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TRISH: Okay, an excerpt from your complaint was included in a recent newspaper article, and I’m going to quote you here, “In fact, it is difficult, if not impossible to discern any ethical standards on the part of the defendants. They appear to have been intellectually destitute and morally bereft during the entire sequence of events giving rise to these complaints.” Do you have any comment on this?
GARY: Well, Trish, what I would probably do with that quote is refer you to my lawyers in Los Angeles who are prosecuting the case on my behalf against the district attorney and they have experience with the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office on previous cases and so they are very familiar with this issue, with the problem in the district attorney’s office in Santa Barbara County. And Joe Freeman is just an excellent attorney in Los Angeles which is handling the case and, you know, at some point I can give you his phone number and you can call him and ask for more of an explanation of that quote because that’s really – he drew the complaint and that’s his conclusion based on the clear facts. See, what’s unusual in my case is that almost everything they’ve done has been revealed during the course of my trial, and so it’s not one of these cases where you have suspicions that they have done something but you can’t prove it. My criminal case, the attorney who represented me in my criminal case was excellent and he just discovered and brought out and got into the record, you know, all of the things the district attorney had done. In fact, before my trial even began, one of the big advantages that we had is that the California Supreme Court appointed a visiting judge, a former, a retired court of appeals justice to hear my trial and Judge Kenneth Andreen retired from the Court of Appeals and before my trial began, my lawyer made a motion to dismiss the case based on outrageous governmental misconduct and there was a three day hearing on a dismissal motion. At the conclusion of it, it was very interesting because Judge Andreen indicated that there was, in fact, governmental, substantial governmental misconduct. And, in fact, he said that their conduct, the district attorney’s conduct was so bad that it read more like a John Grisham novel than it did a criminal prosecution.
RON: Who was playing your part in the movie?
GARY: I don’t know who’s going to play my part in the movie. But that was Judge Andreen’s take on it. But then he went on to say that because the charges are so serious, both against me as a member of the bar as well as the conduct of the district attorney, that it was all so serious that he didn’t feel that he could dismiss the case because he felt that a jury needed to resolve it on it’s merits.
RON: You’re talking about the one that was brought against you, correct?
GARY: Well, in the prosecution against me before my trial began there was this motion to dismiss the charges against me, and the judge agreed that there had been, you know, a lot of misconduct. And, in fact, so much misconduct that he said that it read more like a John Grisham novel to him. However, because the charges were so severe and he felt that it needed - that the case needed to be tried. And that’s why I ended up in trial and ultimately the jury did acquit me. And so, that’s where, you know, that’s where that was. And in the civil case, I think that my lawyer in the civil case, you know, he basically has picked up the same things that the criminal court judge picked up on, is that their conduct was just very inappropriate, I mean, and blatant.
RON: Did it seem like they did their due diligence enough to justify the severity of the charges?
GARY: Well, enough to justify, I don’t know if you realize how difficult it is when they throw the kitchen sink at you, I mean, when they throw seven felonies against you, how difficult it is to get an acquittal on all charges. You know, I mean it’s one thing to be charged with one crime and have a trial and be acquitted on it, but the district attorney in Santa Barbara has a policy that if they throw enough charges against you, the jury is bound to convict you on something.
RON: Well, we’re going to get to that in a second. I do have one quick question before Trish picks up, and you mentioned Joe Freeman had some experience against filing various cases against the Santa Barbara DA.
GARY: Yes.
RON: Are you aware of the success rate in terms of what they have been able to successfully try?
GARY: Well, the cases all settled. What they do is they settle these cases. They don’t take them to trial. They settle them, and they settle them with confidential settlement agreements, which I think is highly inappropriate. So that the public never is aware of these cases, of these various excessive force cases, excessive prosecution cases because they settle them under confidential agreement.
RON: Because they don’t go to trial.
GARY: I think that it’s a misuse of public funds, frankly.
RON: Because they don’t go to trial the public doesn’t find out about it because they never get into the court.
GARY: Well, yes. The people are paid so much money but one of the conditions is that they cannot reveal the amount or any of the circumstances about the case.
RON: That is interesting.
GARY: Yeah, very interesting.
RON: Maybe that’s why they don’t have a, well, should we say this, Trish? Remember at the press conference against the Michael Jackson case, Mr. Sneddon made various jokes, and one of them was the fact that they didn’t have much of a budget to pay for the lunch.
GARY: Yeah, right.
RON: And I’m wondering if they don’t have much of a budget because they’re spending a lot of their money, you know, doing all of these confidential settlements because of their abuse of authority.
GARY: That plus the fact that he’s hired a publicist, and I think that’s a misuse of public funds.
RON: How so?
GARY: I mean, why should tax payers pay for his media consultants?
