County throws offer on table, but defendant D.A. Sarsfield puts
up roadblocks
The investigation and lawsuit that launched a rabid division
between San Benito County’s criminal justice agencies, starting in
the fall of 2003, appears to be winding down.
But not without more money hemorrhaging from county coffers
– and some hollering from the D.A., who feels he has been
wrongly accused. Perhaps even more important, the case has left a
chasm of hatred in its wake, still felt between the county’s top
lawmen, defense attorneys and the D.A.’s office.
County throws offer on table, but defendant D.A. Sarsfield puts up roadblocks
The investigation and lawsuit that launched a rabid division between San Benito County’s criminal justice agencies, starting in the fall of 2003, appears to be winding down.
But not without more money hemorrhaging from county coffers – and some hollering from the D.A., who feels he has been wrongly accused. Perhaps even more important, the case has left a chasm of hatred in its wake, still felt between the county’s top lawmen, defense attorneys and the D.A.’s office.
District Attorney John Sarsfield says he should never have been listed as a defendant in a case brought against the county by the daughter of Dennis Stafford, a private investigator who worked 10 years for former District Attorney Harry Damkar. The suit alleges the Hollister Police Department, the county Sheriff’s Department and the D.A.’s office, together, leaked the name of Stafford’s daughter to the media during a press conference in 2003.
“There were a whole lot of documents that went out,” admitted Sheriff Curtis Hill. “The original allegation was that the juvenile’s name went out at the original press conference. But the bottom line is that the juvenile’s name was never released to the public.”
Sources who asked to remain anonymous because the suit has not been settled yet say the county offered Stafford’s daughter $70,000 in November to end the suit. But getting a bead on where the case stands now is confounding. Shortly after the offer was made, Sarsfield said, Stafford’s attorney, Patrick Marshall, sent a memo to the federal judge in the civil rights case stating that the case was settled. On Dec. 23, the judge dismissed the case, having assumed that all the parties involved had signed off on it.
They hadn’t, at least not according to Sarsfield.
“I haven’t signed a thing,” said the D.A. “I know the county offered them money to go away but the devil is in the details. The judge has been misinformed by Mr. Marshall. While the county might have screwed up on this, it had nothing to do with my office or me.”
Marshall refused comment on the matter, as did interim County Counsel Claude Biddle.
Sarsfield said if the case is not reinstated and he is not exonerated from it officially, he is prepared to sue the county for prematurely signing off on the lawsuit.
The Brady Bunch
It all started in September, 2003, when the newly-elected Sarsfield, along with Sheriff Hill, then-Hollister Police Chief Larry Todd and representatives of the state Attorney General’s office held a dramatic press conference at Hollister police headquarters. It was then, before rolling TV cameras and local print reporters that Sarsfield and the others announced up to 57 cases prosecuted under the regime of former D.A. Harry Damkar could be tainted. At the time, Sarsfield said that information relevant in some court cases was withheld from defense attorneys during the last 12 years of Damkar’s tenure.
Sarsfield said the information allegedly suppressed by Damkar’s office could have called into question the importance given to some court testimony by Dennis Stafford, who until July 2002 was a contract investigator for the San Benito County District Attorney’s Office. Sarsfield alleged that Damkar knew Stafford had been investigated for two felonies in 1992. A parallel investigation sought to determine why Stafford’s case wasn’t sent to the state Attorney General’s office for an independent review so that his former employer wasn’t making the decision about whether to file charges.
The new D.A.’s eight-month investigation began after a meeting with attorneys from the state Department of Justice. During the explosive media event, Sarsfield said the allegations had been reported to the FBI and to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. It was called the “Brady” issue, because under the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must turn over all evidence to defense attorneys, including information that could discredit the prosecution’s own witnesses.
Damkar adamantly denied any wrongdoing on the part of his former office or Stafford. After Sarsfield’s public bombshell, the former D.A.-turned local attorney said that Stafford rarely testified, and was a witness in only one trial in which Damkar gained a conviction. That conviction of William Overby, who was driving drunk when he slammed into a car on Sunnyslope, killing a baby, was not dependent upon Stafford’s testimony, Damkar offered to the press. Overby died in prison.
“It doesn’t apply to Dennis Stafford,” Damkar said of the Brady ruling, “because he was never a witness. He would get our witness list organized, talk to officers, help prepare them, but he was not a percipient witness in any case I tried.”
But Sarsfield insisted that Brady applied even to those who collect evidence for trial, not just testify in court.
Point-counterpoint
Meanwhile, reporters scrambled to find out what the two supposed felonies were that Stafford had allegedly committed, but never charged with. Apparently, Channel 46 won the undeclared contest when a reporter from the TV news agency became the first to obtain records from the Sheriff’s Department about two cases – one involving sexual abuse and the other involving domestic violence – wherein Dennis Stafford had been investigated as the alleged perpetrator.
“If there was a leak there, it was not done with malicious intent,” Hill said in an interview this week. He added that no media outlet ever named any juvenile or victim until after Stafford’s daughter filed a claim against a host of county law agencies. Hence, the identity of the victim was, according to the defendants, revealed by herself.
At the time of Sarsfield’s press conference, Hill had called Stafford “the King of Brady.”
The war had begun in earnest. If that press conference orchestrated by the new D.A. hadn’t alienated the old guard, this was sure to. Weeks later, investigator Dennis Stafford (at this point working privately) filed a $1 million claim against the county, charging his reputation has been damaged by county employees, specifically, by District Attorney John Sarsfield and Sheriff Curtis Hill.
In his claim, Stafford said he had suffered defamation of character, and a damaged reputation and professional standing in the community at the hands of certain county officials. The claim named Hill, Sarsfield, Nancy Leon, the head office supervisor in the D.A.’s office, “and others.”
While Stafford did not return phone calls for this report, at the time he filed his claim against the county in September 2003, he called the accusations made against him a “civil conspiracy” and that Hill and Sarsfield did not name other employees, past and present, who had been investigated by the county. He said he was singled-out and a victim of double standards.
Stafford eventually dropped his complaint after the county rejected it, but in February 2004 the case morphed into a full blown civil federal lawsuit brought against the county by his daughter who, at the time and presumably still, lives in Florida. Jacqueline Stafford-Pelt claimed the sheriff, the D.A. and the police chief recklessly leaked her identity as a sexual abuse victim to the media.
The court file discloses that the complainant was 15 and 17 when two separate sexual abuse criminal investigations were conducted more than 10 years ago; Stafford was investigated by the Hollister Police Department during the early 1990s for two felony counts of alleged sexual abuse, though no charges were ever brought against him.
Then as now, Stafford declined comment. But back when the issue festered in the newspapers Stafford stated publicly that he believed Sarsfield was retaliating against him for supporting rival Cantu in the 2002 D.A. election, a charge Sarsfield denied.
The controversy over Brady pitted two powerful law enforcement cliques against each other. On one side was Sarsfield and Sheriff Hill. On the other stood two former police officers turned private investigators, namely Stafford and Richard Boomer, former D.A. Damkar, Public Defender Greg LaForge (Damkar’s former second-in-charge) and former D.A. candidate Art Cantu.
Nothing has changed.
Wasn’t there a point?
Years passed. The case dragged on. Sarsfield continued to deny he had ever leaked the identity of anyone involved in a Stafford case to the press.
Finally, in fall of 2005 depositions started rolling. Among the witnesses were former Police Chief Todd and former Free Lance reporter Jed Logan, both of whom had attended the initial press conference. In their sworn statements, Logan and Todd repeated what Sarsfield and the Sheriff had said all along: that no names were divulged regarding any investigations on Stafford at the press conference.
As far as where the case stands now, Sarsfield believes it’s been dismissed by the federal judge, an action he will fight and for which he could possibly sue the county. He says that because he was named not just as the county D.A. but also individually in the lawsuit, he was hurt economically in the process. The lawsuit popped up in a record search Sarsfield’s bank conducted when he attempted to get a mortgage on his home, and the result was a higher interest rate that cost him, he said, $50,000 over the course of the loan.
“I’m the one putting up stumbling blocks to end this suit, you bet I am,” Sarsfield said. “I didn’t do anything and I’m not going to sit here and roll over. The witnesses have backed me up on that. I have no problem going to trial on this.”
Sheriff Hill wants to see the case end.
“It needs to get resolved. It needs to be put away,” Hill said.
And what about the possible Brady Act violations?
Sarsfield had identified roughly 57 cases where he said there could have been Brady violations. It was up to individual defense attorneys to determine whether they wanted to attempt to overturn past convictions by taking the matter up with the state Attorney General’s Office.
Apparently, none have contacted the attorney general.
“We haven’t had any meaningful involvement since the D.A. initially asked us for our advice,” said AG spokesman Nathan Barankin, back in early 2004.
