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Author Topic: Sandra Cantu #4 4/27/09 -  (Read 517141 times)
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cece
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« Reply #1000 on: September 11, 2009, 11:59:35 AM »

Thanks cece, the only problem with the death penalty here in Ca is it takes forever to actually follow through 

Hi NoRose! 
And the prosecution wants a speedy trial due to the age of some of the witnesses.  That could be a problem.  And the defense attorney says he still needs more time to read through the some 1800 pages of documents.  I can see where the Judge will have a difficult decision.   
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cece
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« Reply #1001 on: September 11, 2009, 12:04:27 PM »

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/11/BA8S19L7AA.DTL

"Huckaby will return to court Sept. 25, at which time the judge could set a trial date, possibly in March."


(I hope a March trial date will be set)


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cece
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« Reply #1002 on: September 11, 2009, 12:21:19 PM »

Prime News 9/10/09 Sandra Cantu/Melissa Huckaby

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ta7H03rj310&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x3a3a3a&amp;color2=0x999999&amp;border=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ta7H03rj310&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x3a3a3a&amp;color2=0x999999&amp;border=1</a>
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« Reply #1003 on: September 11, 2009, 03:13:07 PM »

A little more legal analysis.   

I read the Minute Order the court entered as a result of yesterday's hearing.  The motion Huckaby filed to fire her attorney was a called a Marsden Motion.  A Marsden motion gets its name from the case of People v. Marsden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 118. It is a request to the court by a criminal defendant to discharge their lawyer on the basis of being incompetently or inadequately represented by counsel.

A defendant seeking to discharge his appointed counsel and substitute another attorney must establish either 1) that appointed counsel is not providing adequate representation, or 2) that he and counsel have become embroiled in such an irreconcilable conflict that ineffective representation is likely to result. People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1085; People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668, 795.

I'll reiterate what I said before.  I don't think MH is very happy with the advice she's getting from Behar.  I think he understands the evidence against her is overwhelming and is likely to result in a very very very lengthy jail term and probably death of the case goes to trial.  He probably also told her that the chances of her winning an incompetency hearing, or an insanity defense are slim and none.  She just had a comptency hearing in the theft cases and was adjudged competent.  She just doesn't want to face the music.  It's finally all sinking in.  She should have thought about that before she took this child's life.

Sorry, I'm probably writing with a little more color than usual.  But I am very bitter.



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Wyks
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« Reply #1004 on: September 11, 2009, 10:18:14 PM »

Thanks cece, the only problem with the death penalty here in Ca is it takes forever to actually follow through 

Yep true!  Some on death row have actually died of old age and/or natural causes, long before facing their last meal.  Sigh. 

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Wyks
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« Reply #1005 on: September 11, 2009, 10:21:31 PM »

Thanks cece, the only problem with the death penalty here in Ca is it takes forever to actually follow through 

Hi NoRose! 
And the prosecution wants a speedy trial due to the age of some of the witnesses.  That could be a problem.  And the defense attorney says he still needs more time to read through the some 1800 pages of documents.  I can see where the Judge will have a difficult decision.   

I wish in the cases of the young children that they give their testimonies now on camera, all to be brought out later on, when the defense is done stalling for time.  Can that be done? 
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Wyks
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« Reply #1006 on: September 11, 2009, 10:52:30 PM »

A little more legal analysis.   

I read the Minute Order the court entered as a result of yesterday's hearing.  The motion Huckaby filed to fire her attorney was a called a Marsden Motion.  A Marsden motion gets its name from the case of People v. Marsden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 118. It is a request to the court by a criminal defendant to discharge their lawyer on the basis of being incompetently or inadequately represented by counsel.

A defendant seeking to discharge his appointed counsel and substitute another attorney must establish either 1) that appointed counsel is not providing adequate representation, or 2) that he and counsel have become embroiled in such an irreconcilable conflict that ineffective representation is likely to result. People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1085; People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668, 795.

I'll reiterate what I said before.  I don't think MH is very happy with the advice she's getting from Behar.  I think he understands the evidence against her is overwhelming and is likely to result in a very very very lengthy jail term and probably death of the case goes to trial.  He probably also told her that the chances of her winning an incompetency hearing, or an insanity defense are slim and none.  She just had a comptency hearing in the theft cases and was adjudged competent.  She just doesn't want to face the music.  It's finally all sinking in.  She should have thought about that before she took this child's life.

Sorry, I'm probably writing with a little more color than usual.  But I am very bitter.


