The high point was a fantastic figure about 15 feet tall in gleaming red satin pants surrounded by a mob of brightly dressed and face-painted children, a few boys, but mostly girls, many of them…
Posts published by “McEwen Bruce”
Crime, Elmore Leonard tells us, is always half-baked and always goes off half-cocked. The popular novelist’s dictum is validated almost weekly here in Mendocino County. Last week a spectacular instance of it faced arraignment in…
Timothy Burger, 21, of Sacramento, was shot dead early the morning of October 30th, 2010 during a home invasion robbery attempt at a home on Steele Lane, Laytonville Burger's accomplices, 18-year-old Tyrone Bell and 19-year-old…
“I respect Ms. Thompson, but this is basic stuff, right out of criminal law procedure 101,” attorney Jan Cole-Wilson said. “Any lawyer should know this.” Ms. Cole-Wilson, as she argued for a new trial for…
Reading the Gualala-based Independent Coast Observer during a lunch break at the Courthouse, I was interrupted by Mark Wuerfel. This was scarcely a nuisance.
Over and over the Wuerfel case convenes in Ukiah court with a great feeling of expectation that something is about to happen — but it never does. Round and round it goes: The Wuerfel Whirl.…
Thomas Knight was looking at four years in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. He'd gotten into a fight with a friend. Maybe the friend was winning the hand-to-hand combat when Knight pulled a…
The names of the child victim and her family will not appear in this story, but they were heard loud and clear in the County Courthouse last week during the preliminary hearing for Richard Kruse…
It was only a landlord-tenant hassle, but the Courthouse was in a state of great expectation. The place was buzzing. Judge Ann Moorman, new to the bench, was scheduled to preside but begged off, saying…