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Keegan Arraigned, Plea Postponed

The arraignment for Dr. Peter Richard Keegan went very swiftly this morning, at 9:00 am, all parties having arrived early, except the defendant, who came in last wearing a gray suit and leaning on a walking stick, in the company of three younger men and a small boy, possibly family members. Judge Ann Moorman came out and called Dr. Keegan's case first. (Doctors have kept us all, each and every one, waiting often interminably, but we would never dare presume to impose upon their precious time!) Judge Moorman noted that the Grand Jury had returned an indictment for one count of murder and prosecutor Timothy Stoen submitted a copy of the indictment, charging the defendant with second degree murder, Section 187 of the Penal Code — the judge had copies made telling Stoen he should have made three endorsed copies and while he apologized Moorman noted that Judge Behnke had set bail on Wednesday at $300,000 — the bail schedule is $500,000 for murder, incidentally, but no explanation was offered for the reduction. Keegan's lawyer, Chris Andrian of Sonoma County, told the judge he had a cashier's check for the full amount in his hands, and would like to hand it over to the court clerk. Moorman told him to take it to the office and get a receipt for it against the day it would be returned. She then gave Mr. Andrian a copy of the indictment, which he formally acknowledged, and asked that the matter be put over for 60 days for entry of plea. The date of Friday, October 20th at 9:00 AM was decided on. Mr. Stoen gave Mr. Andrian a flash-drive containing the discovery and Judge Moorman noted that the witness list had been sealed. Andrian asked that it be unsealed for the attorneys only and this was agreed to. Dr. Keegan was ordered to return on October 20th — ten weeks hence — for entry of a plea. (Bruce McEwen)

12 Comments

  1. Bruce McEwen Post author | August 11, 2017

    Ordinarily, the file of prisoners in the dock, the “in custodies,” have precedence and their cases are called first as it costs a lot of money to stall and delay the timely shuttling of prisoners to and fro from the jail to the courthouse, and then, after the in-custodies have gone through, the at-liberties — those defendants on the calendar who are not in custody, are generally called alphabetically — all of that standard operating procedure was put aside for the Good Doctor, whose eminence seemed to have infected the court with some kind of pixie dust; indeed, the judge appeared visibly to glow and sparkle, as though she’d been touched with a magic wand, sort of like an Englishwoman in the presence of Her Majesty, The Queen!

    Mr. Stoen, too, was infected, highly aware of his self-importance in such a high-profile case. After the case was over, and as he was hobnobbing with Mr. Andrian and some other attorneys, Deputy DA Beth Norman, who usually handles crimes against women, interrupted to shove — yes, shove — the Keegan files and miscellany (which Stoen had left in a scatter on the prosecution’s table), and she, Ms. Norman, had had to gather up — shove it all into Mr. Stoen’s arms, causing him to chuckle garrulously in his (Stoen’s) own signature way, as a means of deprecating Ms. Norman’s impatience with him.

    All in all, it was quite a spectacle, and despite the advance notice, no other local media organs bothered to field a reporter — now, isn’t that curious!

  2. BB Grace August 11, 2017

    re: “now, isn’t that curious!”

    When I read the Captain’s Breaking News yesterday, I thought, “This is good because closure is coming and the hope that justice will prevail has dawned a new day.”

    Hope. I read so much grief with this case by friends of the deceased my heart hurts for their loss and I really hope the truth and justice prevail for them and all of us reading about this very sad story in the AVA.

    Maybe the other media depend on the AVA to be the local heads up about what is going on? The other papers don’t care about the people, only promoting their stuff.

    Thank you Mr. McEwen and AVA for being on the case! Mendocino is blessed to have a local paper that really cares.

    • Bruce McEwen Post author | August 11, 2017

      Hope is like the salt you put in your bread — and I’m paraphrasing Jose Saramago, here, the Nobel Laureate — it doesn’t add any nutritional value, but it makes it taste so much better, doesn’t it?

      • BB Grace August 11, 2017

        I’m only bringing this up because you are a professional court reporter, and I trust, you know way more about courts and justice than I do because I can admit I only know by what I read; Are you are tuned into Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch?

        I got some happy news from JW today.

        Benghazi Court Victory
        August 11, 2017

        Judicial Watch Victory: Court Orders State to Search Benghazi Emails of Clinton Advisors
        Judicial Watch/Allied Educational Foundation Stand for Rule of Law on Gerrymandering
        Judicial Watch Goes to Supreme Court to Protect Clean Elections

        Judicial Watch Victory: Court Orders State to Search Benghazi Emails of Clinton Advisors

        Your Judicial Watch had a major court victory this week in our effort to get accountability in the Obama/Clinton Benghazi scandal.

        This week, D.C. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan,” former aides of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state. Judge Mehta ordered the State Department to search in those accounts “for records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] March 4, 2015, FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.”

        Of course, a JW FOIA lawsuit first broke open the Clinton email scandal – and Benghazi, too!

        Judge Mehta, an Obama appointee, described our Clinton-Benghazi FOIA lawsuit as “a far cry from a typical FOIA case. Secretary Clinton used a private e-mail server, located in her home, to transmit and receive work-related communications during her tenure as Secretary of State.”

        Further, Judge Mehta ruled:

        [I]f an e-mail did not involve any state.gov user, the message would have passed through only the Secretary’s private server and, therefore, would be beyond the immediate reach of State. Because of this circumstance, unlike the ordinary case, State could not look solely to its own records systems to adequately respond to [Judicial Watch’s] demand.

        ***

        [The State Department] has not, however, searched the one records system over which it has always had control and that is almost certain to contain some responsive records: the state.gov e-mail server. If Secretary Clinton sent an e-mail about Benghazi to Abedin, Mills, or Sullivan at his or her state.gov e-mail address, or if one of them sent an e-mail to Secretary Clinton using his or her state.gov account, then State’s server presumably would have captured and stored such an e-mail. Therefore, State has an obligation to search its own server for responsive records.

