prosecutorial discretion

A big part of what I do is reviewing police reports and deciding whether to file charges or not- and if so, what charges to file. Just because a person is cited or arrested by the police doesn't mean that the DA's office is going to file a criminal complaint or petition. I send a significant number of police reports back to the agencies who submitted them, usually because I need more info or because the evidence is just plain insufficient. Even when I believe that a crime probably was committed, there may be reasons not to file. This function is called prosecutorial discretion. I was reading an article on this last week and was inspired by the following excerpt:

Nearly 70 years ago, as then-United States Attorney General, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson offered these eloquent words about prosecutor decision making:

The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous... [T]he citizen's safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.

extra Turkey Trot pics

The pro photography company at the Turkey Trot post low quality images from the race on their website with the hope that you'll purchase the high quality ones. Here are the low quality ones... =)


One of the challenges was created because there were so many of us on one narrow road. A lot of the race we were weaving in and out of runners who were practically shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to avoid the swinging elbows and not step on anyone's toes or heels.

Did I mention how wet it was?

Home stretch baby! Most folks walked or just jogged across the finish line, but Kyle and I were full on sprinting.

And in a completely unrelated vein, I just thought I would post this pic from "Ryan," a character from the TV comedy "The Office." It's from the 2008 The Office calendar which a couple of probation officers at work had hanging in their office. They gave it to me because they said I look like him. I kinda see the resemblance. Another guy at work who isn't familiar with the show saw it and thought it was an old pic of me at first. What do you think?

Where's my bailout? I want a bailout!

The language is a bit colorful but the message rings painfully true. Click the image to enlarge the text at the bottom.

Turkey Trot '08

One of my roommates invited me to spend Thanksgiving with some of his family in Southern CA. He also talked me into participating in the 31st annual Dana Point Turkey Trot 10 kilometer race. It was a great experience, despite (because of? :-) a torrential downpour during the run and standing water all over the road. I'm not in any kind of running shape, but I did it! I got VERY sore the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. I'd do it again though.

There were over three thousand runners, including people running in costumes as turkeys, Pilgrims, Indians, a banana- you name it!

A couple of pics:

The "before pic," around 6 am Thanksgiving morning. The other guy is my roommate Kyle, with two of his cousins on the right and a friend of theirs on the left.

Near the start. It rained hard!

Runner with a Pilgrim hat. I saw a guy in a banana costume wringing it out a few times during the race =)

Fresh fruit after the finish. Oranges never tasted so good!


The "after" shot, where we parked the car at McDonald's. We arrived late, parked pretty far away, and had to jog like half a mile to get to the start on time!

the last 5 weekends

I'm woefully behind on blogging, but here's a synopsis of what I've been up to the last few weekends.


My friend Glenn is getting married next weekend. The bachelor party was actually a couple of days in Pismo the weekend of Oct 11-12. It was good to be at the coast and see the ocean. Although it's only 2 hours away I think it had been about a year for me. We saved some dough by camping, so that we could blow it on ATV rentals on the dunes near Grover Beach. Talk about fun! Biggest sand dunes I've ever been around. Nine of us rented four-wheelers and spent an awesome couple of hours racing, jumping, and wrecking (no serious injuries) all over those things. Whoever comes out to visit me next, that'll be top on my list of fun things to do!


Glenn's brother Dan created an Extreme Croquet course throughout the campground using two croquet sets. I came from behind to take the lead at the last wicket, only to have it stolen from me through some questionable moves by the nefarious Brandon. I can't tell if I'm sneezing/coughing or laughing about something in this pic. Glenn is about to be whacked with Brad's mallet, or judging by his expression, maybe he was already knocked silly =).

=================================



Let me tell you, folks around here take October 31 pretty seriously. These are a couple of roommates and friends in their Halloween costumes. The Joker is Beau, and Kyle (another roommate) is the drunk werewolf. I got invited to no fewer than four Halloween parties, but ended up just staying home because a severe allergy attack left me feeling pretty miserable that night.
=====================================

Jeff and Evan on the Boundary Run, Kaweah River. An early winter storm caused the flow level to jump weekend before last, and I was able to capitalize on it with three friends. It was a narrow window and we hit it just right, as the following graph shows:

Yep, we paddled on 11-2-08. The Corp of Engineers flow data is invaluable for knowing what rivers are running when. We kayakers keep a close eye on the website with these graphs. Some of the guys in the kayak club even get updates sent right to their cell phones when the flows reach a certain threshold!

A short video clip of my friend Jeff running Bumper Rapid, which is on the Gateway run of the Kaweah above the town of Three Rivers. The only difference between storm flows and spring runoff is that the water's murky.


