WOODLAND — The trial for the suspect in a fatal child assault in Davis won’t proceed as planned next week due to a bid by the Yolo County Public Defender’s Office to have the assigned judge removed from the case.
Deputy Public Defender Martha Sequeria, who represents Darnell D’Angelo Dorsey, has filed a motion to disqualify Judge Paul Richardson because she believes he holds a bias against her and her office.
Darnell D’Angelo Dorsey. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise file photo
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Thursday in Judge Janene Beronio’s courtroom.
One of two defense lawyers assigned to Dorsey, Sequeira also represents Eric Lovett, a suspect in an unrelated shooting and criminal street gang case that’s in the early trial stage.
According to Sequeira’s nearly inch-thick motion, Richardson was presiding over a preliminary hearing in the Lovett case last year when two law-enforcement officers who were in the courtroom reported seeing Lovett make threatening gestures toward the victim, Ernie Sotelo, as he testified on the witness stand.
Prosecutors added a charge of dissuading a witness to the case, along with a gang enhancement that, if proven, exposes Lovett to a potential life sentence he wouldn’t otherwise face.
“In preparing Mr. Lovett’s defense, I subpoenaed witness Paul Richardson to testify, as the alleged crime … occurred in his immediate presence and I am informed and believe that (he) would provide testimony exculpatory to Mr. Lovett” and that would impeach the two officers, Sequeira wrote in a declaration.
Richardson opposed the subpoena, hiring a private attorney who penned a letter to Sequeira noting that state laws “prohibit a judge from testifying regarding any statement, conduct, decision, or ruling, occurring at or in conjunction with a prior proceeding at which he presided.”
The attorney later filed a motion to quash, or void, the subpoena, attaching a declaration from Richardson in which he wrote, “I did not witness the alleged conduct when it occurred. I was only later informed by third parties.” The motion was granted by a retired Yolo County judge.
In December, Sequeira’s co-counsel Joseph Gocke sparred with Richardson in court over a defense bid to move the Dorsey trial from January to March due to the unavailability of the defense’s medical expert. Frustrated with the case’s repeated delays, Richardson initially refused another, but relented at a subsequent hearing.
The following month, Sequeira issued a second subpoena seeking Richardson’s testimony in the Lovett case that met the same fate as the first, though this time Richardson’s attorney sought a protective order and made a $3,013 sanctions request that was later withdrawn.
With the Dorsey trial looming, “his demonstrated bias and animosity towards me and my office cannot be ignored,” Sequeira wrote in her motion. “The Honorable Paul K. Richardson is likely unable … to afford Mr. Dorsey a fair trial.”
Richardson was expected to file a response to the motion prior to Thursday’s hearing.
Dorsey, 23, is accused of fatally beating his girlfriend’s toddler son Cameron Morrison while baby-sitting him on the night of Jan. 22, 2014, at the girlfriend’s Olive Drive residence. The defense contends the boy died as a result of illness and from choking on food, which caused him to stop breathing.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene