Eastern District of California Blog

Judge Drozd Nominated to District Court Bench in Fresno

President Obama nominated Sacramento magistrate judge Dale A. Drozd to fill the district judge slot that has been vacant since Fresno judge Anthony W. Ishii took senior status.  Judge Drozd graduated from my alma mater, UCLA Law School, and clerked for recently retired district judge Lawrence K. Karlton.  If confirmed, Judge Drozd would join the EDCA bench in Fresno.  Sacramento Bee, 11/12/14. 

Despite his impeccable credentials and years in Sacramento, Judge Drozd remains a Dodgers fan.

EDCA Court Throws Out Sacramento County Death Sentence

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the death penalty of a transient who fatally stabbed a man 33 years ago on a bank of the American River in Sacramento and fled in the victim’s car.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton adopted the recommendation of a magistrate judge that a lesser sentence be imposed on Larry Junior Webster, unless the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office initiates a retrial of the penalty phase within 90 days.

“We’re glad the guilt phase was not overturned,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi said. “We will take a hard look at the penalty phase and decide whether we want to retry it.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd had found that Webster, the recipient of a Bronze Star for combat bravery in the Vietnam War, was denied a fair trial in the penalty phase because his counsel was incompetent. Karlton agreed with Drozd that Webster was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to “effective assistance of counsel” due to his lawyer’s “failure to investigate and present a mitigation case ... to the jury.”

Sacramento Bee, 8/26/14

$2.2 Million Settlement In Manteca Police Shooting Case

A Sacramento federal judge Monday approved a settlement that calls for the family of a man who was shot and killed by a police officer nearly three years ago to collect $2.2 million from the city of Manteca.

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“The final shots were fired after (Duenez) had fallen to the ground,” according to an order on cross-motions for summary judgment that U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued in December.

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Karlton ruled there were a number of factual issues that a jury would have to decide.

“The court finds that there is a genuine dispute about exactly what the video depicts,” Karlton wrote in his 56-page order on the summary judgment motions. “Defendants say it depicts (Duenez) with a knife, plaintiffs say it depicts (him) with ... tweezers. The video is not fine enough to resolve that dispute.

“Defendants say (Duenez) kept reaching as if for a weapon, plaintiffs say (his) body was simply responding to being shot,” the judge wrote. “The video does not resolve that dispute. Those are among the main facts that must be resolved to determine whether the shooting was a justified response to a dangerous parolee trying to throw a knife at a police officer, or the unjustified police killing of an unarmed man just trying to get out of a pickup truck.”

That order was filed on Dec. 23. Moody filed an interlocutory appeal – that is, an appeal filed before a case has been resolved in the trial court. The appeal was based upon the judge’s rejection of the officer’s assertion that he must be given qualified immunity because his actions were “objectively reasonable.”

Karlton found the appeal to be “frivolous” and refused to wait for it to run its course at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge confirmed an April 15 trial date.

However, in a conference presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd on Feb. 27, the parties agreed on a settlement, approved by Karlton, which included the $2.2 million payment.

Sacramento Bee, 4/7/14

Fairfield Ordered To Pay $316,750 In Attorney Fees And Costs In "Citizen Arrest" Case

Here's an excerpt from the story in today's Sacramento Bee and the Attorney fees order referenced in the story:

One night almost five years ago, the manager of an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Fairfield confused a group of well-behaved African American customers with a separate group of African American patrons he said went nearly “out of control.”

Fairfield police officers arrested four of the well-behaved group, none of whom had criminal records, under the auspices of “citizen arrests” by the manager and based entirely on his account. They were charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest, although the charges were later dropped.

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The city chose to go to trial. Last year, a jury found the plaintiffs were arrested without probable cause, violating the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of freedom from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” But the panel awarded them a total of only $12,150, to be paid by the city, finding the arrests were not a deliberate attempt to interfere with anyone’s constitutional rights and that Officer Nick McDowell, the lone individual defendant by the time of trial, did not act maliciously.

Nevertheless, the federal magistrate judge who presided at the trial on Monday awarded the students’ attorneys $316,750 in fees and costs, to be paid by the city.

In making the award, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd said in his 31-page order that “plaintiffs’ success in the present case cannot be measured solely by the amount of the jury’s verdict.”