=====================================


A hunter went missing in Fresno County on 11-1-08, and the search was still ongoing last weekend. I drove up with a couple of other rescue team members to participate in the search effort. Here's what I e-mailed a friend about it:

There were volunteer teams from maybe 8 or 10 counties at the search. It was neat to see all these strangers come together to help somebody they don't know. We bushwhacked and scrambled up, over, around and through all kinds of terrain yesterday and today. It snowed at the elevation we were at overnight Saturday, so yesterday we were searching in about 4 inches of snow! (On our way to the briefing this morning at the command post, we started fishtailing pretty bad on one snowy section of road. I was frantically trying to get my seat belt on before we crashed, but thankfully after sliding all over and off the road we eventually came to a stop without hitting anything!) By last night I was definitely ready to come home, but some of the others have been there close to a week!

A Fresno Co deputy and Tom, one of our team members.

We were in a really beautiful area. There were no roads or trails to the above. We bushwhacked up to it, so it's likely that not very many people have enjoyed that view.

Unfortunately there was no sign of the missing hunter, but I did come across this very dead coyote.

A quick lunch break on Sunday. The sun's shining in this pic, but it actually snowed on us most of the day.We came across this old mine shaft/cave that wasn't even on the map. I hear the park service doesn't show these types of things on maps due to liability concerns. It's amazing what you can run across when you get off the beaten path!

============================================

October 26 was a fantastic day. Four of us decided to attempt an off-season summit of Half Dome. The cables were down for the winter, but we had awesome weather, great fellowship, solitude at the summit (normally there are crazy crowds on top, and a line to get on/off the cables), and some great animal sightings.

Mike and Madison on the cables. You can't really tell the angle from this shot, but this section is steep!- significantly steeper than 45 degrees. You can see the height they're at by how tiny the person in the background (to the left of Mike) is.

We saw a few big bucks right off the bat, before we even got on the actual trail.

Group shot on the way down: Me, Madison, Mike, and Katrina.

Group shot on top

A tagged black bear we encountered on the way down. Many folks don't know that black bears are often brown or cinnamon in color. Still black bears though. Unfortunately that's the only kind of bear we have in the Sierra anymore. Mike heard the bear first. It was only 20 or 25 feet away in some thick brush. It was heading towards the trail behind us, so I jogged back a few steps to get some better shots.

Strike a pose! As it turns out, the girls were much braver around the edge than Mike or I. We spent half the time trying to tell Madison to step back and stop doing crazy antics while leaning over the edge to catch the view 2500 feet straight down =). I, on the other hand, prefer to crawl out to the edge on my belly while maintaining at least three points of contact with the ground at all times.

Victory!

Getting ready to attack the cables again on the way down. Mike had a death grip on those things! Halfway down I was trying to get more pics and his terse response was "Just KEEP MOVING- Let's get off this rock!!"

Leaving at 5 am and getting back after 9 pm made for a long but fun-filled day. Even the trip home was blast, between singing in the car and hot juicy burgers/ freezing temperatures at Carl's Jr.. Seriously, for some reason this particular restaurant had the AC blasting everybody inside with frigid air. One employee responded to complaints of patrons (not even us) by saying, "sorry, if we touch the thermostat we get fired." The not-so-bright employee dutifully asked another patron if he could get him anything else, and the customer suggested, "a blanket?" It was quite humorous, including when Katrina started stuffing napkins in her clothing as insulation.

Alright, so that's been my last few weekends. Next update should be a work update- or maybe I should throw in a post announcing my recent change of address?

August update

Here's what's new for me in August:

First of all, I decided to update my blog name to something more reflective of my job rather than an inside family joke of sorts that no doubt leaves most folks scratching their heads. "For the record" is a phrase that I use in court regularly, almost as much as "for the people," a phrase that follows my name when the judge says "counsel, state your appearances."

School's started in California, and the stacks of police reports in my office have gone down a little. Even so, there's never a shortage of crazy cases, and lately I had a few go to trial. I suffered my first not guilty verdict recently when two key witnesses went sideways on me on the stand. A loss is always tough, but when your witnesses give one story to the police (and you), and then testify to something completely different at trial, there's not much you can do. (If you've seen the movie Fracture, it was kind of like that. Good movie, by the way.) The next day I wrapped up an armed robbery trial that had been going on for over a month, and thankfully, this time the result was good. But one of the things I love most about my job is that ultimately it's about something more than simply winning or losing. In a 1935 decision the U.S. Supreme Court summarized the prosecutorial role with seminal language which is oft repeated more than 70 years later:

The [prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor -- indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one. Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (U.S. 1935)

That right there is a great little bit of legal writing.