Understandable, JessStar.  Many are very bitter, the whole crime seems more heinous than the worst cases.  It's hard for many to believe such evilness even exists in the world, that another human being is capable of such to another human, esp such an innocent as Sandra.  I've said it before, I'll say it again am sure.  There IS evil in this world, and folks need to open their eyes and start listening to others around them.  My heart goes out to Sandra's family, and to all the loved ones of victims everywhere.  My heart breaks for those victims who are still alive and no one is listening to them, believing them, not even trying to understand that their circumstances are verrrrrrrry real. 

The world is not only made up of human beings that care about their families/friends/neighbors.  Evil human beings DO exist.  And the world needs to wake up and take off their rose-colored-glasses. One of the first steps in prevention is for folks to become aware.  We cannot let Sandra's death be in vain.  Or Caylee's.  Or any of the other countless cases.  This can be a beginning of awareness. 

But........ as bitter as I am, as others are, I've become rather jaded.  It seems many in this world would still rather turn a blind eye, no matter what happens around them or others, what they are told, etc.  And soooooo.... there likely will be more abused/murdered.  Cuz no one believed, or cared enough to get involved.  Sigh.   

<sorry........... stepping off my soapbox now.  i can't help it at times, the apathy of others just..... grrrrrrrrrr.... and the defense of the perp/s.. the appeals.. the attempts to delay.. the pleas for pity.. just sets me off again.  what concern was the victim shown?   grrrrrrrr... >

For some who are obviously a perp, I like the Texas saying... he needed killin'. 
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« Reply #1007 on: September 12, 2009, 10:54:02 AM »

 Wykers! 
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JessStar
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« Reply #1008 on: September 12, 2009, 06:56:55 PM »

Wyks, an awesome post. You are so,so right.
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Wyks
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« Reply #1009 on: September 13, 2009, 02:14:23 AM »

Thanks Cookie and JessStar!   an angelic monkey 



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« Reply #1010 on: September 15, 2009, 12:06:42 PM »

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Prosecutors plan on seeking a 42-year sentence for a former San Jose swim coach who pleaded no contest to child molestation charges. Sixty-one-year-old Andrew King entered no-contest pleas to 20 molestation charges. King had been a head coach at San Jose Aquatics and a number of swim clubs in the area over the past 40 years.

http://www.khsltv.com/news/state/story/Here-is-the-latest-Northern-California-news-from/iNOTkKiP10K-GU3PSLpvvA.cspx
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« Reply #1011 on: September 15, 2009, 02:47:31 PM »

Northern Rose, it's enough to make me violently ill.
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« Reply #1012 on: September 17, 2009, 11:07:13 PM »

A little more legal analysis.   

I read the Minute Order the court entered as a result of yesterday's hearing.  The motion Huckaby filed to fire her attorney was a called a Marsden Motion.  A Marsden motion gets its name from the case of People v. Marsden (1970) 2 Cal.3d 118. It is a request to the court by a criminal defendant to discharge their lawyer on the basis of being incompetently or inadequately represented by counsel.

A defendant seeking to discharge his appointed counsel and substitute another attorney must establish either 1) that appointed counsel is not providing adequate representation, or 2) that he and counsel have become embroiled in such an irreconcilable conflict that ineffective representation is likely to result. People v. Barnett (1998) 17 Cal.4th 1044, 1085; People v. Mayfield (1997) 14 Cal.4th 668, 795.

I'll reiterate what I said before.  I don't think MH is very happy with the advice she's getting from Behar.  I think he understands the evidence against her is overwhelming and is likely to result in a very very very lengthy jail term and probably death of the case goes to trial.  He probably also told her that the chances of her winning an incompetency hearing, or an insanity defense are slim and none.  She just had a comptency hearing in the theft cases and was adjudged competent.  She just doesn't want to face the music.  It's finally all sinking in.  She should have thought about that before she took this child's life.

Sorry, I'm probably writing with a little more color than usual.  But I am very bitter.





Jess, I am just reading this, and I think you are right on.  She is playing the incompetent to stand trial card, and it isn't working.  I hope she does more than face the music, I hope she has the whole damn orchestra there.
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JessStar
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« Reply #1013 on: September 19, 2009, 07:59:29 AM »

Another female, God fearing, Church going, sexual abuser of children.  This time, a Pastor.

Calif. pastor jailed for drugging, abusing 5 girls
Prosecutors say woman forced kids to live in a hidden room with no heating
   
updated 4:16 a.m. ET, Sat., Sept . 19, 2009

MORENO VALLEY, Calif. - A California pastor has been sentenced to life in prison for beating and drugging her five adopted daughters and locking them in a garage.

