By Linda Sutter – January 6, 2017 – WHO DONE IT?  CASE# CRF16-9212

WARNING:  What you are about to read is straight from the court record with questions not on the Officer charged, but the DA’s Office, as well as other CHP Officers. On November 28, 2016 the Attorney General Deputy Peter E. Flores submits to the Superior court a Motion in Limine, People v. Clemann. I won’t bore you with the first few pages but we will start this story from page 6, paragraph 4, line 24.

ANY REFERENCE TO THE PROSECUTION OF THIS CASE BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SHOULD BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED.

The People request that neither party refer to the fact that the Attorney General is prosecuting the case. Such references would only cause the jury to speculate about the reasons the district attorney is not prosecuting. Such speculation could include speculation that the government has taken a special interest in prosecuting defendant because he is particularly dangerous or because of over-reaching by singling out the defendant for prosecution. If any reference is made to the prosecution of the case by the Attorney General, it should be a simple advisement by this court that the “Attorney General is substituted as the prosecutor whenever a member of the district attorney’s staff has a conflict with a party or witness to a case.”

Additionally, while the People are uncertain why elected District Attorney Dale Trigg is on defendant’s witness list, the People move to exclude any testimony by Mr. Trigg or any other witness about the case being sent to the California Attorney General’s Office for review instead of the Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office. The Chief Deputy, (Katherine Micks) of the Del Norte DA’s office and her husband, along with another Deputy DA, (Lisa Specchio-Wolfe) and her husband are good friends with defendant and regularly attend poker nights at defendant Clemann’s house. The Chief Investigator, (AC Fields) for the DA’s office is one of the defendant’s best friends. The basis for recusing the small Del Norte DA’s Office is evident from these connections alone. However, the basis for a recusal or for the Attorney General assuming responsibility for prosecuting a case has no relevance to this case. It would merely introduce a tangential, irrelevant issue that could be used by defendant to imply that his is being unfairly targeted by being charged in this case. To rebut such an inference witnesses from the Attorney General’s senior staff would have to be called to discuss the basis for their decision to proceed with the case. All evidence by both parties in this area would be an undue waste of time and unnecessarily distract and confuse the jury. As a result, any such evidence should be EXCLUDED.

Whether this was granted or not was not determined because a Court Clerk informed me she needed the file back because of a hearing set for Monday at 0900 hours on Clemann whether the case will be reheard again or not.

During the Preliminary hearing much came out to the point that reasonable doubt was created in my mind. I don’t know what the testimony was from the staff of the DA’s Office as I was not in the court room to listen, however the manuscript of the preliminary spoke in volumes about this case and why there was a not guilty verdict on count 1 Burglary, and the other 11 Felony counts resulted in a hung jury.

TIMELINE

It was determined that Clemann had worked as the evidence officer from June 13, 2013 to March 9, 2015. On March 1, 2015 a new commander for the California Highway Patrol (CHP) began and when a new commander begins his service, an audit is suppose to be conducted on the evidence room contents. However, that was not done. In Fact on March 9, 2015,  Martin Ashire and Chris Enriquez were tasked with conducting a complete audit of the evidence room which contained 9 bins of evidence.

Martin Ashire is an officer from Humboldt County Branch who was specifically  brought in on March 9^th, to conduct an audit on the evidence room to prevent an insider conduct an audit for a change of command audit. During that audit,  Ashire and Enriquez repackaged every single piece of evidence in the evidence room, and threw stuff away (pag 94 of pre-lim manuscript) unbeknownst to Investigator Shawn Villano. In fact, Officer Enriquez  was the evidence officer from March 9, 2015 to May 1, 2015 when Officer Borges took over as Evidence Room Officer.

Prior to Officer Clemann working as Evidence Officer, Rick Barry was the Evidence Officer. He was taken out of that position due to some sort of impropriety involving drugs.  No Audit was conducted prior to Clemann attaining that position from Rick Barry.

Prior to Officer Borges taking over the Evidence Room he happened to come to the CHP office one weekend and discovered Sgt. Ashire and Enriquez in the evidence room. He overheard them say, “everything is fine, everything is fine.” Borges proceeded about his business without questioning what he had overheard.