RON: Well, as I understand it, they’re doing it pro bono, but between you and me only, a public relations firm doesn’t typically, they’re basically doing it to promote themselves and their clients. So they’re not getting any direct payment from the Santa Barbara DA, but they’re getting tons of free publicity just by attaching themselves to this case.
GARY: They’re getting consideration.
RON: They’re certainly getting consideration, whether they admit that or not.
GARY: Absolutely.
RON: Okay, Trish, go ahead.
TRISH: In a recent newspaper interview you stated, “Economically I suffered and I continue to suffer, but the major loss is the pressure I felt and the emotional aspect of what this did to my family. It went on for a year, and that was pretty disconcerting.” Can you tell us a little bit more about what it was like to spend more than a year of your life fighting for not just your reputation but to avoid what could have been a 12+ year prison sentence?
GARY: Yes, well, Trish, I’m 62 years old. I’ve been a lawyer for 37 years all in the same community. I’ve raised my family in Lompoc and Santa Maria and, you know, this area. And I’ve had a very successful law career and I’ve had a very successful business career. I’ve owned a number of businesses outside of the law practice and my whole social life as well as my professional life has all been and is in Santa Barbara County and particularly in the north part of the county. My wife is an employee in the county of Santa Barbara. As a matter of fact, she is the executive assistant of the Superior Court. She has a very delicate position in the court system and this was humiliating to her. It was humiliating to my children. I can’t tell you how stressful it is at my age to all of a sudden be charged with all of these crimes and to be looking at 14 years in the penitentiary. And essentially what they wanted, was they wanted me disbarred. They wanted me out of practice because I’m one of the few lawyers who is not financially dependent on my law practice. So that I don’t have to, I don’t calculate the amount of defense that I can give based on the size of the fee that I receive. I mean, I pretty much charge clients whatever they can afford, and I’d rather look for the merits of the case. And I have been particularly interested in excessive authority cases where I think that either the prosecution is trumping up the charges or even if the charges, if there is some basis of a charge, that the penalty that they are seeking is just grossly out of line with whatever it is that the person has done. Here is the thing. What you have to remember is northern Santa Barbara County is pretty much a government dependent economic base in that we have Vandenberg Air Force Base as the primary employer and then all of the aerospace industry that is related, you know, to that. And so, what they have done over a period of time is, they have given felonies for practically nothing to a generation of young people who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum and have locked these kids out of any kind of meaningful employment forever. Because once you get a felony conviction you can’t get a job with the police department. You can’t get a job with the fire department. You can’t join the military service. You can’t work at Vandenberg Air Force Base. You can’t have a security clearance.
RON: You can’t be a DA.
GARY: Well, yeah. You couldn’t be a DA if you wanted to. And essentially, when you have people, and we also have the prisons in Lompoc, the federal institutions in Lompoc, and so you have a large population of young people who are sort of at risk anyhow, socially and economically. And then, it’s almost like they take some of these kids right out of high school and they start throwing felony convictions on them for relatively minor offenses, and it ruins their lives and their opportunity to turn their lives around. And I’ve always opposed that and I do oppose it. And so the district attorney and I are always at odds with one another about the excessiveness of the way that they prosecute their cases and the way they punish what, in most jurisdictions, are relatively insignificant types of cases or, not insignificant, perhaps, but certainly not at the level at which they prosecute them and punish them.
RON: Gary, when we talked a couple of days ago, I’m not going to try to put words in your mouth, I’m just going to try to articulate what it was that you were saying to me for you to comment on. You mentioned some kind of, you know, give and take relationship between the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and the DA. The fact that there is a lot of excessive force claims issued against the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and in order to get those claims reduced or dismissed, in some cases the Santa Barbara DA has, you used the word overstack or stack charges above and beyond what would be a normal “level of prosecution for them to go after”, giving them more jail time or what have you, and getting them to plea bargain down to dismiss the charges of the excessive force. Can you comment on that? Do you have any specific cases? How common is this?
GARY: Yeah. I have a lot of cases. I can cite the case of People vs. B.J. Taylor as an example. That’s a case maybe not five years old, People vs. Bartucci. Yes, I mean, those are the cases that I specialize in, that I am particularly interested in, and I have a number of those cases.
RON: Typically, how does that happen? Can you describe the process? The basic….
GARY: Well, for instance, you have an uncorroborated informant, for instance who, to get out of trouble himself, tells the police that somebody’s doing something wrong, that they’re selling drugs, or whatever, okay? They send a SWAT team in on an uncorroborated charge. They engage in all sorts of excessive force. They arrest the person and they don’t find any drugs or any evidence of this criminal activity, but they arrest the person anyway. Then, rather than the district attorney reviewing the report from any kind of responsible position, instead they automatically file the charges. They file numerous charges, I mean, you know, in a case like that, resisting arrest. I mean, a guy gets beaten up by the police so they charge him with resisting arrest and obstructing justice, and because his 3 year old child is in the line of fire, between the SWAT team that has broken into the apartment illegally and the individual who’s still in bed, they charge the individual with child endangerment.
