Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Al Giannini: Hired



San Mateo County Board of Supervisors – Board Meeting 4/23/2013


Hire of Al Giannini as second chair in william hamilton ayres prosecution:

San Mateo County Supervisors Pine, Groom, Horsley, Slocum, and Tissier voted unanimously to approve Item #7 on their agenda, adding former deputy district attorney Al Giannini as second chair to prosecutor Melissa McKowan in the william ayres child molestation criminal case.


Other agenda items of note:

National Crime Victim's Rights Week:
Item #3 on the Agenda was a proclamation declaring the week of April 21 to be National Crime Victim’s Rights Week. Don Horsley noted that DA Wagstaffe and his deputy Karen Guidotti had done a good job for victims of crimes in the county. Both Wagstaffe and Guidotti were present. Wagstaffe and Guidotti left after the vote for Item #7.

One of the other agenda items before Item #7 was set to approve the upcoming Mental Health Awareness Week (month? – whatever…)

Awesome.

8 comments:

  1. Don Horsley's comment = sickening.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Seems the new strategy is to spread the blame and confuse the issues by adding in a new prosecutor with no working knoiwledge of the case. Now that DA has a legit reason to allow for continuance so this new and proven incompetent team member can get up to speed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like Tweedledum and Tweedledee (McDougall and Wagstaffe) and the County Board of Supervisors are on the same page. Money talks. This turkey will walk. Alternatively, the turkey may be sentenced to the time he has served plus community service.

    Psychopaths always have a posse.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FYI: He's not really served any time.

      On the criminal matter, he's always made bail within a day or so, so he's served about 3-4 days.

      On the "Not competent to defend himself" claim, this was his claim and his burden to prove. Perhaps the court would consider that as time served, even though he could have ended it at any point by declaring that he was competent, as was determined by medical experts anyway. Doesn't seem that that would count as calculated time served. While he was held at Napa State, he was transported to the court a few times, and had to stay in the jail. There was a transport mix-up at one point. I think the total time he was held in the jail was a few weeks at the most, but again... that was because he insisted on the necessity for the evaluation, not because of any criminal matter.

      Delete
    2. I see your point; the child abuser and molester has served no criminal jail time. As such, I anticipate that it will either walk or be sentenced to non-strenous community service.

      In the future, the County of San Mateo should reconsider almost always giving its business to the lowest bidder. Paying less today might mean paying more later - and giving yourself a bad legacy, to boot.

      Delete
  4. The San Mateo DA's prosecutorial team in the first trial in 2009 was so lazy that even after Ayres testified that an "Al Songden" had trained him to do physicals at Yale on kids, they couldn't even be bothered to do a Google search during the trial to find out if such a person actually existed.

    If it weren't for the pro bono work of contributors on this blog, who spent time interviewing people at Yale to find out if there was an Al Songden, we wouldn't even know about Al Solnit.

    Never mind that what Al Solnit did is not relevant to this case at all. The only place where Ayres trained in child psychiatry was at Judge Baker Guidance Center in Boston. Not only did they NOT train child psychiatrists to give ANY kind of physical exams to children but several doctors over the years who were CAUGHT TOUCHING children there were FIRED.

    Judge Baker has onsite pediatricians. And at the time Ayres was there, Judge Baker was right across the street from renowned Children's Hospital. Why would a child psychiatrist who had just one year pediatric training ( as opposed to three, four or five years' worth of training that bona fide board certified pediatricians have) take it upon himself to give genital exams to boys when there are world renowned actual board certified pediatricians just a minute away from Judge Baker?

    As Dr. Gordon Harper who trained at Judge Baker has said, " The only child psychiatrists I know who say they were trained to give genital exams to boys in therapy are the pedophile psychiatrists."

    ReplyDelete
  5. I realize the following news excerpt is somewhat off-topic, but here goes, anyway:

    San Mateo Daily Journal
    April 24, 2013
    Government Watch
    County government

    The Board of Supervisors unanimously granted District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe’s request to rehire recently retired homicide prosecutor Al Giannini to assist in the May 13 retrial of W[snip] H[snip] A[snip], the former prominent child psychologist accused of molesting several former male patients. Giannini can earn up to $83,241.60 which is equivalent to the hourly rate of his former position. The funds will come from the already approved budget of the District Attorney’s Office.

    * * *

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not off topic at all.

      Took them all of 20 seconds for the motion to pass, by the way, and Wagstaffe and Guidotti took off immediately after the motion was approved.

      There's an article in the Mercury News about it too. Blurb, more than article -- with no mention of any of the ayres case details or the fact that the paper has been sent copies of the Innocence Project report about Giannini well ahead of the decision.

      Fishwrappers are clueless.

      Delete