Next court hearing for Timothy Littlefield set for June 11, guess round 3 is on, alleged charges include sodomy with child under 10

June 11 disposition and reset hearing in Courtroom 2.

Charges against Littlefield include sexual intercourse/sodomy with a child under 10, penetration by a foreign object, oral copulation and lewd and lasvicious act under 14 years.

Littlefield has been represented in the last two trials and in round 3 by private attorney Russ Clanton.

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May 8, 2015

"Looks like we will be going round 3 in the Littlefied case", will the third time be justice for Timothy Littlefield

If you are not familiar with the Timothy Littlefield case, you may want to click on the links below. For those following the saga, the above quote is from Littlefield's attorney Russ Clanton.

He said he looked at the apellate brief. His remarks were directed to DDA Brie Bennett who is one of the DDAs now prosecuting CAST cases. This was openly said while we were in the hallway this morning waiting for the Kailan Meserve case.

http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-timothy-littlefield-story.html
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/05/timothy-littlefield-posted-bail-and-is.html
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/06/timothy-littlefield-deal-in-works.html
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/12/attorney-general-files-opening-brief-in.html
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/10/timothy-littlefield-case-keep-getting.html
johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/05/unconfirmed-as-of-now-buttimothy.html?m=1
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/11/attorney-general-to-default-on.html
http://johnchiv.blogspot.com/2014/07/littlefield-retrial-set-for-oct-20.html

Local attorney Allan Dollison sent the following link to the appellate court :

http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=1&doc_id=2078140&doc_no=A141929

He said, the appeal is still pending. There has been no appellate decision. I guarantee you that they will report that at the D/R hearing, and thus it will be premature to set it for trial. The trial court literally cannot act anyway, until the remititur (return back to the trial court) is issued.

Below is Allan's detailed response why:

Having just done 2 recent civil appeals, one that resulted in the overturning of a $70,000 attorney fee award, and currently pending a Petition for Review before the CA Supreme Court in another case, I wanted to add some clarity and ground truth information to this post.

Appeals are necessarily long and drawn out processes. There is essentially a 3-part process. Whoever files the appeal files their brief. (This is only done after the record and transcript of what happened in the lower trial court is forwarded to the Court of Appeals.) The party opposing the Appeal, called the Respondent, then gets their one and only opportunity to file their brief countering what the Appellant argued. The appellant who has the burden then gets to file a reply brief, limited to only what the Respondent argued. They can't bring in new theories. After the briefing is completed, the case undergoes a rather intense scrutiny by lawyers who work at the Court of Appeal. It then gets set for optional oral argument.

Most criminal lawyers request oral argument. Sometimes prior to the oral argument, what are called "argument focus" letters are sent out. They can be very critical as it lets you know what the Justices really think are the critical issues.

In this case, we are only at Step 2 of this process. The people (represented by the CA Attorney General's office) have filed their brief. The Defendant (Timothy Littlefield, represented by a private court appointed appeals specialist) has now just recently filed his brief. The people still get their opportunity to file a reply brief. We are months and months from a decision.

The main issue in this case was whether or not it was Juror misconduct for a juror to have said, "that he thought the Defense did not prove their case." The Defense of course has to prove NOTHING in a criminal trial. Littlefield was convicted, and over a year later a Motion for New Trial was filed, wherein a Juror signed a Declaration (it was written by a Defense investigator) making that claim. There was actually a hearing on that motion, and the Juror supposedly testified, and admitted that he actually did know the Defense did not have to prove anything. Judge Feeney (who is also hearing the Bullock trial) ruled that it was Juror misconduct, and he threw out the guilty verdicts.

The Court of Appeals will have 2 options. They can affirm the Judge's ruling or they can reverse it. If the former, there will be another trial, if the DA's office wants to convict Littlefield of molestation. If the latter there will not be another trial. He will be sentenced to over 100+ years in prison. Either side if unhappy with the Court of Appeals decision will have the right to ask permission to have the case heard by the CA Supreme Court or the US Supreme Court. Both of those Courts "choose to hear their cases" ie it is not automatic, so this ruling by the Court of Appeals is for all intents and purposes the final say on this matter.

The US Supreme Court just ruled on the issue of using declarations (or affidavits) if you will to overturn jury verdicts. The issue was the juror supposedly lied in voir dire. Although the case was decided on federal grounds, they ruled that those types of declarations are ALMOST never admissible. That would be a good case for the people, and not Mr. Littlefield (link below.)

There is substantial evidence in this case. Per other reports there was actually DNA evidence presented linking Mr. Littlefield to the crime. That is extremely rare in molestation cases. One final issue, is that it is obvious that this juror never stated or uttered those words during deliberations. If so, my experience is that the other jurors would have immediately corrected him. Frequently they report the Juror to the Judge, because the Juror is not following the law. Also, the DA's office (to wit former DA Paul Gallegos) filed the appeal. If the AG thought there was no chance and that the Judge was right, they could have dismissed the appeal. They did not do that. This is not over, and we should wait until the case is finally presented to the Court of Appeal, before predictions of "heading toward Round 3.--Allan Dollison "http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/warger-v-shauers/