RON: Was that a real case that you’re talking about?
GARY: Everything I’m telling you is a real case. If you follow my trial, if you follow my case, you’ll see, you’ll have the names and the dates and the places and the times and the whole thing. Then what they do, is they prosecute this guy, they prosecute these people, and in the particular case I’m drawing these facts from, but it’s not just his case. It’s not just B.J.’s case. This happens on a regular basis. And they prosecute them and they threaten him that if he doesn’t plead guilty to one of the charges and if they convict him on all of the charges, he’s going to go to jail for 20 years or go to prison for 20 years. So in most cases, he gets intimidated and he takes a plea. When my clients do it and I realize or I have the facts to back up the defense, we go to trial and we get acquitted.
RON: It sounds like you’ve got experience in this area.
GARY: Yes. Yeah, I’ve had a significant amount of success. If I lost every case they wouldn’t be nearly as upset with me. But I’ve had a significant amount of success in these cases. But you get to the position where most of the guys here are so intimidated they end up taking these deals that are terrible. It sends them off to prison but only for a few years instead of a whole bunch of years type of thing, when, in fact, they shouldn’t be charged at all.
RON: So let me understand it. Is it sort of like a cover their own butt in terms of they knew that because of the excessive, the physical force that the sheriff’s department or the police department has when going after somebody, the DA, to kind of compensate for that, will stack these charges up so that they’re never really liable for the excessive force because they….
GARY: Because they had ultimately pleaded guilty to something and so that basically lets the excessive force case go away because what lawyer is going to take an excessive force case for a guy who’s already in prison because he was convicted or pled guilty to a charge. So in that manner they protect the law enforcement agency.
RON: I see.
GARY: If they build up a lot of indebtedness in law enforcement to the district attorney’s office for having protected them and at the same time they save the county, you know, a lot of money on what would otherwise perhaps be excessive force cases, they do it at the expense of the people who are least able to defend themselves. The people who, for the most part who have to go with an overworked, understaffed public defender’s office that doesn’t have the horsepower to fight these cases.
RON: Trish, why don’t you go ahead and ask him any, Gary, with your permission, have you heard about the Michael Jackson case?
GARY: Yes, I’m familiar with the Michael Jackson case.
RON: It happens to be going on in your county right now. Trish, why don’t you ask the questions that you’d like to and then, when you’re ready, just turn it back to me.
TRISH: Okay. Well, as you said, you’re familiar with the Michael Jackson case filed by the same district attorney, Tom Sneddon. What are your thoughts about the case so far and what’s going on, what we’ve learned from Court TV and newspapers? What do you think about the case?
GARY: I can’t hear you too well, but I got the impression that you want me to comment on the Michael Jackson case?
TRISH: Yes. I would like you to comment on the Michael Jackson case.
RON: And especially in the ways that it is similar to your own.
GARY: All right, well, first of all, let me say I have no opinion one way or the other whether or not he is guilty because I don’t know, I don’t really know very much about the facts. I don’t think any of us do. But what I will tell you, the very fact that he’s being prosecuted by Sneddon’s office does not cause me to have any reason to believe that he’s guilty in that, because of what I know about the district attorney’s office, I know that they do vindictive prosecutions on a routine basis. And I know that Sneddon has been, you know, chafing at the bit because he wasn’t able to prosecute him ten years ago. And so I don’t think that there’s any question that he’s being over targeted. Now, you know, whether he did whatever it is that they’ve charged him with, I don’t know. I’m highly suspicious of it. I mean, it does not fit in my experience, and I have defended some cases of similar, you know, of similar nature. And he does not fit the pedophile profile regardless of what Greta Van Susteren and Diane Dimond can talk about on their Court TV program, he does not fit the profile of a pedophile. I know that he has had hundreds and probably thousands, but certainly hundreds of young people at his ranch, and I know personally that scores and scores of those kids have stayed overnight and have had personal relationships with him. And when you take that into account and then you only have two allegations in ten years of this kind of activity, it’s highly suspicious to me. Does that answer anything?
TRISH: Yes, absolutely it answers.
GARY: I mean, and I have no personal investment in Michael Jackson’s case. As a matter of fact, I sued Michael Jackson a couple of years ago.
TRISH: Oh, you did?
GARY: You know, on a case, in a civil matter.
RON: Was it about those freaking animals, Gary?
GARY: No, no it had to do with a wrongful termination of one of his employees. What I discerned out of that case, even though my client had charged that she had been wrongly terminated, okay? She never doubted his innocence on that case ten years ago or on this case.
RON: Was she working for him then? I’m just curious.
GARY: Yes, she was working for him during that time.
RON: Was she a maid or something like that?
GARY: No, she was an executive employee at the ranch.
RON: I see.
