This news article written by Joshua Melvin smacks of bias, distortion and misrepresentation of fact.
This was NOT a competency hearing. It was an incompetency hearing. Competency is presumed. Incompetency is not presumed. The statement 'He cannot be retried on the criminal charges until he's deemed competent' is a false statement. He will or will not be retried solely on the determination and decision of the DA's Office.
The fact of the mistrial on incompetency will raise issues on appeal. That will be the DA's concern.
This
Further, in spite of the utterly unusual events surrounding the declaration of mistrial and the basis for it, not one word of comment is made by the reporter on this subject. Why?
How often does such a high profile case terminate its deliberations so quickly? Yet not a word from this person reviewing the event.
Further, although on-site observers of the trial are unclear as to whether there was a public hearing of the mistrial event, as has always been the case in my experience, there appears to be the possibility that the entire event was conducted in private. This would be extraordinary if true, and certainly newsworthy.
We all know from having seen events like this repeatedly, that it is common practice for a judge to admonish the jurors, consult and advise them according to the law and send them back to try again time and again. Yet, in this case, the judge seems eager to accept the mistrial path and waste the taxpayer's hard-earned money. Why?
None of these issues are addressed by the reporter and editor who seem to my mind intent on creating misinformation in an attempt to mislead the public. If this is the case, it is reprehensible and irresponsible in the extreme.
There has already been a long series of events in this case of questionable actions and behaviors on the part of both Bay Area News Groups characterizations in their reporting of this horrid trial, as well as those of the DA's Office and the Courts in the conduct of this case.
Does Dr. Ayres have knowledge of the conduct of others within the government and judiciary of the County of San Mateo that requires those in power to take steps to collaborate in efforts to protect him from the obvious consequences of his actions? One can only speculate..
Saturday, June 18, 2011
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DA Steve Wagstaffe informed a citizen in May, 2009, just a few weeks before the start of the Ayres trial: "The DA's office has NEVER used Ayres to evaluate chidren."
ReplyDeleteThis is a flat out lie. In his own deposition for the first molestation civil suit against him in October 2004, Ayres himself states under oath that the San Mateo DA's office HAD hired him to evaluate boys. Specifically. Ayres states that when Marta Diaz worked as a prosecutor in the DA's office in the 1980s she used Ayres to evaluate boys.
Glenn Rabinowitz, the executive editor of the San Mateo County Times told this same citizen in August 2010, that the paper believes that the "San Mateo DA's office is ambivalent about trying the Ayres case and doesn't really want to try it. " Rabinowitz stated to the citizen that he had worked in papers in many states around the country, yet that "San Mateo County was the most corrupt county he'd ever worked in." Rabinowitz stated to the citizen that his paper"should investigate the corruption". However, despite numerous efforts by citizens to alert Rabinowitz about for example- the ongoing investigation by the FBI's office into DA Steve Wagstaffe for corruption, and turning over documents that the FBI has itself in its possession on this matter, the paper has done NOTHING to look into the mishandling of the Ayres case and has not even bothered to check to see if there is an FBI investigation into the San Mateo DA's office.
Think about it: The San Mateo DA's office hired Ayres; all of the judges sent children to Ayres: San Mateo County Children's Services sent children to Ayres (he was their primary vendor for many years); the San Mateo Public Defender's office sent children to Ayres; all of the public schools sent their children to Ayres.
Think about how many lawsuits the County would be open to should there be a conviction.
Some of us believe there's much more than incompetence going on here...
Let's face it: the prosecution did a piss-poor job on the first criminal trial, and an even worse one in the competency trial.
ReplyDeleteWebsleuths has provided information on where citizens can go to complain about the San Mateo District Attorney's office's conduct on the Ayres case:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105573&page=24
Prosecutors have been known to deliberately lose cases. Here's one example:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/nyregion/05da.html
I suppose that example shows a prosecutor will do as they see fit but it misleads since it is about a man with proper morals acting to correct an injustice.
ReplyDeleteIn this case the prosecutor's office, and apparently the entirety of the San Mateo County Government, has illicit, apparrently monetary motivations for subverting the prosectution of Mr Ayres who has admitted to the molestations calling them "physical exams" which the evidence shows are not only not appropriate for any psychologist/psychiatrist to do under any circumstance, but that his school residency program if I remember one of Ms. Balfour's reports correctly, explicitly told him and his fellow residents to never do any kind of physical exams on children, period.
His assertion that this is what he was taught has been refuted many many times by his fellow students.
On another subject; How does one contact Victoria Balfour? There doesn't seem to be an email link on here and I cannot find anything online.
C
C:
ReplyDeleteHi- you can reach me at: balfour.victoria@gmail.com
San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told a citizen in May, 2009 that his office had "NEVER"hired Ayres to evaluate a boy. That is a completely false statement. Ayres testified under oath during a civil deposition in a molestation suit against him in 2004 that the San Mateo District Attorney's office DID use him to evaluate boys.
