Inn before the first court appearance. In he walks; I was expecting a Latino and got a red-haired Irishman about 5′ 8” and fairly trim in stature. “How did you get to be called Belasco?” I asked, and he laughed. He replied “My father wanted to be in the movie theater business, and there was a known string of Belasco theaters, very popular with movie-goers, so he changed his name from (can’t remember exactly but something like O’Riley) to Belasco to benefit from the name!” Steve was self-taught as to his Spanish speaking ability, merely from representing Spanish speaking defendants, and he had plenty, as farm and horse ranch country attracts a lot of immigrants from Mexico to work on the ranches and farms. His background consisted of attending one of the top-rated Claremont schools, Pomona College, and after a stint in the Peace Corps in Africa, I believe he then attended UCLA School of Law, and settled in Santa Maria doing criminal defense. What a break for me. Not only getting a Spanish-speaking associate, but a guy who was immensely qualified to work on the case.
This is what I learned from Manuel, the client and the police reports. Manuel and his cousins lived in the Mexican State of Sinaloa where the main city is Culiacan, population several hundred thousand, but the area was at the time rather primitive, where distances were measured by how long it takes to go from one area to another, such as from spot A, it would take one day by horseback to get to point B. Well, one day, two groups of locals met at a ranch for a party where food, drinks and music would be provided, as well as music where people could dance. The lighting was provided by generators as there was no public electricity provided in this remote area in Mexico. Nearby there was a ravine. Well, it seemed there was a lot of drinking and one of the group from Jose’s clan decided to dance with a young attractive lady from the other group. This did not go over too well and before you know it, it both male groups ended up in the ravine shooting at each other. About five members of Jose’s family group were killed and a few of the members of the other clan did not fare too well. One member of the other clan who survived, learned he was targeted for execution for his participation in the shoot-out, so he disappeared. He eventually ended up as a horse tender on a horse ranch in the Las Olivas area of Santa Barbara county. One day, he was assigned to drive a tractor with a trailer attached and in the trailer was a young man whose job was to pitch hay to the horses from the trailer. While the two were doing their job, apparently there was a car parked nearby on one of the horse ranch roads, and when the tractor trailer approached the parked car, one of the occupants got out, walked over to the tractor, shot and killed the driver and then turned the pistol towards the young man who had been pitching hay and shot the young man right in the stomach, but the boy survived to describe the assailant, the car and the shooting. My client ended up accused of being the guy who left the car and deliberately shot and killed the tractor driver and attempted to murder the young hay pitcher. One count of Murder 1st, premeditated and lying in wait and attempted murder in the 1st degree of the young man. The brothers were also charged with the same as accomplices and conspirators.
If you like steak and meat, there is no place better than “Jocko’s.” It is located in a small, and I mean small, village called Nipomo, located just beyond the northern boundary of Santa Barbara County and the southern end of San Louis Obispo County, off of Highway 101 north, and just off the Santa Barbara county line in San Luis Obispo County. The best is their ribeye steak. Steve Belasco first told me about the place. The steaks are cooked outside in big BBQ grills with oak as the firewood. For about twenty dollars, you get soup, salad, steak, baked potato, a vegetable and a scoop of ice cream. Wine and coffee extra. I never made reservations, but would just enter, put my name down, go to the cowboy bar order a martini, and when called, get a table and hash down. Also their baby back ribs were to swoon over. No sauce allowed, just the taste of the ribs, yummy. The whole Santa Maria area has great eats, but Jocko’s tops the list. If you are in the area, it is a must.
Back to the case. It turns out one of the brothers was represented by a friend of mine, Gerson Horn. I liked Gerson, not because of his legal abilities, of which he had plenty, nor his work for California Attorneys for Legal Justice, an organization I mentioned earlier. But as short as I am, he is shorter. In Gerson’s group of defendants, Gerson had a young man associated with his group of defendants whose name I can’t remember, but he was about 16 years old, and part of the defendants’ Sinaloa family. Probably assigned and attached to observe and relate back to the powers-that-be in Mexico.