GARY: And even though she did not, I mean, she had her own problems with him, arising out of her termination and we were suing him, even throughout all of that, she never once doubted his innocence with regard to these charges ten years ago or, in fact, I’ve spoken with her since these new charges have come up, and she continues to be supportive of him. She says it’s absolutely not true.
RON: Well, that says a lot.
GARY: She said the problem with Michael is he marches to his own drum and he does act impulsively, and that’s what happened in her case that resulted in her wrongful termination. And so it’s not that she, you know, it’s not like she’s trying to cover for him or anything. If anybody would have a reason to say something bad about him with regard to these charges, it would be her, and she says it’s absolutely not true. And so, because of that, because she knows him and has even had some adversary relationship with him and has been intimately involved with the ranch and with out the ranch in an executive capacity during the thing ten years ago, the fact that she is so confident in his innocence leads me to believe that this is just, just another district attorney effort to get publicity for his own purposes.
RON: Well, he’s certainly getting that, if nothing else.
GARY: Well, I don’t think he’s getting the publicity he expected to get or the reaction that he expected.
RON: Well……..
GARY: Sneddon is used to having it his own way and for the media to fall right into line with him. And it’s always been that way, and I think that, all of a sudden, with my case and with Michael Jackson’s case, people are beginning to question the integrity of his office.
RON: So it could end up backfiring on him.
GARY: All of it could end up backfiring on him.
RON: Okay, well I have a couple of questions regarding the case against Jackson that they’re filing.
GARY: Pardon, what was that?
RON: I have a couple of questions regarding the case against Jackson, you know, not specific, but in general. Are you aware that the attorney general is now investigating the investigation and the procedures that have gone on both in terms of the investigation from day one, the legitimacy that the case should ever have been filed in the first place, the charges. And secondly, with respect to the way that Michael Jackson was treated, or allegedly treated, when he was arrested. And that includes the marks that we were talking about in the photograph that we saw that was allegedly taken after he was arrested, you know, and being locked in the bathroom for, they say 15 minutes and he says 45 minutes, and you and I talked about that as well. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, first of all with respect to the injuries, the handcuffs and so on? Can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that?
GARY: Well, my experience is well, first of all, Jackson would not have had a watch on when he went through the booking process. They would have taken his personal items off. So even if he wore a watch in, he would not have had a watch with him, so when he says that he was detained in the bathroom for 45 minutes, I think that that’s the way it feels because it’s absolutely true that he would have been locked into that bathroom and it does feel probably longer than it really is. I know that in my own case it is not uncommon that when you go into that jail, particularly, I know in my own case…..
RON: Are you talking about the Santa Barbara…
GARY: If you go in to visit one of your inmates, unless you go through an extraordinary procedure weeks in advance, you cannot have what they call a contact visit with your client. That is when you can sit in the same room with him and talk with him face to face. You have to talk through the glass just like any other thing, which makes it very difficult for a lawyer to develop a relationship with his client and to go over documents together and this type of thing. And when they put you into that room sometimes you have to wait an extraordinary period of time for them to bring the inmate in. And then after you’re finished with your interview to get out of the visitation room, your side of the visiting room, can take as long as they want it to take.
RON: Do they do that on purpose, do you think?
GARY: Well, I don’t want to say it’s on purpose, Ron, I mean, you know, they say we’ll get there as soon as we can. But sometimes that seems like a very, very long time. And I’ve noticed in my case it does seem to be extraordinarily long and I frequently have to call several times and ask for a supervisor before I’m released from the visitation room. Now, is it intentional or are they just busy, I mean, they are busy, you know. So it’s not something that you can prove. I don’t think that the AG is going to find any misconduct because it’s not the kind of misconduct that you can prove.
RON: Are you talking about being locked in the bathroom or are you talking about in general?
GARY: I’m talking about the extended period of time type of thing. I do know that they have officers there, some of whom are very nice and very helpful and very professional. They have others who have reputations for being impolite, aggressive, and forceful – overly forceful. It sort of depends on what officer is assigned but what Michael Jackson alleges I know has happened in other cases.
RON: Are you talking about the injury now?
GARY: The injury as well as the delay as well as the inappropriate remarks to him while he was in the bathroom. And I know that those things have happened to others. So when he makes the allegation, I have the tendency to believe him because how else, I mean, how would he even think to say those things? Because I’ve had several of my clients make those identical kinds of complaints to me. And so, when he said that, I have a tendency to believe him based on my own experience. But, on the other hand, in any given instance, you can’t prove it. One of the things that Greta was talking with Diane Dimond and they were pooh-poohing Jackson’s remarks, they were talking about, well Geragos was right there with him throughout that whole procedure. That’s not true.
RON: Well, I think they were there too, though, weren’t they, Gary?