ReplyDeleteWhy would Steve Wagstaffe lie about that? Could it be because he didn't want his office to be the subject of lawsuits? What about the San Mateo Private Defender's Association? Ayres was under contract to them for decades. Ditto for Children's Services. No one in those organizations- despite repeated requests from citizens- have bothered to investigate how many boys Ayres molested through these agencies. But up in Calgary, when Dr. Aubrey Levin who treated young men through the courts was arrested for sexually assaulting them, the Calgary courts contacted every single patient of Levin's through the courts to see if they had been molested. You'd never ever catch San Mateo doing anything like that. They don't want to be held accountable.
One of Ayres' victims died this past February. We have learned that Ayres gave him alcohol and other substances in the session and then violently sexually assaulted him (think worst case scenario.) We know that Ayres told this victim, "If you let me do this to you, then I will make sure you don't go to juvenile hall. "
This victim only told his closest childhood friend the details about what Ayres did to him, just before he died. The sexual assault that the victim said Ayres did to him is a thousand degrees worse than anything that has been printed in the papers.
Just think how many other juveniles had the same thing happen to them as this deceased victim. Think how many juvenile cases Ayres affected.
The San Mateo District Attorney's office; the Private Defenders and other responsible organizations have shown a bizarre lack of interest in getting to the bottom of the breadth and depth of the sexual assaults on boys in the juvenile system. No doubt because of the lawsuits.
This information must be made available to the California Attorney General.
Wendy Murphy, former Boston prosecutor and legal analyst on the Today Show, CBS, MSNBC and Fox weighs in on the Ayres case: "DA's throwing cases is not new. Even the IDEA of Ayres being incompetent is so silly- it seems like a setup."
ReplyDeleteMore on the Ayres competency mistrial from Wendy Murphy, legal analyst on MSNBC, Fox and the Today show: "The interesting thing is - it's supposed to be an issue for the COURT to deal with, not the prosecutor, so even having it structured as a fight between the prosecutor and defense makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteCompetency is about capacity to function in the system and is not supposed to be subjected to an adversarial process in the typical sense."
This "mistrial" is just bogus.
ReplyDeleteIf John Demjanjuk, the Nazi death camp guard could be convicted at age 91 when he was in a wheelchair, why can't the San Mateo District Attorney's office prove to a group of jurors that the New Yorker and New York Times reading 79 year old Ayres was sane?
In Massachusetts, prosecutors have been successful convicting pedophile priests who are well into their 80s.
This was a sham "trial." Shame on the San Mateo District Attorney's office for their shoddy work. Or was that deliberate on their part...The papers say that the FBI is already investigating the DA's office. It's time now to bring in the Attorney General's office to investigate the DA's "work" on the Ayres case.
This situation leaves me speechless. ayres must be held accountable for the damage and ruin he has caused. My deepest sympathy to all those affected by him.
ReplyDeleteEven readers of the San Francisco Chronicle are catching on to the fact that the San Mateo DA messed up bigtime by failing to check to see if Ayres was trained to do genital exams to boys in therapy, as he claimed. A commenter named Chris Thorne (and no, it's not me) had this to say in a story about the "mistrial."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BAVH1K07P9.DTL
"Ayres testified that as a psychiatrist, he was also a medical doctor and that he used physical exams to help determine what was ailing his patients."
Earlier in his career, when that strange habit of his was remarked upon and questioned by his local professional peers, Ayres claimed that he had been trained to do this during his psychiatric residency back East.
No one had the good sense to actually contact that program to verify his claim.
When later asked about it, the doctor who had run the residency program at the time Ayres had attended it said that conducting "physical exams" on psych patients was absolutely _not_ something they trained residents to do, and in fact it ran completely counter to their doctrine."
Here's another comment on the Chronicle story from one of Ayres' medical colleagues:
ReplyDeleteComment by bruceafrica
7:54 PM on June 20, 2011
"What Chris says is true. I was Bill's colleague in the Northern California Psychiatric Society in the 80's and when this story broke there was an attempt made to rally behind Bill " ...because I know he would never do such a thing". He did, and he disgraced us all.
'
Anonymous, Mr. Ayers (supposdily took an oath to do no harm so he is obviously not a DR. but truly a monster that was hiding behind a DR. notation to be able to harm so many) Anyone in government or the psychiatric community that supported him knowing his molestation issues over the years I cannot comprehend how they sleep at night. And they know who they are. I know personally many more victims would surface if it was not for the fact, they are trying to move on, and don't want to revisit the damage he did to them, even though it haunts them. AND LOOK HE IS GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Like a female rape victim, how many come forth when the know people just walk or get light sentences. It would probably only be the level of a state attorney general or a federal investigative agency that victims would have a chance for justice and a conviction. I pray for all his victims there are so so many and their families...and I pray for some miricle that there will some day be justice for them, their families, and all who have suffered because of William Ayers.
ReplyDelete