Saturday, December 3, 2005

THE PERSECUTION OF THERESA DANG: PART II

Any jury would have concluded “beyond a reasonable
doubt” that the DA had a shoddy case

By DUANE J. ROBERTS
duaneroberts92804@yahoo.com

WESTMINSTER, CA – Orange County Deputy District
Attorney Erik Petersen seems to be puzzled. He appears
not to understand the reasons why a jury decided to
find Theresa Dang, 26, of Westminster, California,
“not guilty,” of two misdemeanor theft charges for
allegedly stealing a flashlight “lost” by a Garden
Grove policeman at a counterdemonstration she attended
earlier this year. “I don’t know whether they got
caught up in the law or the politics behind it or the
fact that the flashlight was only worth $100,” a
newspaper reporter quotes him as saying. {1}

But the only one to blame for this defeat is himself
and his superiors. After careful deliberations, any
jury looking into this matter would have concluded
“beyond a reasonable doubt” that Garden Grove Police
not only never bothered to mount a complete and
thorough investigation into all the facts before
filing criminal charges against Dang, but that the
Orange County District Attorney’s Office’s case was so
shoddy and full holes and inconsistencies that none of
the so-called “evidence” they had brought forward
would be able to withstand any serious scrutiny. “I’m
surprised they’re bringing this case to trial,” said
B. Kwaku Duren, her defense attorney told me earlier
in the week.

Take for example, the small clip of videotape that
Deputy District Attorney Petersen showed where you can
clearly see Dang picking up what appears to be a large
Maglite flashlight not far from where several Garden
Grove policeman had just tackled a protester down to
the ground. Petersen said these images were proof that
Dang had engaged in an “opportunistic crime” during a
“moment of passion”; that she saw a flashlight fall
from a policeman’s pocket and stole it for a “trophy.”

But if it were Dang’s intent on stealing a flashlight
from a policeman, why does the videotape show her
moving toward the cops with “their” property clearly
visible in her right hand? And why does she then stand
directly in front of them and scream? “At a
demonstration, with lots of police around, police in
helicopters, police on horses, why would anybody want
to try and steal from them? There must be something
seriously wrong with you if you do that. Something
mental,” Duren would tell jurors.

And there were serious questions as to who really
owned the flashlight in question. Officer David Lopez,
the policeman whose flashlight that Dang supposedly
“stole,” not only couldn’t offer any conclusive
evidence proving the one seen in the videotape was
his, but testified under oath that he originally
didn’t even know if he had lost it until well after he
went home. He didn’t even file a “lost property
report” until it was brought to his attention by his
superior that they had a video of Dang with a
flashlight in her hand. When asked by Duren if
thousands of these kind of flashlights have been made,
Lopez said “yes.”

Petersen claimed after Dang picked up the flashlight,
she stuck it in her purse. But the videotape shows no
images of her trying to conceal it from anybody – much
less hide it her purse. In fact, shortly after she
backs into a protester standing directly behind her,
disappearing off-camera momentarily, she has no
flashlight in her right hand when we see her again.“If
she put the flashlight in her purse, where was the
bulge?” Duren asked jurors rhetorically.

If one carefully scrutinizes the images of Dang after
she reappears on camera without the flashlight, we see
her clinging on to her purse, holding it rather close
to her body. But her purse is not made of hard vinyl,
stiff leather, or some other kind fabric that is
inflexible or hard to bend; it’s constructed out of a
soft cloth. If she had indeed stuck the flashlight
into her purse, wouldn’t we have seen the contours of
it on the cloth as the body pressed against the
fabric?

But if Dang didn’t have the flashlight, where did it
go? During the trial, Dang testified under oath that
she picked up the flashlight with the belief that it
was owned by a man she knew who had just been tackled
down to the ground by several Garden Grove policemen.
She said that the protester she backed into was
another friend of hers who took the flashlight from
her possession with the intention of eventually
returning it to the man being detained by the cops.

Detective Michael Reynolds, the policeman
investigating this matter, was asked by Duren if there
was a possibility that Dang had passed the flashlight
to the protester behind her instead of keeping it for
herself. He acknowledged there was, but claimed that
Dang didn’t want to talk to him. But the first time
the Detective ever bothered to call her was when she
was at work: the exact same moment when he and two
other police officers had raided her Westminster home
and began rummaging through all of her personal
belongings.

Petersen repeatedly badgered Dang about this, asking
her why she didn’t talk to the Detective when he made
an attempt to contact her the day he was at her house?
He hinted to jurors that Dang’s reluctance to
cooperate with the policeman in his investigation
indicated not only was she being evasive, but
dishonest as well. But the day before Reynolds
contacted her, she had received a letter from the
Orange County District Attorney’s Office charging her
with a misdemeanor petty theft charge. “She had
certain rights not to talk,” Duren told jurors.

In fact, Reynolds testimony under oath not only
established the fact he had been with the Garden Grove
Police Department for more than 16 years, but it also
suggested this might have been the first time in
his career that he ever conducted a misdemeanor petty
theft investigation backwards: first, he filed a
criminal charge against Theresa Dang with the Orange
County District Attorney’s Office; second, he obtained
a search warrant from an Superior Court Judge to raid
her home in search of a Maglite flashlight; and
third, while rummaging through Dang’s personal
belongings at her Westminster home, he calls her for
the first time to ask for an interview.

With absurdities like this -- of which this case is
riddled with -- should it not be a surprise to anybody
that a predominantly white, middle-aged jury composed
engineers, homemakers, retirees, and administrative
assistants here in Orange County, California coughed
up “not guilty” verdicts on Dang's behalf?

Petersen was quite right when during opening arguments
he told jurors he wasn’t prosecuting “the crime of the
century”; what he neglected to inform them, however, was
that in reality, he was prosecuting a farce.

END OF PART II

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NOTES:

{1} “O.C. Woman Is Acquitted in Flashlight Theft,”
Friday, December 2, 2005, The Los Angeles Times.

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For more info, see the following links:

THE PERSECUTION OF THERESA DANG: PART I
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/140410.php

GG POLICE PURSUE PHONY CRIMINAL CHARGE
AGAINST WOMAN HIT BY MINUTEMAN SUPPORTER
http://www.la.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/129491.php