GARY: Well, the media was all there, I mean, it was a circus. But the point is, once you go into the booking process nobody is with you. They don’t let your lawyer go in and stand next to you while you’re being booked. And I would be extraordinarily surprised, in fact, I know it did not, I can’t believe that it happened. Geragos was not allowed past the closed doors of the booking room.
RON: Well, did they videotape that as a normal course? I know that they had some audio tape and video tape of, you know, of the booking process, how he was arrested and handcuffed in the car, and so on. Do they videotape the entire process? Do they videotape only parts of it? Do they videotape the whole process and then edit it out to the parts that they want you to see? Or how does that all work? You would think, especially in this case –
GARY: Well, the jail system has a video surveillance system in the booking room. Now, what they release, you know, I don’t know. To regular people they don’t release any of it. As long as we’re talking about videotaping it and the press and some of this kind of thing, one of Michael Jackson’s biggest complaints was the fact of the amount of coverage and the number of officers and the amount of coverage.
RON: Are you talking about the search of the property?
GARY: Yes, it was at the search of his property. And I will tell you that it is against the law for information to be disseminated regarding a search warrant until after the search warrant has been executed and returned to the issuing magistrate.
RON: We did talk about that and I was going to mention that. You mentioned your case.
GARY: In my case, I know that the district attorney, I know that the district attorney’s office does leak that kind of information out, which is illegal.
RON: To the press?
GARY: To the press, to certain members of the press.
RON: To certain members of the press.
GARY: Right.
RON: I see.
GARY: And, in my case, they got the magistrate to issue a search warrant both of my home as well as my office. They then executed both of those warrants simultaneously. My home is in Solvang, California, which is about 30 miles away from my office in Lompoc. I’ve lived in Solvang for the last five years or so because when I began to realize that I did not feel safe in Lompoc anymore because of what I felt was going to be authority problems. I really felt that something like this was going to happen for a long time. And I moved out of Lompoc and I moved to Solvang, although my practice was still in Lompoc. In any event, they executed the warrant on my house and my office simultaneously. And while I was at my home with the officers, at least I came to my home from court and found them rummaging through my home and I was at my house from then on. While that search was going on they were breaking into my office in Lompoc under the position that my office was locked. And they went around to all of my tenants in the building, because I owned the building at the time, and they went around to all of my tenants trying to get a key to my office. Thereby telling all my tenants that they were getting ready to execute a search warrant on my office.
RON: I’m sure that made you feel great…
GARY: And they had a number of police cars surrounding my building and they had a member of the press and a photographer from the local paper taking pictures of breaking into my office. So that the next day there was a headline, “Dunlap’s Office Raided by FBI and Local Police”.
RON: Was that another Diane Dimond exclusive?
GARY: I don’t know if it was a Diane Dimond exclusive – it was the local paper exclusive.
RON: Was she there waiting for you at home?
GARY: They were already in my home when I came in from a court appearance in Santa Maria. But when I was waiting for them to finish up in my home, they were in my office doing the same thing, breaking into my office with the press present. So that, that’s improper. I mean, they aren’t supposed to do that. But they do it anyway. They do it because they can get away with it, and they’ve always gotten away with it, and nobody can stand up to them.
RON: The attorney general, as we mentioned, is investigating this. A couple of questions, first of all….
GARY: They won’t come up with anything. There’s going to be a whitewash.
RON: Okay, assuming that there is video tape that we have not seen yet, would they be able to access that video tape before the police could actually, you know, have a little bit of fun with it? I’m not accusing anybody of anything there. I’m sure they’re fine officers, but my point is, if that is internal and it’s not turned over to the attorney general, there could be some tampering with that evidence by them or by somebody else.
GARY: Well, there could be. But you would expect that if they have video surveillance in the booking room or in the bathroom, I don’t know if they have it in the bathroom, but they certainly have it in the booking room, then they should have it when he was in the bathroom behind the door, behind the actually booking facility doors. And it should even be, there should be a video camera even in that bathroom. And if they have that, you have to also assume that they have a time clock on that. And if they have a time clock on it, then they will be hard pressed to tamper with it. But whether there is, you know, what there is, I don’t know. But I just don’t believe that there will be a very extensive investigation.
RON: When you say whitewash are you inferring that they’re not going to really do their due diligence because they’re going to, you know, take care of their own, or am I – I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, I’m just wanting clarification on what you mean by that.
GARY: These are law enforcement agencies that work hand in hand with one another on a regular basis and unless, if it’s an internal affairs investigation, if it’s in the nature of an internal affairs investigation then I think it may be on the up and up and it may be thorough. However, if it is just one of these review these procedures and tell us if you think anything was done wrong, then it won’t be. It will just basically be something to give, you know, to give to Diane Dimond and let her….
RON: Well, I’m sure she won’t find out about that from the DA.
GARY: Well, it depends on what the result is.
RON: Right. Right, exactly.