The investigating sheriff, whose name I cannot remember, was a big and burly guy, about 6’4″, to whom I took an instant dislike, and he felt the same about me. I remember an incident where I stood right up to him, accusing him of lying and trying to pin the murder on my client to close his case, knowing my client was innocent. Thought Steve Belasco was going to pee in his pants, but the cop did nothing. You might wonder why I accused the deputy sheriff of manufacturing? Well,the shooter was described as 6’2″ and my client was 5’8″, quite a discrepancy. Plus, the young hay-pitcher could not ID my client and it was the cop who said in his reports that the witness said the shooter was identified by a picture, which the witness denied saying. All bull-hockey.
So, we went to preliminary hearing, evidence was presented, and the judge found insufficient evidence to connect the defendants to the shooting, as the magistrate should, But the DA can, and did, refile the case with the same charges. This time, a new twist. An inmate who was called “Abuelo,” which means grandfather in Spanish, claimed the defendants told him who shot the victim, total BS. Abuelo wanted in the worst way to get out of the Secure Housing Unit at one of California’s toughest prisons, “Pelican Bay,” where the worst of the worst are housed, and he wanted to get transferred to a more friendly prison, even though he had attempted to murder a fellow prisoner which caused him to be sent to SHU. Abuelo was interviewed by Gerson Horn and his investigator who learned of the reasons for Abuelo’s statement, which was used at the second preliminary hearing. Same result: the magistrate found the new statement unbelieveable and dismissed the the case for the second time. But that did not stop the DA from continuing, and he took the case to the Grand Jury, but only sought an indictment against my client. There is a saying a prosecutor can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich, and they came back with an indictment against my client.
So, now I’m alone with a client charged with murder and attempted 1st. to stand in front of a grand jury supposedly composed of a cross section of the community which cannot be excused because of race or ethnicity. This rule applies not only to regular trial jurors but also grand jurors. So I make a motion to dismiss the indictment because I learned Santa Barbara selected its grand jurors by recommended appointment of the judges, plus voting roles and drivers’ licenses. I claimed the method used was discriminatory as there was no attempt to get Hispanics on the grand jury, yet they represented a sizable portion of Santa Barbara’s population. I had gathered the evidence to support my claim. When I raised the issue, the judge listened patiently and even though Santa Barbara later changed its efforts to recruit grand jurors, the judge said “change has to come about slowly,” the same argument the Southern States used to uphold school, buses, restaurants etc. regarding Civil Rights. Motion Denied
I wasn’t done. One can attack a judicial ruling on a motion to dismiss by filing what is known as a writ of Mandamus, claiming if a judge acted in excess of Jurisdiction I can file a writ of prohibition basically asking the appeals court to prohibit the case from going forward and to order the judge to change the ruling. I filed the writ in the appellate court, 2nd district, division 6 and, guess what? They granted the prohibition and ordered the DA to answer the claim within 60 days.
In the meantime, I got a request to meet with the people bankrolling the defense. So I, like a fool, get a hold of Steve Belasco and we traveled to Tijuana, Mexico to meet what we believed to be the person in charge of the family’s affairs. Now, most people going to Tijuana are pretty much restricted to main streets, where the bars, restaurants and shops are located. Our destination was deep inside the area at a very fancy hotel that had a room set aside for the meeting. I recall to this day, there were several men present, with one asking the questions, and at the far end of the table, a fierce looking man glaring at me. Basically, they wanted to know how come two of my client’s brothers were released and my client was still on the hook. I answered as best as I could, explaining what had transpired and the state of the case. The questions and answers were all in Spanish, but apparently, it worked, as I was offered the services of a very pretty waitress, or, if I wanted, they would fly me to Acapulco and I could play there, if I wanted. I politely demurred, and got the hell out of there back to the USA and wondered if I was crazy going to Tijuana and meeting with those guys.
Well it turned out the DA did not answer my writ and the cops, behind my back, drove my client to Mexico, turned him over to the local police, where he ended up incarcerated for a short time. The case was dismissed, the client had a celebration party in the Tijuana jail, was released shortly after, and that ended the case. As a side note, the young man who was attached to Gerson Horn’s staff was later discovered in the trunk of a car riddled with bullets.
End of story
Marshall
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