Jessica Banks, 65, received consecutive life terms Friday after being convicted in July of sexually abusing two of her daughters and forcing all the sisters to go without food for days.

Banks was arrested in 2005 after one emaciated girl was found lying outside a Moreno Valley business.

Prosecutors say the sisters, who were ages 4 to 11 at the time, lived in a hidden room in Banks' garage with no air conditioning or heating.

They attended school at the Word of Life Apostolic Church, where Banks was pastor.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32923530/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
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Wyks
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« Reply #1014 on: September 20, 2009, 01:09:34 AM »

A female pastor, at that..... 

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« Reply #1015 on: September 20, 2009, 05:51:04 PM »

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090920/A_NEWS/909200310/-1/NEWSMAP#STS=fzubkhju.blz

Could gender spare Huckaby?
Death penalty seldom meted out to women
By Scott Smith
Record Staff Writer
September 20, 2009 12:00 AMInteractive code for Huckaby story

STOCKTON - California's death row for women holds 16 inmates at a remote prison in Chowchilla. They're convicted of murdering other women, their husbands, their children and other people's children.

Prosecutors in Stockton believe one more woman belongs among their ranks - 28-year-old Melissa Chantel Huckaby of Tracy.

Before they can lock her away, San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Thomas Testa must convince a jury that Huckaby, who once taught Sunday school at her grandfather's church, committed the most heinous of crimes.

The facts alleged in the case - the kidnapping, rape and murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu - make his job sound easy. But asking jurors to send a woman to her death could come with bigger obstacles than trying a man.

"It's going to be much harder," said noted Bay Area defense attorney Daniel Horowitz, commenting on the case.

Stereotypically, women are the victims and not the perpetrators. Men commit sadistic and brutal crimes against children or multiple murders, which are the hallmark of death penalty cases, Horowitz said.

Horowitz said San Joaquin County Deputy Public Defender Sam Behar, who represents Huckaby, will almost certainly put the focus on her mental illness bolstered by possible childhood abuse that Huckaby may have suffered.

"Any good defense attorney has to think there's a reasonable chance that happened," he said. "If that is the case, she's not going to be executed."

Huckaby also is charged with poisoning a 7-year-old girl and a 37-year-old man. Both survived. She then allegedly kidnapped Sandra, a neighbor girl who was raped, killed and dumped at a dairy's drainage pond in a black suitcase.

Not everybody agrees that Huckaby can beat a death sentence if prosecutors prove she committed these crimes.

Steven Clark, a San Jose attorney who has closely watched the case unfold, said jurors may learn that Huckaby taught Sunday school and therefore held a position of trust.

"A jury isn't going to be very sympathetic to her situation," Clark said. "I don't see it's an advantage for her being a woman."

Statistics point in a different direction. For every California woman condemned to die, there are nearly 43 men.

Some 685 people are sentenced to death in California. About a dozen of them are men from San Joaquin County, who are sitting on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. The women are housed at Central California Women's Facility.

The prison about 90 miles down Highway 99 from Stockton lies in the pancake-flat Central Valley surrounded by farmland.

If convicted, Huckaby could become the first local women sentenced to death in more than a century. At least one other woman in recent years faced a potential death penalty trial.

In 2002, the San Joaquin County District Attorney's office considered and decided not to seek a death sentence against Sara Dutra, who took part in the Woodbridge killing of Sacramento attorney Larry McNabney.

Dutra, 29, of Vacaville may be released from prison by this time next year. She is at the Chowchilla prison that holds death row inmates.

In Huckaby's case, jurors could go either way when it comes to deciding life or death, said Donna Shestowsky, a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Shestowsky is a lawyer and a trained psychologist who studies juries.

On one side, it may be too difficult for jurors to send a woman to her death. Or, they may find her alleged crime - killing another woman's child - so upsetting they will want to punish Huckaby with death and send a message.

"Jurors may deduce that there's something extra wrong, something that is hard for them to imagine can ever be rehabilitated," she said. "Here she killed a little girl who wasn't hers."

Dorothea Puente of Sacramento is perhaps the most notorious woman to undergo a capital murder trial in Northern California. In the end, jurors deadlocked on the punishment, and Puente beat the death sentence.

Drawn by a stench of rotting corpses in 1988, police unearthed seven bodies from the backyard of Puente's Victorian boardinghouse. She poisoned elderly and infirm tenants and collected their government checks.

After the first jury was unable to reach a verdict, prosecutors allowed her to plead guilty to three murders and take a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Now 80, Puente is an inmate at the same Chowchilla prison that houses death row inmates.