GARY: So it’s very difficult to take on law enforcement. They have all of the, they have the power. We, as citizens, give them the authority and we assume that they will exercise it responsibly for all of our benefit and protection.
RON: And obviously when they abuse it…
GARY: When they decide that, when the prosecutors decide that they want to be the judges, then law enforcement gets the break down. And what you have is you have law enforcement that have taken on the role that they are the judges as well as the prosecutors. And they are no longer doing an investigation. They are attempting to build an airtight case.
RON: That they can’t lose.
GARY: That they can’t lose and to protect the law enforcement agencies. And when you have a chief law enforcement agency protecting the subsidiary agencies, the policing agencies, with that kind of an attitude, it’s very difficult to do anything about and to catch them.
RON: Trish, are you still there?
GARY: You have the judges – the judges are intimidated. The judges can’t watch what they did to Judge Hall and not be intimidated. They have an extraordinary input as far as the selection of judges. It’s not, you know, it’s not a good situation.
RON: We talked about that, how Melville was assigned to this, the Jackson case, was atypical because, you know, first of all he’s not a criminal judge he’s a civil judge and he, you know, the typical methodology you had mentioned was a random selection. And that’s a random selection of criminal judges of which he is not one. So that would lend you to question how and why he was assigned to the case.
GARY: That is correct. But the only other thing I can say he is probably the most capable of all of the judges on the bench in the north county. So in many respects, Michael is probably well served having him.
RON: That’s good.
GARY: I don’t think that’s the issue. I think, rather, the issue is the selection process was not followed. You know, and if it wasn’t followed it should have been explained both to the public as well as to Jackson and his lawyers why it was not being followed and allow them to have input. But the way it came out it was just like as if it’s a normal kind of a thing. It was not a normal kind of a thing. Does that make sense to you?
RON: It does. It does make sense to me.
GARY: I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Melville handling the case. In fact, Jackson, I mean, the public and Jackson and everybody are probably best served by having him do it because he is an excellent judge.
TRISH: It’s just the process of how they….
GARY: It’s the process. It’s the process the way that it was handled.
RON: It kind of makes you wonder if they are going to, you know, kind of do as they will on that and not inform people, you know, there might be other things going on that people are not informed about that are much more……
GARY: Right. That do cut against the defendant’s rights.
RON: Trish, did you have any other questions?
TRISH: Yes. I do have a question. It was just reported on MSNBC that Thomas Sneddon would like to have a grand jury for the Michael Jackson case. Now, is it typical for the district attorney to go for a grand jury after a defendant has been charged with a crime?
GARY: Well, here’s what I can say about that is that they indicted me. They did not take me through the regular process. They did a grand jury investigation on me. The downside of…..ordinarily, with a grand jury proceeding, they do not have – the defendant does not know there is going to be a grand jury. I didn’t know there was a grand jury being convened in my case until after the indictment was handed down. When you have a grand jury proceeding, it’s essentially a rubber stamp for the district attorney’s charges and allows him to avoid a preliminary hearing, a probable cause hearing. There is no defense lawyer in the grand jury. There is no cross examination in the grand jury. There is no judge in the grand jury room. It’s just the grand jurors and the DA. And in my case, if you read the grand jury transcript and then you compared it with the jury trial transcript, there is virtually no similarity. In my own case, the grand jury indictment transcript is farcical. I mean, the grand jurors asked questions because my case, it sounded a little fishy to a few of the grand jurors and they asked for an explanation. And the district attorney basically said, that’s not important. There were some things that sort of stood out as exculpatory or, you know, exonerating towards me. And a few of the grand jurors asked about, well, what about this? Or, what about that? And the district attorney said, well, you’re just supposed to ignore that. Don’t worry about that. You know, we’ll try to get around to explaining that later, which they never did. And they basically just control it. And that’s why someone famous, and I can’t remember who it was, someone said, you know, in a grand jury proceeding a district attorney can indict a ham sandwich.
RON: A kosher ham sandwich? (laughter)
GARY: A kosher ham sandwich. (laughter) And I think in this case, the DA wants to avoid the glare of a probable cause hearing. Because it will be extraordinarily embarrassing to him if he can’t even get past a preliminary hearing. And so he doesn’t want to have a regular preliminary hearing where his officers will be subject to examination. And so that’s why he wants the grand jury to indict if he can. Now, I have reason to believe that he may have already tried to get a grand jury.
RON: Does he get a grand jury just by requesting it, or does it have to be approved by the judge and if so, based on what criteria?
GARY: He has the right to notify the judge that he wants a grand jury convened.
RON: So he will get it by just asking for it.
GARY: Right.
RON: I see.
GARY: He will get his grand jury convened. Now, what we know is that a few weeks ago, right at the beginning of all of this Michael Jackson stuff, there was a rumor circulating in the north county that a grand jury was being convened.
RON: Against Michael Jackson?
GARY: No, just that a grand jury was being convened.
RON: Oh, in general. Okay.
