WOODLAND — Ever since his newborn son Justice Rees died on a Knights Landing slough bank two years ago today, Frank Rees vowed he’d see the person responsible for his death be held accountable.
“I want justice for Justice,” Rees said in his frequent interviews with newspaper and TV reporters, even as his then-fianceé Samantha Green recanted her claim that someone had kidnapped her and the baby. Green soon was charged with second-degree murder for taking Justice into Ridge Cut Slough on a methamphetamine high.
A jury found her guilty last fall.
Justice Rees lived only 19 days. Courtesy photo
But many questioned why Rees wasn’t prosecuted alongside her, given allegations that Rees had facilitated Green’s drug-induced state. This week, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office answered, charging Rees with involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and administering methamphetamine.
He did not enter a plea at his arraignment hearing Thursday in Yolo Superior Court, where the Yolo County Public Defender’s Office — which represented Green — declared a conflict of interest in the case. A county conflict panel attorney, Rod Beede, asked to continue the hearing until Tuesday morning.
Beede also requested a review of Rees’ $500,000 enhanced bail, which was set by Judge David Rosenberg, though the documentation presented in support of that amount is sealed from public view.
District Attorney Jeff Reisig said testimony from Green’s trial proved crucial in building the case against Rees, who faces up to six years in prison if convicted.
“Evidence presented at trial established that Frank Rees was administering methamphetamine to Samantha Green” even though Justice was born with the drug in his system just weeks earlier, and the couple had promised social workers they’d address their addictions, Reisig told reporters at a press conference Wednesday morning.
“Under California law, when another individual’s unlawful or reckless conduct in the face of known risks is a substantial factor that contributes to the death of another person, criminal liability may be established,” Reisig added.
Rees, 31, proclaimed his innocence in an interview Wednesday morning with The Davis Enterprise at the Yolo County Jail.
“I just started healing from everything, and now they’re trying to do this s— to me,” said Rees, who recently became a father once again when his current girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl on Feb. 14, two months prematurely.
“We’ve been doing everything we’re supposed to do,” Rees added. He said a district attorney’s investigator and several other officers arrested him Tuesday morning after he and his girlfriend left the Child Welfare Services office in Woodland.
Rees denied reports that the new baby tested positive for methamphetamine at birth, as Justice had. Social workers are involved “because of our past history,” he said.
Yolo County officials also declined to comment on the new baby’s status, citing state privacy laws.
“I really just want to be a dad and move on with my life,” said Rees, alternately weeping and angered during the half-hour interview. “I just want to see my baby. I can’t have Justice back, but I have another chance with this new baby. I don’t want to lose another one.”
Rees also has four other children who were removed from his custody when detectives investigating Justice’s death reported finding drugs in the home he shared with his parents and the kids. He said he’d just been granted visitation rights this week.
“I can almost guarantee you this is going to be thrown out,” Rees said of the new case, for which he says he’s seeking a “shark” of an attorney to represent him. “The DA should come here and give me an apology. I lost my son. I think I’ve been through enough.”
Building a case
But prosecutors disagreed, saying that an investigation into Rees’ alleged culpability has been ongoing since Justice’s death.
In addition to the evidence from Green’s trial, Rees’ arrest earlier this month for allegedly having drugs and ammunition, which he is prohibited from having because of a prior felony conviction, factored into the timing of the new charges.
“During that incident, Mr. Rees was with a 27-year-old female who was six months pregnant and living with Mr. Rees,” Reisig said. “She was also found by (sheriff’s) deputies to be in possession of methamphetamine.”
The woman, presumably the mother of the new baby, was cited for the offenses. Rees denied those as well, saying first that “she had nothing that was hers,” then, “she didn’t have anything.”
As for why Rees wasn’t charged alongside Green, Reisig said it was “for legal reasons, which I do not plan to discuss today.”
John E.B. Myers, a criminal law professor at McGeorge School of the Law in Sacramento, said the two-year delay isn’t all that unusual.
“There’s many reasons that could be completely justifiable. You have to do your investigation. You have to see how the case unfolds,” Myers said. He also noted that Reisig may be hesitant to divulge reasons for holding off on charges “because doing so might reveal his sources and methods. There may be witnesses he needs to protect.”
Justice was just 19 days old when Green swam with him across the frigid slough on Feb. 23, 2015, while on a methamphetamine high and, according to prosecutors, in a jealous rage over Rees’ infidelity. Rees had gone to Knights Landing earlier that day to pick up a female friend with whom he later admitted having an affair.
Clad in just a gray cotton onesie, Justice died of exposure due to neglect as Green, having crashed from her drug high, kept him on the slough bank overnight.
Rees’ family disclosed following the baby’s death that he had tested positive for methamphetamine at birth due to Green’s ongoing use of the drug, but social workers allowed him to remain in his parents’ custody following the creation of a family “safety plan” that included the couple’s pledge to quit meth and seek drug treatment.
That never happened, however, and the case triggered significant reforms for Yolo County’s child welfare system and how it intervenes when parents struggle with substance-abuse issues.
Family reacts
In reaching their second-degree murder verdict, jurors ruled that while Green didn’t intentionally cause her baby’s death, by continuing her drug-abuse habits she acted recklessly and with conscious disregard for the infant’s life.
Green’s attorney, Public Defender Tracie Olson, mounted a defense that largely blamed Rees for Green’s actions, alleging that after injecting Green with large rectal doses of methamphetamine, Rees made bizarre claims of an impending apocalypse that sent her fleeing into the slough in a drug-induced psychosis.
“Never,” Rees said of those claims during the jailhouse interview. “She made her own f—ing choices. She needs to take some responsibility and not put it off on me.”
Green, who turns 25 this week, is serving a sentence of 15 years to life at the Central California Women’s Facility state prison in Chowchilla, her bid for a new trial or reduced conviction of involuntary manslaughter rejected in December.
Her father, Randy Green, stood outside District Attorney’s Office following Wednesday’s press conference, calling Rees a “menace to society” whose criminal prosecution was a long time coming.
“All the people involved need to be held accountable for their actions,” said Green, who in addition to Rees has faulted child welfare workers for failing to remove Justice from his addicted parents’ custody, as well as Rees’ parents, with whom the couple lived, for being oblivious to their continued drug abuse.
“They had a responsibility there, they violated their agreement, and that contributed partially to the death of my grandson,” Randy Green said. “I’m not saying my daughter’s innocent. She’s where she needs to be. But 15 to life? Not at all.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048.