About a week after the San Benito County Bar Association lodged
a
”
no confidence
”
vote in District Attorney John Sarsfield, the prosecutor came
back swinging with a fiery op-ed column in today’s Free Lance
defending his office and harshly criticizing the previous
administration.
Hollister – About a week after the San Benito County Bar Association lodged a “no confidence” vote in District Attorney John Sarsfield, the prosecutor came back swinging with a fiery op-ed column in today’s Free Lance defending his office and harshly criticizing the previous administration.
A group of local lawyers, including former District Attorney Harry Damkar, Sarsfield’s opponent in the 2002 race, Arthur Cantu, private investigator Dennis Stafford and Public Defender Greg La Forge, took the brunt of Sarsfield’s criticism.
Sarsfield accused Damkar’s administration of failing to forward a number of police reports to defense attorneys that were investigated by Stafford, who worked in Damkar’s office. By law, the prosecution must provide the defense with all of the evidence and information. When he was first elected to office, Sarsfield said he was investigating the alleged violations but no charges have come from it.
Stafford declined to comment, but Damkar said while Sarsfield claimed Stafford investigated almost 60 cases for the district attorney’s office, the former sheriff’s lieutenant only worked for the prosecution on seven cases and was a material witness on only one of them.
“Here were are 17 months later and Mr. Sarsfield has done nothing about this. Mr. Sarsfield is making accusations now because he’s in the hot seat and he’s trying to throw the public spotlight off of himself,” Damkar said. “This is just another smear and run attack.”
Sarsfield also claims in his column that Damkar only promoted whites to positions of responsibility in the office, which angered the former prosecutor.
“I hired the first female, Hispanic and Asian prosecutors in the county,” he said. “And now I’m a racist.”
Several weeks ago the Free Lance published a pre-mediation brief from an investigative report into Sarsfield’s office that concluded he retaliated against four of his employees because he believed they were politically aligned with Damkar’s administration, which Sarsfield believes was corrupt.
The report obtained by the Free Lance sustained a number of allegations made in a sexual harassment claim brought against Sarsfield by two women in the Victim Witness Department. A couple weeks after the summary went public, the bar association, in a majority vote, decided to send letters to the state’s Attorney General’s Office and the California State Bar detailing their concerns about Sarsfield’s conduct.
One of their main gripes was Sarsfield’s use of a criminal grand jury, which recently indicted controversial Los Valientes lawyer Michael Pekin on five felony charges including filing frivolous lawsuits and attempting to elicit perjury.
Sarsfield believes the no confidence vote from defense attorneys such as Damkar, his “former chief deputy Greg La Forge, (and) his hand-picked successor Arthur Cantu,” is proof that he’s doing a good job.
Damkar said the majority of attorneys who voted to send a letter to the Attorney General’s Office and the California Bar Association detailing their concerns with Sarsfield were civil attorneys – and three of them were retired district attorneys and four were former deputy district attorneys.
“He walked out of the campaign a sore winner,” Cantu said. “Politics is a full contact sport. If you can’t handle (it) then maybe it’s not for you. He’s lost perspective and he’s still upset about the campaign. From day one he’s been marching down this political dead end road.”
La Forge said Sarsfield’s “rantings” and “hollow accusations” didn’t warrant a response, other than that it “appears as a last gasp from a drowning man.”
Sarsfield also accused Damkar’s administration of charging former County Administrative Officer Dave Edge with a felony, arresting him in front of his 7-year-old daughter only to “slink into court later and declare him to be factually innocent.”
But Damkar said Edge was arrested and investigated, along with a woman in his office and her son, by the California State Department of Insurance for allegedly filing a false worker’s compensation claim. Damkar said the state insurance department decided not to prosecute the case and the Attorney General’s Office refused to prosecute, so Damkar took it and lost.
“I did not slink into court. A judge held there was no evidence of criminal intent on Mr. Edge’s part,” Damkar said. “Mr. Edge’s attorney asked me to stipulate to a filing of factual innocence and I did what I had to do. The state department of insurance investigated, I prosecuted it. It didn’t come out or way.”
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or em*******@fr***********.com