GARY: And nobody could find out whether that was true, or if it was true, to whom did it pertain? Was it another charge against Dunlap? Or was it a charge about Judge Hall? Or was it the Michael Jackson case? Or was it something unrelated – to some new person? But all of a sudden, the rumor then went away. There was no more talk about a grand jury convening.
RON: Well, like you said, isn’t it basically in secret, so that if it did, in fact, happen, you know, it could have already happened and we would not even know about it, at this point?
GARY: We would not even know about it. There was no indictment. Only if there was an indictment would you know about it. Because the jurors are instructed under their oath, they can be prosecuted if they even discuss that they were on a grand jury. So, grand jury proceedings are all conducted in secret.
RON: Isn’t he taking a risk, though, because if the grand jury does not find enough evidence to proceed to trial, couldn’t that be the end of his case there, or does he have other recourse after that?
GARY: Well, that’s a good question. I believe that if they did not grant an indictment, he could still file charges and go through the preliminary hearing process. However, if he can’t get an indictment from a grand jury then he’s got no case. He’s got no chance of getting through a probable cause hearing because in a probable cause hearing you have the right to cross examine the witnesses.
RON: So it could be viewed as some desperation tactic if he didn’t get that already. You would think that by now we would have heard something if the arrest was November 20th.
GARY: I think that because there have been so many of the news media people around that you would think that it would have leaked out somehow. But, on the other hand…..
RON: I haven’t heard it from Diane yet, so…if I don’t hear it from her I don’t believe it.
GARY: You would only hear it from her if there had been an indictment issued. You wouldn’t have heard it from her if there was such a proceeding and there was no indictment.
RON: Right.
GARY: So there’s really no way of knowing other than through the rumor avenue. But when he says that he would rather have an indictment process, now that doesn’t surprise me because Sneddon and his office prefer to do things in secret. That’s why they hate this media focus that’s been put on this case. Because they operate best, you know, under the covers. That was one of the things that I accused them of.
RON: I’m not going to even touch that one, Gary.
GARY: Well, that was probably a poor choice of words. Probably a poor choice of analogy.
RON: If they don’t like the media, why does it seem that they try to use it to their advantage so much? Without naming names, it’s obvious, you know, that Mr. Sneddon does have some favorites in the media that seem to get information before anybody else does. Obviously, that’s suspicious.
GARY: Up until my case ended in an acquittal, he was able to pretty much control the local north county press, I don’t know about the south county press. But the north county press he was pretty much able to control because the courtroom reporters for the two local north county newspapers would rely on law enforcement and the district attorney’s office to give them, you know, information about cases. And so they had a very cozy relationship. Now, after my acquittal, I think the local newspaper in my community, in Lompoc, began to question whether or not they were getting totally accurate information from the district attorney’s office, and it seems to have changes significantly recently. But up until then, he had a real control over the press. I’m telling you, this guy has had control over a lot. He’s about the most powerful politician. Him, through his office, has been extraordinarily powerful, in the north county particularly.
RON: Trish, did you have any other closing questions?
TRISH: One closing question. I’m reading right now and Associated Press release stating that Mr. Geragos, Michael Jackson’s attorney, is expected to file a motion soon asking the judge to remove both Sheriff Anderson and Tom Sneddon from the case because he believes his client cannot receive fair treatment, and that the criminal investigation was legally flawed. Do you have any comment on that?
GARY: Well, Jim Anderson, I’ve known him for many years, and personally, Jim Anderson has always been a fair law enforcement officer. But you have to remember that he’s a new sheriff, newly elected sheriff, and the structure of his office is left over from his predecessor, who is Jim Thomas, who is a crony of Tom Sneddon. And he also is the one who is going out and doing the interviews with Diane Dimond.
RON: I saw him, actually.
GARY: Yes, well, the sheriff’s office, well, he was sheriff for a long time, and he and Sneddon were very tight. And so, while I think Jim Anderson, individually, and I think he is rebuilding his department and I think you’re going to see a significant improvement in the sheriff’s department in Santa Barbara County over the next few years, but he inherits an infrastructure that was built by his predecessor and that is a big problem for any new coming elected official such as a sheriff.
RON: Gary, you told me a couple of days ago when we talked that Sneddon doesn’t even prosecute his own cases, for the most part. Why would he even have a problem if he was “removed” unless he had some kind of personal interest, i.e., vendetta? I hate to use that word, it’s so strong, but, you know, if he wasn’t so personally attached, why would he even care? Since he doesn’t, you know, personally prosecute?
