Having just returned from vacation, I started to catch-up on
current events.
When I got to the front page of the Aug. 14 issue, I saw
side-by-side the headlines,
”
Case of justice or injustice? and
”
Santos murder confession in court limbo.
”
Having just returned from vacation, I started to catch-up on current events.
When I got to the front page of the Aug. 14 issue, I saw side-by-side the headlines, “Case of justice or injustice? and “Santos murder confession in court limbo.”
While reading each article twice, I felt three emotions: relief, sadness and anger. Relief that Mr. (Robert) Orabuena was out of jail and his story finally accurately told; sadness for the plight of the Santos family and anger as to how these cases were so badly bungled by the California Highway Patrol, the Hollister Police Department, the San Benito County Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office.
Regarding the Santos case, I vividly recall Sheriff Curtis Hill patting himself on the back for the great “package” the elite “task force” had presented to the District Attorney and saying what a great Chief of Police Larry Todd was. Now, we find that the “task force” may have blown the case by failing to give something so automatic in police work as a proper Miranda warning.
Question: Did Hill and Todd actually read this report and if so, why didn’t they and District Attorney John Sarsfield and Deputy District Attorney Steven Wagner see the bombshell coming and prepare accordingly?
The defense attorneys were smart enough to figure it out; yet, the task force consisting of numerous people from the DA’s office, Sheriff’s office, Gilroy PD, Hollister PD and the FBI didn’t have a clue?
Suggestion: Maybe we should recall Sarsfield and elect another Salinas attorney, Bud Landreth, as our new DA.
Angry at the sorry state of our law enforcement. I researched your archives and found two more recent cases that should concern us all. The first is an ongoing case involving Albert Solorio who is charged with allegedly attacking Police Officer Greg Thul. A video taken of the incident by a neighbor was confiscated by the Hollister Police Department.
The tape then disappeared into thin air. Eleven months later, it reappeared in the back of a cop car, apparently altered. This was after Deputy District Attorney Steven Wagner told defense attorney Art Cantu, in court, that the tape did not exist. The FBI has been called in to investigate the mystical and magical disappearing tape.
Another case involved the killing of a middle-aged man in front of his family at the Community Center by a local teen-ager. The police department initially arrested the wrong person. It took almost a year, but the real killer was finally arrested and as in the Santos case, an outside agency did the Hollister Police Department’s job for them.
Thanks to Mr. Sarsfield and Mr. Wei, this vicious cold-blooded killer received a whopping one year in jail, a mere slap on the wrist for gunning down an innocent man in front of his stunned and now grieving family.
In the “… justice or injustice?” article, Deputy DA Denny Wei was quoted as saying, “We have a new administration now that takes the death of someone very seriously …” Based on the outcome of the Community Center murder case, I strongly disagree with that quote and would suggest Mr. Wei rethink that statement.
There are also three other unsolved murder cases and I apologize to the victims’ families for not having the names. A man shot to death at a local bar, a man beaten to death at a local car wash and another man stabbed and left to bleed to death in a field on the west side of town. As I said, these three murders have gone unsolved and oddly enough, the victims all have Hispanic surnames.
I would suggest that the San Benito County Grand Jury do an investigation, but based on that body’s past performances and the fact they are appointed by a local judge from “the system,” and run by DA John Sarsfield, I don’t believe they could be fair or objective. The fact is, they are part of the problem.
Until people with their own personal and political agendas are kept off that panel, the less-than-grand-jury system should be suspended before they do irreparable damage to somebody and get themselves and the county sued.
In closing, hopefully, we as a community will not forget our murder victims nor should we forget the victims of our poorly run injustice system. The record is clear, our local law enforcement and legal system doesn’t need to be looked into or fine-tuned, it needs a major overhaul. Not next week. Not tomorrow. But now.
Bruce Kiefert, Hollister
