D.A. Is Accused of Targeting Non-Whites

A public defender Wednesday formally accused the San Diego County district attorney’s office in Vista of targeting non-whites for the harshest possible prosecution involving cases of drunk driving, while charging white defendants in similar cases with lesser crimes.

John Jimenez, an attorney with the Office of Defender Services, said the conclusion was reached after a statistical review of all drunk-driving cases involving fatalities in San Diego County over the past three years.

Claim Called ‘Horse Manure’

Phil Walden, the supervising deputy district attorney in Vista, called Jimenez’s claim “unmitigated horse manure.”

Jimenez’s arguments will be aired before Vista Superior Court Judge Tony Maino on April 29, when he will ask that second-degree murder charges filed against three of his clients be dismissed because of “selective prosecution” by Walden’s staff. Each of the defendants was accused of drunk driving that resulted in fatalities--including a crash after a drag race on Old Highway 101 along Cardiff’s so-called Restaurant Row in February, 1987, that killed two pedestrians.

Jimenez noted that, of 161 drunk-driving cases prosecuted by the district attorney’s office over the past three years involving fatalities, only five defendants were charged with second-degree murder.

Two of those cases were handled out of the district attorney’s office in San Diego and each involved a white defendant. In one case, the defendant was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter, and in the second instance, the case was dismissed by the judge at his preliminary hearing, Jimenez said.

Each of the three remaining cases involving second-degree murder charges was filed by the district attorney’s office in Vista--and in each case, the defendant was a non-white who was not allowed to plead guilty to vehicular manslaughter.

Each of those three cases is pending trial, and Jimenez on Wednesday filed motions seeking the dismissal of each on the grounds of selective prosecution.

Discrepancy Claimed

In his court papers, Jimenez noted that during the same time each of the three non-white defendants was charged with second-degree murder, six white defendants involved with drunk driving that resulted in death were charged only with vehicular manslaughter.

Jimenez argued that there were no circumstances involving his three non-white clients that justified the filing of second-degree murder charges, when compared to the circumstances surrounding other drunk-driving fatalities in North County.

“The deaths in all nine cases resulted from acts of an intoxicated driver, but no pattern can be shown establishing more egregious conduct or greater subjective awareness of the risk of death by the minority defendants than by the white defendants,” Jimenez wrote in papers he filed with the court Wednesday.

Jimenez said he might subpoena Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller to testify in court about the criteria used by his office in deciding when to seek second-degree murder charges.

“I don’t think it is ever appropriate” to file second-degree murder charges in drunk-driving fatalities, Jimenez added.

Walden said Jimenez’s claims of selective prosecution are without merit, and noted that, coincidentally Wednesday, a Latino defendant was charged in Vista Superior Court with vehicular manslaughter--and not second-degree murder--involving a drunk-driving crash that left two persons dead several weeks ago in Carlsbad.

He said the decision on filing second-degree murder charges is made when a case can be made that the suspect was guilty of especially reckless or careless driving while drunk and may have a prior drunk driving record “to suggest he should have known better.”

A conviction on second-degree murder carries a prison sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Vehicular manslaughter convictions carry prison sentences of 2 to 10 years.

The defendants being represented by Jimenez are Rudy Martinez, charged with the deaths of Michael Wolf and Danny McAllister in Cardiff 14 months ago; Dennis Butler, a black, charged with the death of Gary Nettleland and Victor Donnan, who were killed when their truck was struck head-on on Oceanside’s El Camino Real in February, 1987, and Fernando Cobarrubias, charged with the death of Maxima Hernandez while she was standing near an Oceanside bus stop last October.

Walden said that he didn’t know Martinez’s name or race when he and Miller decided to charge him with second-degree murder and that he didn’t know Butler was black when the same decision was made on him.

Jimenez contended there have been equally serious drunk-driving cases in North County in which the district attorney has not sought second-degree murder charges, including the case of Neil Raymond Adams, charged with vehicular manslaughter for the deaths of three Dutch tourists on Interstate 5 last September.

Prosecutors in the Adams case previously said that, though Adams was intoxicated when his truck rear-ended two vans carrying the Dutch tourists as they slowed to pass through the Border Patrol checkpoint near San Clemente, there was no evidence that Adams’ driving up to that point was reckless.

Jimenez said there was no evidence to suggest that the district attorney’s office in San Diego, El Cajon or South Bay has targeted non-whites for second-degree murder cases.

“But it appears they (in Vista) chose the weakest victims for (second-degree murder) prosecution . . . persons who economically are in the worst position to rally support for their own defense,” Jimenez said.