So, sometime in June, Officer Borges takes over the Evidence room  and does an inventory and begins to find things missing, opened, etc. He decides to talk to Officer Bailey who is the Union Rep asking advice because he didn’t want to be accused of taking drugs from the evidence room. Officer Bailey instructs Borges, “DON’T TELL ANYONE, I’LL TAKE CARE OF IT.”  Soon after Sergeant Pete Roach and Officer Borges begin a comprehensive audit of all nine purge bins. That Audit began on June 15, 2016. By the end of June 16, 2016 they audited purge bins 1-3 and found 8 to 10 items had been tampered with.

Keep in mind, Officer Borges is the only officer with the Evidence Room Key accept for the Lieutenant in charge who kept a key somewhere in his office. According to the Attorney General, the Defendant Clemann was informed of the ongoing audit of the purge bins, the evidence room was broken into and most of the items from purge bins 1-3 were taken.

So, let me get this straight. Officer Borges has the key to the evidence room since May along with the old commander and the new commander. Borges and Roach conduct an extensive audit and call up Clemann to let him know some stuff was missing because Clemann had not been the evidence room officer since March 9^th, 2016, and then suddenly the CHP OFFICE WAS BROKEN INTO THAT VERY NIGHT and they are going to claim it was Clemann. And this was after all the other officers had been in and out of this evidence room and audits had been completed. Oh… one more thing… not only was the CHP evidence room broken into…a hole the size of Texas was sawed into the evidence room door with more than likely a reciprocating saw. There is sawdust with shoe prints everywhere. So, how the heck was someone bold enough to come onto CHP PROPERTY with a saw and knowing how to get through the gate by leaving a trash can on the electric gate to keep it from closing.

The night of the 16^th the highway patrol got a phone call from the dispatcher that one of the box phones on 199 was off the hook. Officer Navarez and one other officer responded to that call. At 12:20 a.m. They drove to the call box in Hiouchi, only to find out the phone was hanging from the call box. Navarez called the dispatcher from the call box and made a peculiar statement to the effect, “my fingerprints are going to be all over this phone.” Navarez and his partner then went out to eat before returning to the CHP OFFICE. Upon their return to the office they discovered the side gate opened. They conducted a security check and discovered that the evidence room had been compromised and three purge bin items were missing consisting of 91.2 grams meth, 4,080 grams of marijuana (8.99 pounds) 349.5 pills, and 30.6 grams of black heroin.

The next morning an investigator, Shawn Villano, flew into Gasquet airport from Redding California.  As the Commander of CHP drove him to the scene they passed Officer Bailey who was standing guard of the call box. When investigators arrived to get fingerprints off the call box it was discovered there were no fingerprints on the telephone from the call box. It should be noted that when Officer Navarez was interviewed regarding this matter he made mentioned that he thought he saw Rick Barry’s truck driving in the opposite direction when officers were responding to the call box.

The DOJ determined the shoe print left behind in the saw dust was a woman’s size 8.5. I did not see whether the investigator requested that all the officers involved in this madness had their wives come in to see if any of their wives wore an 8.5. Also, a red hair or burgundy hair was discovered in the strike plate of the door.  Clemann does not have red hair so who does out of all these people mentioned in this story? The lead investigator Villano could not answer if any women or men wore women’s shoes size 8.5. Officer Bailey was never interviewed to explain why his finger prints were found in the evidence room.

During this investigation Clemanns was required to provide hair samples for a drug test. None of the other officers who were in and out of the evidence room were required to provide samples for a drug test.

Then there was Jeremy Jacobs. He used to be best friends with Clemann until he accused Clemann and Jason Costello of sleeping with Jacobs wife. In Fact Jacobs is alleged to have gone to Del Norte County  Courthouse, where Clemann’s wife Michelle works as a clerk and threatened both over infidelity. Yet with that said, how would Jacob’s get into the CHP office cut down a door, steal the goods and then get a key to Clemann’s house and place evidence in Clemann’s house?

What is interesting as well is most of the jurors on the jury panel were people who had not lived in Del Norte County very long. (Hint, hint… meaning they may not have been aware of all the cronyism going on in this town.) Hence, counts 2-11 were found by a hung injury.

On Monday morning, January 9, 2017, at 0900 hours there will be another hearing to decide if there should be another trial. Clearly, it appears the court wasted taxpayer money even having a trial because it appears that some or all of the “bad guys” are all in bed together.