Quoting from his own 2011 fees order in another civil rights case that went to trial, Drozd wrote that outcomes like the one in the Fairfield case “act as a deterrent to law enforcement and serve the public purpose of helping to protect” law-abiding citizens “from being subjected to similar unlawful treatment in the future.”

 

EDCA Court Denies Jury Trial To Drone Protester

Once again a federal judge in Sacramento has denied a jury trial to a defendant who is a regular among anti-drone protesters at Beale Air Force Base.

U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd, like two colleagues before him, cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent holding that there is no right to a jury trial if the penalty is capped at six months in prison.

And, like his colleagues, he said it is unclear whether he has the discretion to grant a jury trial, but, even if the law allows him that latitude, he would not do so in this instance.

Drozd did not mention the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a jury trial to criminal defendants, without exception.

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In the motion for a jury trial, Chief Assistant Federal Defender Linda Harter argued that, in cases outside the Eastern District of California, “where the charges against the defendants stemmed from protests or actions against the government, (they) have been granted jury trials, even where the charges have been considered petty.”

Sacramento Bee, 4/1/14

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/01/6287486/judge-denies-jury-trial-to-beale.html#storylink=cp

Bail Granted In Tribal Theft Case

Bart Wayne Volen, once a prominent Sacramento-area developer and contractor, has an impressive list of assets, and now federal prosecutors want them, plus double-digit incarceration.

So, they argue, he should have to stay in jail until he pleads or is found guilty because, facing prison and financial penalties that spell total ruin, he will use his liquidity and familiarity with international travel to flee.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd didn't see it that way Friday. At the conclusion of a protracted hearing stretching over parts of two days, the judge ordered Volen released on $3.5 million bail to be secured by a home in Maui and his son's signature on an $800,000 bond.

Sacramento Bee, 9/1/12

EDCA Court Awards $331,000 In Attorney Fees In Sacramento Jail "Sewage Dunking" Case

  Congratulations to Sacramento attorney Stewart Katz, who was awarded over $331,000 in attorney fees and expenses by Judge Drozd in the Sacramento jail "sewage dunking" case.  See Sewage Dunking Case Verdict, 3/11/11.  Here's the Drake Jones Attorney Fee Order.  With three attorneys working for the plaintiff in a lengthy, difficult case that resulted in the jury finding jailers used constitutionally excessive force, the award seems very reasonable, even though the jury awarded only $31,000 in compensatory damages: 

On Aug. 12, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dale A. Drozd ordered the county to pay fees, costs and expenses totaling $331,225 to Katz; an associate in his office, Guy Danilowitz; and Joseph George Jr., an attorney he sometimes works with.

Quoting from a 2009 federal appellate opinion, Drozd wrote: "The (U.S.) Supreme Court has … indicated that when a decision has 'served the public interest by vindicating important constitutional rights' an award of attorney's fees that is disproportionate to the actual damages may be appropriate.

"This is such a case," Drozd wrote in his 36-page order.

"Achieving such a verdict is no easy task, and obtaining the … finding" of malice, oppression and recklessness "is even more difficult," Drozd said. "Moreover, such verdicts are significant in that they represent a determination by citizens … that the defendant law enforcement officers' conduct … was prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. The court trusts that the defendants and those in their department will take heed of the verdict and adjust their future conduct accordingly."

Drozd also quoted a 2008 federal appellate opinion, saying the lawsuit should "act as a deterrent to law enforcement and serve the public purpose of helping to protect the plaintiff and persons like him from being subjected to similar unlawful treatment in the future."

Sacramento Bee, 8/20/11.

Photo:  Sacramento County Main Jail, sacsheriff.com

Fraud Defendants Denied Bail

Yesterday, Magistrate Judge Drozd ordered Folsom developer David Romo detained as a flight risk in his fraud case, U.S. v. Romo, No. 11-209-GEB, Sac Bee Blog, 5/17/11 while three of eight defendants were ordered detained in a Roseville mortgage fraud case, U.S. v. Kuzmenko, No. 11-210-JAM, according to Sac Bee Blog, 5/17/11.  In the Roseville case,  

Two sisters who prosecutors said are at the center of a mortgage fraud scheme appeared Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Sacramento.

Vera and Nadia Kuzmeko are charged with running a scheme that prosecutors cheated mortgage lenders out of about $9 million between December 2006 and September 2007.

KCRA, 5/17/11.