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Contra Costa DA’s number two resigns, says handling of murder cases ‘made me sick inside’

By NATE GARTRELL July 2, 2019
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/02/contra-costa-das-number-two-resigns-says-handling-of-murder-cases-made-me-sick-inside/

MARTINEZ — Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton’s chief prosecutor has resigned, a move she attributes to concerns over her ex-boss’s leadership as well as a recent controversial plea deal that freed a man from death row.

In quitting, chief deputy district attorney Phyllis Redmond joined an exodus from the office that has seen at least a dozen people leave since January, when there were approximately 90 staff attorneys.

Redmond said in a recent interview that Becton had stopped seeking her and other prosecutors’ input on key decisions, such as how to handle significant changes to the state’s murder law. She said the “final straw” involved the case of Freddie Lee Taylor, who was freed in a February plea deal after an appeals court overturned his 1985 conviction of raping and murdering an 84-year-old woman in her home.

“It’s almost like a mom saying, ‘Because I said so.’ That’s how the management style is beginning to feel,” Redmond said. “And again, this is an elected position so there is a lot of ‘Because I said so,’ but that is not really what it takes to bring people along into a new era.”

A district attorney spokesman declined to comment on Redmond’s critiques of Becton’s leadership, saying in a written statement it would be inappropriate to air “personnel matters” and describing Redmond as a “disgruntled ex-employee.”

Redmond joined the office in 1989 and was a senior deputy district attorney in December 2017 when Becton appointed her chief deputy, the second-highest position in the office. She resigned April 30, announcing the move six weeks earlier in a letter that said the current office environment “undermines my ability to support the hard-working employees of this office, to seek justice and to serve victims of crime.”

A new chief deputy has not been selected.

She made up her mind to resign after learning about Taylor, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February and was released from jail later that day. Redmond criticized the district attorney’s office for failing to order testing of two rape test kits stored in a court clerk’s office and suggested they may contain evidence that would prove Taylor’s guilt.

“To see us not do the best job or care about doing the best job for a family is just not the way we should be doing business,” Redmond said, adding that she learned of the plea deal from news coverage and that the article “made my stomach hurt.”

The Taylor case

Taylor was convicted of murdering Richmond resident Carmen Vasquez in 1985 during a home invasion robbery. But both his conviction and death sentence were overturned this year over concerns about his mental state during the trial, which appellate court judges ruled should have been examined at the time. The February plea deal that freed Taylor also has been criticized by others in the district attorney’s office.

Before the plea deal was finalized, authorities used modern methods to retest evidence stored at a Richmond police locker, including various swabs from Vasquez’s autopsy, as well as her fingernail clippings and dentures. No DNA was found.

But two rape test kits introduced during trial and kept with the court clerk’s office were never tested using modern technology.

District attorney’s office spokesman Scott Alonso said because the rape test kits had been stored in the clerk’s office, not a police evidence locker, they may have been contaminated. He added that the case also was complicated by the appellate court decision and witnesses who had died in the 34 years since Taylor was sentenced.

“The DNA testing conducted from the oral, anal and vaginal swabs were taken from the autopsy,” Alonso said in a written statement. “Unlike exhibits that were introduced at trial and were subject to contamination, these swabs were maintained under a strict chain of custody protocol at the Richmond Police Department.”

Redmond, though, said she believes the case would have been winnable in a retrial and accused former colleagues who suggest otherwise of revisionist history.

“At the time of the plea, they believed that evidence was lost,” Redmond said. She added that after she and a colleague found the rape test kits with the court clerk, “the story begins to change.”

Vasquez’s grandchildren, meanwhile, say they are still seeking answers. They too learned about the plea deal through media reports and were outraged, several of them said in an April interview. Last week, Becton spoke in person with a group of Vasquez’s family, a meeting Vasquez’s grandson Thomas Garcia called “unproductive” and “disappointing.”

“Becton gave no solid answers. … We found that very dismissive, insensitive and detached for a public servant,” Garcia said in a text message signed, “The Vasquez family.” He added, “It was very disrespectful.”

Alonso said Becton had listened to their concerns and “assured the family that a detailed written response will be provided.”

Becton, a former judge, was appointed district attorney in September 2017, three months after her predecessor, Mark Peterson, resigned and was convicted of perjury amid revelations he had used his campaign account for personal expenses. She was re-elected last year with more than 50 percent of the vote, after running on a platform of progressive justice reform. She is both the first woman and first African-American to be district attorney in Contra Costa County.

Her campaign had the support of nationally known justice reform advocate Shaun King, as well as Sen. Kamala Harris and then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., both former attorneys general. But some within Becton’s office have resisted not only the progressive reforms she has sought to implement but also recent fundamental changes to the state’s justice system that lean away from incarceration and so-called “tough on crime” measures.

This was evident in January, when deputy district attorney Chad Mahalich refused to preside over a plea deal that doled out a seven-year sentence for a murder defendant who was less than 16 years old at the time he shot and killed Discovery Bay resident Allie Sweitzer at a Richmond park. Mahalich publicly criticized Becton for refusing to allow him and others to challenge SB 1391, a new law that prohibits children younger than 16 from being tried as adults.

A June 25 county merit board meeting agenda suggests that Mahalich had been reprimanded and was appealing, alleging political retaliation; details of the reprimand were not available.

Another significant legal change, SB 1437, restricts when accomplices can be prosecuted for murder during the commission of another felony. After the law took effect in January, thousands statewide have applied to get their murder convictions overturned. Redmond said that, at first, Becton “walled off” line attorneys in her office from being involved in the handling of SB 1437 cases.

“Our handling of those things was being done in secrecy as opposed to a team evaluation,” Redmond said, adding that this changed only after an “uproar” within the office and that it was one of the things that “made me sick inside.”

“It’s not about having a progressive agenda. It’s, ‘Don’t forget that there are people and families and victims behind all these changes,’ ” Redmond said. “You have to consider them.”