I got to take a helicopter ride the other day! The California Highway Patrol flew their bird down from Fresno to do a demonstration for our rescue team, but that's not the chopper I flew in. One of our veteran team members happens to be a pilot, and he flew his company helicopter to the meeting. When we were done and CHP had taken off, he took us up for a brief spin around the Sequoia Air Field and surrounding area. The best part of it was that this was no commercial tour. We zoomed just over the crops and dipped and banked so steeply that I could see land through the sunroof. We even did a simulated engine failure. This started when in the middle of our flight, we heard the voice of our pilot Bo through the headsets asking, "So, who can tell me what happens when the engine dies?" Ed ventured an educated guess from the back bench (I was riding shotgun) - "you go down?" "Well yes," Bo answered, "but not in the way that you think." He then proceeded to perform a live demonstration. As if our ride wasn't already exciting enough. He throttled the engine back to idle, and my stomach shot up to my throat as we immediately starting dropping from our altitude of several hundred feet. We remained at idle as we dropped, and Bo explained how the chopper actually develops energy as it falls- energy which you can use to control the descent even without power. At the last possible moment he flared the nose up and we slowed dramatically (engine still at idle mind you). He powered back up just in time to avoid what would have been a rough but survivable landing. As technical rescue team members, our job often involves trusting each other when lives are, literally, on the line, but this was just very cool in its own way =).

I found a good deal on another kayak. I'm not sure what it says about my priorities that at age 29 I own two boats but still rent a one bedroom apartment. This one is what they call a creek boat, so I should be able to run more steep and challenging whitewater with it- its larger size gives it more volume and stability. Also, with a second boat I can take you out if you want to try the sport! Only problem is- I have to wait until spring to get much use out of it =)

stupid slogans

I get a kick out of catching really dumb things being said in ads on radio and TV. Sometimes I wonder how some ad campaigns ever made it out of the boardroom. For example, this is what I just heard on an ad for a local news station:

"We know you want answers to the tough questions- so do we. Local News 17."

And it's said in that deep authoritative tone that all media announcers have. What in the world? Is it just me, or does that make no sense at all? I'll overlook for the moment the fact that it's probably somewhat grandiose for a local news station to be referring to themselves along with life's tough questions. Regardless, what they're basically saying with a slogan like that is, "we have the same questions you do." Call me crazy, but I don't think that's the message most news viewers and listeners are tuning in to hear.

I guess they want you to assume that because they want answers to tough questions, that they also go out, obtain them, and pass them along to the viewing or listening audience. But that's a big logical leap. Most people never achieve what they want. Maybe it's designed to garner loyalty by expressing a sort of "hey, we're on the same page you are" sentiment. But that's not what it did for me. My first thought was, "hmm, that sounds clever." Second thought: "but what does it mean?" Followed quickly by the conclusion that it's another slogan stupid enough to blog about.

Unless.... maybe their true objective was simply to get people thinking about their ad. If that's the case, then I'm the sucker.

Speaking of words, I did see a great quote the other day: "Repetition is the sincerest form of repetition." =)

Okay, enough time wasted. I have two boxes of files to prep for court tomorrow, and it's after 11. I just had to see a few more Olympic medals won for Team USA, and a couple more world records broken. (Seriously- who set these previous world records? They're snapping like toothpicks in the Beijing swimming events.)

Olympic gold

The 2008 Olympics are in full swing in Beijing, and I've been glued to the coverage all weekend. I saved a medal standings results page as a favorite on my laptop. And believe it or not, I actually have a CD in my car right now with Olympic theme music from John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

In what some are heralding as the best swimming relay of all time, the Americans just took down the French (and everybody else) in the men's 4 X 100 relay, the one swimming event in which the French were heavily favored. In fact, the French were talking some smack, publicly stating pre-race, "The Americans? We're going to smash them. That's why we came here."

It was pretty incredible, and if you haven't yet seen it, make sure you do: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0811_HD_SWB_HL_L0194. The Americans trailed for most of the latter half of the relay, but anchor Jason Lezak rode the wave of the Frenchman, Bernard, and created an incredible finish. My reaction was about the same as Michael Phelps' above =).