        ***

        State has offered no assurance that the three record compilations it received [from Secretary Clinton and her aides], taken together, constitute the entirety of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails during the time period relevant to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request. Absent such assurance, the court is unconvinced “beyond material doubt” that a search of the state.gov accounts of Abedin, Mills and Sullivan is “unlikely to produce any marginal return.”

        ***

        Accordingly, the court finds that State has not met its burden of establishing it performed an adequate search in response to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request and orders State to conduct a supplemental search of the state.gov e-mail accounts of Abedin, Mills, and Sullivan.

        This major court ruling may finally result in more answers about the Benghazi scandal – and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in it – as we approach the attack’s fifth anniversary. It is remarkable that we had to battle both the Obama and Trump administrations to break through the State Department’s Benghazi stonewall. Why are Secretary Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions wasting taxpayer dollars protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration?

        Judicial Watch asked a federal court to compel the Trump State Department to undertake a thorough search of all emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the terrorist attack on Benghazi, including those of Clinton’s closest advisors. We also specifically asked the court to compel the agency to produce all records of communications between Clinton and top aide Jake Sullivan relating to Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the Sunday following the 2012 Benghazi massacre.

        This long journey began on May 6, 2015, when we filed a lawsuit after the State Department failed to respond to a March 4, 2015, FOIA request seeking all emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton relating to the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00692)).

        This latest breakthrough made headlines and again focused public attention on the Benghazi outrage. You can see JW attorney Ramona Cotca, who was lead attorney on this case, on Fox News last night discussing the victory.

        The State Department has until September 22, 2017, to update the court on the status of the supplemental search and production of additional emails to us. We’ll let you know what we find!

        Judicial Watch/Allied Educational Foundation Stand for Rule of Law on Gerrymandering

        We have joined with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in filing an additional amici curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to convince the high court to reject the arbitrary method of drawing Wisconsin’s electoral districts adopted in Beverly R. Gill, et al. v. William Whitford, et al. (No. 16-1161).

        The lower court struck down Wisconsin’s 2011 redistricting plan on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional gerrymander. We asked the high court to take up the case and overturn that ruling. We filed an earlier amici brief in this case.

        Judicial Watch and AEF argued in our joint brief against the ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. That ruling relied in part on the use of a test for gerrymandering known as the “the efficiency gap,” which focuses on a purely hypothetical estimate of what each party “should” win in a “fair” election.

        We point out that the test amounts, in practice, to court-ordered proportional representation, and that this will not prevent gerrymandering:

        After all, it is not the case that any deviation from the strict proportional representation of voters by party is suspicious.

        ***

        [P]roportional representation has nothing to do with preventing gerrymandering. Deviations from proportional representation, however defined, may occur for any number of reasons other than gerrymandering, including the political views or missteps or personal qualities of the candidates of one of the parties. The absence of proportional representation does not uniquely identify gerrymanders. In any event, proportional representation is not required by the Constitution.

        There is a massive leftwing effort to oppose gerrymandering, led by Obama’s corrupt Attorney General Eric Holder. Rather than make sensible constitutional arguments regarding partisan gerrymandering, leftists want the courts to overturn district lines if not enough Democrats win. The Supreme Court will now have a chance to rule that Democrats – or any political party – will not have a constitutional right to win elections.

        (The Allied Educational Foundation is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life through education. In furtherance of that goal, the Foundation has engaged in a number of projects, which include, but are not limited to, educational and health conferences domestically and abroad. AEF has partnered frequently with Judicial Watch to fight government and judicial corruption and to promote a return to ethics and morality in the nation’s public life.)

      • Eric Sunswheat August 13, 2017

        RE: McEwen: Salt doesn’t add any nutritional value…

        Think again.

        • Bruce McEwen Post author | August 15, 2017

          Hope again, too.

  3. Jim Updegraff August 11, 2017

    Clinton and her e-mails are for the history books. Except for the historians and BBGrace no body gives a Tinker’s Damn about her.That we may be on a brink of a nuclear war is were our concern should be.

    • Bruce McEwen Post author | August 11, 2017

      I dare say, all you caps who comment on this page have only one thing in mind… and it’s rather frightful to put it mildly.

  4. Kelly Horne August 12, 2017

    I worked with Dr Keegan at the Round Valley Indian Health Center and he has my 1000% backing. Such a wonderful and caring doctor! And Eyster should be voted out of office as my cousin was nearly beaten to death here in Covelo and he didn’t do one thing about it. He doesnt care about Covelo at all!
    Eyster can take a flying leap for all I care!

    • Kelly Horne August 12, 2017

      And I along with others will be there for our to support my Dr Keegan all the way!

    • Bruce McEwen Post author | August 15, 2017

      Personally — not that King David (DA Eyster) and I are on, shall we say, reciprocal terms, I can tell you that at least a dozen Covelo cases go through the courts every day.

      As for your devotion to the doctor, which you’ve made the theme of your comment, I personally, do not know whether he did it or not.

      My contention is simply this: If he didn’t have all that money and that lofty social status, he would have been subjected to a kind of law enforcement that civilians don’t really want to hear about.

      Now: If any of my reports or suplementary commentaries have offended you, I hasten to apologise. But, Madame, I will never back down from my original opinion that the Good Doctor was given preference, cut a lot of slack, to put it in the vernacular, As they say, and every man is considered innocent until found guilty …Please, accept my apology for something I really don’t think I’ve done!

      • Bruce McEwen Post author | August 15, 2017

        My apologies for responding in the form of a sonnet… forgive me, please.

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