John O'Mara, the Sacramento County prosecutor who tried Puente, said that in most murder trials, the facts drive the case and not things such as gender. Yet being a woman was one factor that worked in Puente's favor, he said.

The remains of some victims had also dissolved to bare bones, leaving little forensic evidence. Puente's appearance as a grandmother who lived in a cute house and grew rhododendrons in her front yard became a sticking point, O'Mara said.

"It was not just a gender but an elder issue," O'Mara said. "It was driven by her sex, but it was also driven by her age."

Huckaby is due back in a Stockton courtroom Friday, when San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Linda Lofthus is expected to set a trial date. The prosecution wants to begin early next year.

Still, Huckaby's ultimate fate may not be known for months or years. Even if she receives a death sentence, capital punishment in California remains in a holding pattern because of another case involving a San Joaquin County resident.

Stockton's Michael Angelo Morales, 49, was scheduled for execution on Feb. 21, 2006, when last-minute appeals put it on hold. He remains on death row 28 years after he raped and murdered 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell.

Contact reporter Scott Smith at (209) 546-8296 or ssmith@recordnet.com.
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cece
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« Reply #1016 on: September 21, 2009, 11:06:01 AM »

Thank you Catbert.   an angelic monkey

Looks like she is scheduled to return to court this Friday & possibly a trial date set.  Looking forward to that.
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« Reply #1017 on: September 21, 2009, 04:53:04 PM »

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090920/A_NEWS/909200310/-1/NEWSMAP#STS=fzubkhju.blz

Could gender spare Huckaby?
Death penalty seldom meted out to women
By Scott Smith
Record Staff Writer
September 20, 2009 12:00 AMInteractive code for Huckaby story

STOCKTON -

She then allegedly kidnapped Sandra, a neighbor girl who was raped, killed and dumped at a dairy's drainage pond in a black suitcase.

jurors may learn that Huckaby taught Sunday school and therefore held a position of trust.

her alleged crime - killing another woman's child -

"Here she killed a little girl who wasn't hers."



As attorneys, one of our jobs is to distinguish cases on their facts.  The case against Huckaby is so obviously distinguishable from the cases this reporter cites it's almost laughable.  I snipped some of them out (See above).  But the fact is, if the prosecution proves Huckaby killed Sandra during the commission of a sex crime, then her gender means little.  No juror (except perhaps the most liberal individual who votes against the death penalty on principle, and who happens to make it onto the jury) will be able to think of anything more egregious and worthy of the most exacting punishment than taking the life of someone else's child for the pupose of sexual gratification.  End of story.  JMHO



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« Reply #1018 on: September 21, 2009, 09:33:19 PM »

I am still wondering about her own little girl, and if she molested her as well.  I wonder if this will come out in trial? 
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« Reply #1019 on: September 21, 2009, 09:48:28 PM »

Thank to all for the updates! 

And thank you Catbert for that article. 

I remember the case of Dorothea Puente very well, since my sons and I were living in Sacramento at the time.  It was horrendous!!  Nice looking home too, right smack in downtown Sacto.  The whole thing has been burned into my mind. 

Especially the pictures of Dorothea herself.  I doubt that anyone could find a more respectable church-going-type cookie-baking purse-carrying little ole granny.  Talk about shock!  Sacramento staggered under the shock of it all. 

Many (myself included) stood outside, across the street from her house, staring in shock, as LE brought out body after body, day after day.  Even while THERE watching, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Nor could any of us relate any of what we saw and read/watched in and on the news, to this apparently so sweet-looking lil ole lady.  I swear to you, it felt like my own grandma up there being accused.  Surely there must have been some mistake?  Well.... surely not, cuz as it turned out.......      


So I DO know for fact what it feels like when such as this turns out to be the perp. 

Huckaby on trial is likely going to force many to fight-within their own previously held ideas and values.  IMO.  She's a female, a (supposed) Sunday School teacher, a mother, a family member of generations of (so-called) clergy, likely abused in the past, and so on.  Despite her previous behaviors, which she seems to have gotten lightly past, until now.   

IMO, although the prosecution may have the case nailed down shut against Huckaby, seems their biggest hurdle is gonna be the above described obstacles with a jury.   


Seems as good a time as any to start breaking down the world's viewpoints on 'females', and give the accused the exact punishment to fit the crime.  No matter who or what or how or why!  Also seems as a good a time as any to let JUSTICE prevail for the victim.  Let it begin with Sandra. 

All in my opinion. 
 
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