To give you an idea of how fast these swimmers were, consider this: The Swedes, whose 5th place finish didn't even get them close to the podium, still came in with a time under the previous world record. The Americans crushed it by like four seconds!! And to add insult to injury, the world record for fastest split time had been held by the vocal Frenchman, until that too was crushed by Jason Lezak. Who's talkin' now?! =)

Onion News Network

I've always been a fan of The Onion newspaper, and I've just learned that their website now includes video news stories. If you like parodies and satire, check out this compelling example:


Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children's Healthcare

okay, gotta post one more. This one's actually not that far from reality =)


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

July 4th family visit

Last weekend Christian and Dad flew out to visit me for almost a whole week! We had a fantastic time. Thanks so much to Mom and Hol, Addie and Storie for giving up your men for the July 4th Holiday! I worked half a day on Wednesday, then jetted up to Fresno to pick the guys up. We had all afternoon, so we decided to cruise on up to Yosemite. Christian had never been, and we figured (correctly) that it would be less crowded on a Wednesday than on a holiday weekend. Unfortunately none of us had a camera with us, but we drove through Yosemite Valley, and took a nice little jaunt up to the top of Vernal Falls. It was beautiful as always.

On the 4th we went kayaking on the Lower Kings river east of Fresno. This scenic stretch is COLD because it's fed from the bottom of the Pine Flat Reservoir. It has a couple of class two rapids. C & D were in borrowed old-school boats and neither has a reliable roll, but they were game for it and Dad especially was a great sport despite a cold swim below one rapid which caught him off balance.

It was another triple digit day, so the water felt particularly refreshing!

At the takeout there's what they call a "weir" for irrigation purposes. It's a fun spot to kayak surf. Here's a short clip of my first attempt to get on the wave.

On Sunday we hit up some of my favorite spots in Sequoia National Park. We got on Top of Moro Rock just in time to catch an interesting talk from a Park Ranger on some of the history and geography in the area. We hiked a couple of miles around Crescent Meadow and saw Tharp's Log, a hollow and fallen Giant Sequoia that Hale Tharp, the area's earliest white settler, fashioned into a primitive cabin that he lived out of in the summers from 1861 to 1890 while his cattle grazed in nearby meadows. We checked out the aptly named Tunnel Log, and stopped by Auto Log, another giant sequoia that people used to drive on. Christian found a "C & H" carved into it, which made for a great photo. We finished up with a respectable hike from Wolverton to the Watchtower. (I checked the mileage again guys- it was probably close to around 7 miles round trip with significant elevation gain =). The views of Tokepah Valley were stunning despite the poor air quality due to so many wildfires in the Sierra this summer. Dad's knee was bothering him on the descent but he was a trooper even though I had no pain-killers in my pack.

On the Watchtower Trail.

Christian and I, same spot.

The almost sheer vertical here will take your breath away! Click on this pic (or any other) to see it full size.

Dad and I scrambled out as far as we could to peer over the edge. This granite monolith is a lot like Half Dome- not quite as high, but the hike is shorter, and the views are still killer.

Christian and Dad enjoying the fruits of our labor.

The view up Tokepah Valley. You could clearly hear the stream raging over a thousand feet below us as it pounded through twists and turns in sections of granite gorge. There was a sizable snowfield below too, which surprised me, considering it's July and it wasn't a great year for snow pack.

Crescent Meadow, in the Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park. A ranger was telling us that there have been a number of sightings of a sow and cub(s) here recently. We didn't end up seeing a black bear here, but on our way out of the park, we did! A sow and one cub were meandering through another meadow just off the road. It was a great way to end the day.

Christian on top of Moro Rock, with a view of the Middle Fork Kaweah River drainage and the Great Western Divide in the background.

At Hanging Rock, with Moro Rock just behind.

There were some beautiful wildflowers. I'm really bad at identifying local species, but this is what I call a purplus flowerus.

This is a patch of the rare and beautiful spotted yellow-centered penta-petal.

Another beauty known as the pale droopy flower.

And here we have the fuzzilus spikus plantus.

Here's a clip of a doe and fawn we encountered, as well as the Watchtower.

My friends Kevin (in the boat) and Beau (reclining in background) swung by as we were out by the pool grilling one night, and we turned it into an impromptu roll session.

I don't think Kevin had ever been in a whitewater boat before, but he picked up the technique fast and did a couple of unassisted rolls within about 10 minutes!

video- Kevin roll

Here's Christian giving it a shot. You can tell he's on his way up here because of the water curtain off the boat.

setting up for the roll...

video- Christian roll

Dad's turn. Flopping in (on purpose =)

Me standing by for the assist, if needed.

Dad fiddling with his spray skirt. underwater. =)

video- Dad roll

Well there you have it- all the stuff that was photographed, at least. We also spent a fair amount of time eating good food, watching good movies, and computing (that's where the three of us line up on the couch with laptops and check e-mail, listen to music, and watch funny YouTube clips together =). I also had a jury trial scheduled which the guys were going to watch on Thursday/Monday, but it ended up resolving, which I wasn't too disappointed about. We got more time to hang out together!

Thanks so much for coming to visit me guys! It was such a pleasure sharing part of my life with you. I know both of you guys have a lot going on at home right now too. We need to start long-term planning soon for next time!