THE LOCAL ANGLE: A Contra Costa County prosecutor who had rape charges against him dismissed last year has sued the state, the county (of Contra Costa) and the city of Martinez, claiming he was the victim of a politically motivated prosecution that has destroyed his career and reputation. Deputy District Attorney Michael Gressett, 55, had been indicted on charges that he used a gun, an ice pick and handcuffs to sexually assault a junior colleague during a lunch break in 2008. (The ice pick as sexual tool has never been clarified, but the mere fact that officers of the court are running off for complicated “nooners,” seems bizarre even by contemporary standards.) The case was dismissed; the judge agreed with defense attorneys that the prosecution had failed to turn over to the grand jury evidence that could have cleared Gressett. Gressett remains on paid leave. He says he probably cannot return to his job “because of the irreparable damage to his reputation.”
THE SUIT, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages. The defendants have not responded. Gressett had faced 13 criminal counts including rape and sodomy in the alleged attack, which occurred or didn't occur at his Martinez home on May 8, 2008. Gressett's junior colleague, Holly Harpham, then 33, and briefly a prosecutor in Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg, in Mendocino County, told investigators she'd lusted after Gressett but was not expecting what ensued with the gun, the ice pick, the handcuffs, the sodomy. Gressett told police the sex was kinky but the adventure was consensual. In dismissing the case filed by state Attorney General Kamala Harris, a judge ruled that the grand jury should have heard evidence that Gressett's accuser had at one point told a colleague that she had been raped — not by Gressett, but by a knife-wielding stranger in a van. The judge also said the grand jury should have been told the woman was, at the time of her testimony, in the process of securing a $450,000 settlement from Contra Costa County over the alleged attack.
GRESSETT'S lawsuit does not name Ms. Harpham as a defendant. His attorney, J. Gary Gwilliam, has said he considers her a witness and a “pawn in this matter.” Gressett was fired before being indicted. After charges were dropped, an arbitrator ordered the county to reinstate him at his $150,000 salary, with back pay. The arbitrator agreed with Gressett's contention that his supervisors had been out to get him because he ran unsuccessfully three times for district attorney and supported Mark Peterson for the job in 2010. Then-District Attorney Robert Kochly and his top deputies — including Paul Sequeira, presently Mendocino County's top prosecutor, who led the initial Gressett probe, were in political support of a former Contra Costa County prosecutor and judge, Dan O'Malley. Peterson defeated O'Malley in November 2010. (Much of this courtesy of the SF Chronicle.)
FROM THE ARCHIVE (July 1997): Bill Evans, Laytonville, did an amazing thing at the Supes meeting last week, so amazing that when I told a couple of Frisco lawyer friends about it over the weekend they didn’t believe me. Evans delivered his [anti-drug war] speech with a felony bag of pot, or fake pot, tossed casually on the table next to the podium from where he spoke. Seated at the table were Sheriff Tuso and Lt. Ron Caudillo, Tuso’s commander of the County’s pot eradication effort. Seated in the audience was DA Susan Massini. None of the crime fighters so much as opened the bag to have a sniff. Was it Mendo Mello? Was Bill bold enough to flaunt a big bag of dope right in front of the averted eyes of the County’s legal apparat?
THE NEXT DAY, Wednesday July 9th (1997), Evans faxed this note to Sheriff Tuso: “I understand that concern has been raised about the prop bag of marijuana I showed at the beginning of my comments to the board of supervisors yesterday. Rest assured that this was a simulation, the same as I’ve used before when you and I spoke together in Willits a few years ago about the issues of drugs. You can confirm this if you are suspicious of my personal integrity by calling Jennifer Poole of the Ukiah Daily Journal who came up to me afterwards for a look. I apologize if this is giving you cause for concern or embarrassment. Obtaining real dope, as you can well imagine, would not have been difficult here in Laytonville, but since I work for a living, it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to afford on my wages.”
MY LAWYER friends were astonished (in 1997) that the cops didn’t at least have a look at the contents of the bag, oregano or no.
BACK TO TODAY (2012): Whatever happened to Bill Evans?
ALSO FROM JULY 1997: One can never be quite sure around here where reality ends and self-parody begins but I think the following is a serious press release: “From an ancient fragment found in a hollow redwood tree near the holy village of Willits.” […Willits?] “And lo, we heard the men and their sons and their fathers were gathering for the third time, each from his own tribe of Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara, Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Humboldt, and their wise men, the holy rabbis, the tzaddikim, were coming, from Eugene [Eugene?] in the North to Palo Alto [Palo Alto?] in the south. They have been coming, so it is said, for three years from the holy cities of San Francisco [San Francisco?], Berkeley [Berkeley?] and Santa Rosa [Santa Rosa?], and so we went to see for ourselves. They again held convocation in the heart of Mendocino County [Where else?], only this time it was to be in the Redwoods and the Hot Springs and the Rolling Hills near Comptche. They were observed to have spent 3 days and 2 nights celebrating shabbos, kabballah and Torah. [And Doobies and Debbies since Rachel couldn’t make it.] They were singing, schmoozing, telling stories and even drumming around a campfire! There was also observed some splashing in the water, [sometime after we head the word ‘mikveh’], schvitzing near a Lakota sweat lodge, boating on a river, swimming, and hiking on the 140 acres. We saw davening, learning, healing together. If you don’t have a father or son, bring somebody else’s. Indoor accommodations for 30. Nearly limitless camping accommodations. Register early for best selection. Friday, August 22nd, 2pm until Sunday the 24th, 6pm at the Shambhala Retreat Center, Orr Springs Road between Ukiah and the Coast, 2 hours or so from the Golden Gate Bridge. $150 suggested donation.”
YOU DON’T THINK we want you shmucks running naked around our place for nothing, do you?
CRIME OF THE DAY (May 31, 2012): Mervin Wilson, 47, of Laytonville, was arrested Monday for burglarizing an empty trailer on the Laytonville rez. Observed as he crawled into a storage area of the vacant doublewide, CHP and Tribal Police simply waited for Wilson to crawl back out, then took him into custody. Predictably, Wilson was also in possession of go-fast powder.
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