The preliminary hearing has been delayed again until February 22nd, 8:30am in Department 11 in Superior Court in Downtown San Diego.
The judge put a “no contact” order on the three defendants. They cannot talk to each other about the case now except in the presence of their attorneys. They arrived late to court by about 30 minutes last time and were hauled off the jail and their bond increased.
The judge implied that the three had conspired and arrived late in order to delay the preliminary hearing, which is totally ridiculous. These three guys are not that organized and don’t think that far ahead of time in such a sophisticated way about tactics to conspire to delay the prelim. They are struggling really just to understand what is happening to them. They have no reason to want to delay the proceedings. They feel like they are being terrorized, themselves, and would like to just get it over with. They arrived late, because they all live in East San Diego County and underestimated the delays due to heavy traffic that they would encounter.
I think the real reason is that the La Raza district attorney, who is prosecuting this case is trying to “crack” them and get them to plead guilty. In my non-legal opinion the case against them is very weak. The La Raza DA doesn’t want them to be coordinating their testimony and giving each other moral support. They could easily the thrown back in jail, if they violate this current order, which is where the DA really wants them.
I paid $200 (half the bail) to help bail one of them out of jail last week, in part, to prevent him from being at the mercy of this predatory, La Raza assistant DA, Oscar Garcia. I think this “no contact” order is an attempt to give the ADA the upper hand again. Also, they said they are “developing” (read fabricating) new evidence against them.
We are trying to raise funds to pay the retainer for at least one good private attorney for one of the defendants, which is desperately needed. The cases against each of the three are very much interconnected. So one of them having a good, aggressive private attorney will have a good impact for all three. The retainer costs $5K to defend one person for the trial. Of course $5K is just the start and there will be additional charges above that, which the defendant may be able to pay off over time. We are not expected to have enough money to hire an attorney for the prelim.
The Deplorables are under a lot of stress and said that they very much appreciate knowing that we are behind them and someone believes in them. You can see a summary of the contributions and pay-outs at the bottom of this link. Please contribute even a small amount, $5, $10 or $15, if you can.
San Diego Deplorable Three Defense Fund:
https://fundly.com/deplorable-defense-fund-san-diego
Sincerely,
Roger Ogden
San Diego, Ca
