Neighbors Report on Pretrial Hearings for Defendants in Bernal Robbery Spree

/ Todd_Lappin

courtroom2b

courtroom1

Last month, the defendants accused of perpetrating a series of brazen muggings on the streets of Bernal Heights in January 2013 had their pre-trial hearing to determine if the case should proceed to full trial.

During the hearing, the defendants filled the audience with friends and family, to suggest to the judge that the alleged criminals are upstanding members of their community. Not to be outdone, many members of the Bernal community attended as well, both to support the Bernal neighbors who testified, and to emphasize the extent to which the defendants’ alleged crimes had sent shockwaves through an entire neighborhood.

Bernal Heights even sent its own courtroom artists to document the scene inside the courtroom.  The images you see here,  from Neighbors Laurie Wigham (above) and Sharon Steuer (below), are the result.

Defendants1

Midway through the hearings, Neighbor Laurie reported:

I had an interesting conversation with one of the defense attorneys on the steps at the lunchtime recess. After Monday’s session a lot of the court folks hung around to look at the sketches and chat with me. The impersonal frozen faces they wore during the court proceedings dropped away, and they were all casual and friendly and wanted to talk about their connections with Bernal. I got the impression that they are all surprised but pleased by the high neighborhood involvement.

Neighbor Sarah, Bernalwood’s ace crime correspondent, also attended the hearings, and she filed this extended report on the process and its outcome:

It looks like these guys are going to trial, though one count was dismissed (not sure which).

From the DA (edited slightly by me for clarity):

The defendants were held to answer on all but 1 robbery count. They are scheduled to be arraigned on the Information on 11/22/13. At that time, the defendants may enter a general time waiver or a no time waiver depending on how they want to proceed towards trial. Defendant Thomas Sagaiga moved to have his bail reduced but Judge Kahn denied the request. Both men remain in custody.

We can’t comment on the specifics of testimony, etc., without potentially affecting the case once it goes to full trial, so here are some more general thoughts on the process thus far.

One of the most striking things has been to realize how little we knew of the specific mechanics of the judicial process. The scheduling issue is incredibly daunting – when a judge, an assistant DA, two separate public defenders, witnesses, and the courtroom itself (all of whom/which have many other trials going on) have to coordinate schedules, it’s amazing that anything ever moves forward. And it’s very old-fashioned: the participants just get out their paper calendars, and they go through an iterative process – “How about 9am on the 16th?” “I have another trial that day.” “How about 1:30pm on the 21st?” etc.

Constitutional rights affect the schedule as well – defendants can waive their right to a speedy trial, which they may want to do in order to give their defense attorneys more time to prepare, but then that means that any defendants in other cases who do NOT waive their right to a speedy trial will take precedence over the ones who did.

The same goes for bifurcating your hearing – meaning you’ll let a single hearing take place over several, non-contiguous dates, which is what ended up happening here eventually.

If the juvenile in this case is charged as an adult, he will have the right to the same preliminary hearing, and so we are still quite a ways off from a trial.

We hope Bernalwoodians can continue to show up to support our neighbors and also show that we take an interest in crimes that happen in our neighborhood. Many neighbors have already shown up (several more than once), and we have gotten the impression (from the court employees and others) that it’s rare to have so many people who are not directly involved in a case show up at these hearings.

Finally, we were just as impressed by the bravery, stalwartness and perseverance of the three Bocana victims as we have been struck by the amount of time that elapses between arrest and preliminary hearings — let alone a trial. After watching this preliminary hearing, we have nothing but praise, admiration, and gratitude for Bernal’s three victims and the others who have testified in this case.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Laurie Wigham (top), Sharon Steuer (bel0w) 

9 thoughts on “Neighbors Report on Pretrial Hearings for Defendants in Bernal Robbery Spree”

  3. I attended one of the hearings for a few hours and want to reiterate what Sarah said about our Bocana neighbors. I only heard one neighbor’s testimony; he was remarkably unflappable under extreme duress. The defense attorneys kept trying to trip him up, oh-so-gallantly, and he simply wouldn’t let them. Hats off to our brave neighbors. I also want to thank Laurie and Sharon for these remarkable drawings/paintings. They capture that courtroom scene pretty perfectly.

    Finally, I’m not sure if you are aware that Bernalwood also came up during this pre-trial hearing. The defense questioned our Bocana neighbor on whether he was familiar with Bernalwood and whether he had gone to the Facebook page for Sagaiga that was linked to in a Bernalwood post (the implication being that he might have been prejudiced/negatively affected by the photos of Mr. Sagaiga that he saw there). He said that does read Bernalwood and had seen mention of Mr. S’s fb page but had neither read the post nor clicked through, in compliance with the direction that he was given not to discuss the case with anyone or read any news reports about it. Kind of wild, eh? That our neighborhood’s vigilance and interest in accurate info dissemination could potentially muck with the trial?

  4. In my summary, the ‘we’ is meant to include neighbors Ellen and Edie, who also attended numerous days of the hearings (in fact, Ellen undoubtedly attended the most hours of hearings of anyone except the defendants, judge, and lawyers!). Just wanted to make it clear that I am not using the royal ‘we.’ For now.

  5. What bravery! Wonderful BH! You did not have to read Bernalwood to see Sagaiga’s fb page. A photo of him was in the Chronicle; plus comments mentioned fb; if you did a Google search, his name came up under Facebook. I took a look at that time. The guy is a lowlife thug; surprised he hasn’t murdered anybody yet [or maybe he just hasn’t been caught]. You can almost hear the family/friends saying ‘you got the wrong guys; they would never do this; they’re such great men; taking care of their family; turning their life around…”. Hope these guys go away for a very long time.

  7. I’d like to clarify that my discussion with one of the defense attorneys was mostly about how everyone was entitled to a solid defense, and I appreciated that he was doing that job. I also said that while, as Bernal residents, we would go a long way to support our neighbors, that did understand that everyone should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

  9. i moved out of bernal a year ago but still want to follow this case closely. ❤ bernal 4 eva.

Comments are closed.