GARY: I think this is his personal baby. He’s been waiting for this for ten years or more, and Tom Sneddon is a good prosecutor, I mean, don’t kid yourself. He’s an administrator and an elected official and as such he prosecutes very few cases, if hardly any. However, a few years ago, I mean, he went to Israel and prosecuted a couple of murderers in Israel who had committed a murder in Santa Barbara County and he did an, as I understand from reports, a terrific job. And when he was coming up through the ranks, before he was a district attorney he was a very effective prosecutor. Tom Sneddon is no fool and he’s no pushover. I think he wants this case bad. He knows it’s a big publicity case. He knows his reputation is on the line, and he wants to be at the controls of this case. And whether or not he should be allowed to do that, I don’t know, but I don’t think the judge is going to remove him. I think that, in some respects, this is his case and, you know, he probably should prosecute it. But I also know that the truth has a way of coming out in these cases and when you have the financial ability to defend, you know, I think that we’ll, I think that things will work out the way that, I think we’re going to learn a lot through this Michael Jackson case.
RON: I hope you’re right.
GARY: And the very fact that he is so personally involved in it will cut, certainly, both ways. He’s going to get his personal attention and his, you know, imprint. But also, you know, whenever you’re emotionally involved in something you’re less……
RON: Objective?
GARY: Objective. And so it will be interesting. On the one hand, I worry about Michael Jackson’s case only because, Mark Geragos is an excellent lawyer, no doubt about that, he’s, you know, as good as they come. At the same time, he’s from Los Angeles and he doesn’t know Santa Maria. Santa Maria is a unique community, and I hope that he is alert to the personality of the community where the case is going to be tried.
RON: Gary, in closing, I have one quick follow-up question to the one that Trish asked regarding the removal of Sneddon and/or Anderson. What criteria would be justifiable, if any, and what criteria do you think that Geragos is using for, you know, justification to remove them from the case?
GARY: Well, you know, I don’t want to second guess a lawyer as good as Geragos.
RON: Well, generally speaking, what criteria could be used for the removal of a prosecutor from a particular case, you know, as far as conflict of interest, personal attachment, what have you?
GARY: Well, at the least reason for which we attempted, we attempted to have the district attorney’s office removed from my case and our theory was that the prosecuting attorney, the guy who was trying the case against me, and actually there were two of them, but the one who had conducted the investigation was leading the prosecution, was leading the trial against me, was the one who had committed a number of the inappropriate acts. And as such, we intended to call him as a witness, or we wanted to call him as a witness. He couldn’t prosecute the case and be a witness. However, we lost on our motion to have them removed. We always felt that that was an error that they had committed, and had we been convicted that would have been an appellate issue because the personal involvement of McBeth in my case, he should have been a witness. We should have been able to put him on the stand. So we wanted him off of the case. And the same with a number of the other attorneys in that office had also engaged in a lot of misconduct in my case, and because they were potential witnesses, we wanted their office removed. However, when we made the motion, the attorney general, rather than sitting on the sidelines to see whether he was going to be appointed, appeared with the district attorney and argued against being appointed. And because they argued against being appointed and basically rend the motion, the defense of that motion, it was denied. I mean, the case still worked out for us fine. However, that’s why I’m very leery of the supposed investigation because I know in my own case we tried to get the judge, we wanted the judge, who had been improperly contacted, we wanted her to appear as a witness in my case and also to reveal the e-mails that she had communicated with the judicial council about the ethical issues involved in the district attorney coming to her ex parte. And the attorney general, who should have been a disinterested observer, and even more than a disinterested observer, they should have been watching it because with a founded to be illegal act, they theoretically, well, not theoretically, when they found that the district attorney had illegally taped the court proceedings and had made an illegal ex parte conversation with the court, they should have prosecuted those DAs. But instead of sitting back and waiting for the judge to make a decision and then acting on that decision, they went to the district attorney’s defense and argued against our being able to put the judge on the stand to question her about the ex parte communication and they went and they argued on the behalf of the district attorney and with the district attorney against the release of those e-mails, and they argued on behalf of the district attorney against the district attorney being removed from the case and them being substituted on behalf of the district attorney. And so, I don’t want to pick a fight with the attorney general’s office but what, in my own case, the attorney general did not sit back as a fair observer of the conduct or as an examiner of the district attorney and his conduct, instead they came aboard as, law enforcement is under attack and we are on the side of the district attorney.
RON: Right.
GARY: And so that’s why I am very leery about the objectivity of any AG investigation of the district attorney. I have another case that’s pending right now where the attorney general has taken over the prosecution of the case at the request of the district attorney and it has not been a clean operation, let me just say that. I don’t want to say any more about it or give a case name until the trial is over. But it’s coming up next month, and the AG is prosecuting it. When it’s over, depending on how it comes out, I think it’ll be a new chapter in this whole mess, this whole stinky mess.
RON: Well, Gary, we certainly hope so, I mean, obviously we don’t like to see any kind of improper behavior, especially with the authorities. I mean, you put so much trust in them in protecting you and it just seems a little bit medieval to have to fear the people that you’re putting trust in. I mean, it’s almost as bad as Washington from what we’re hearing here, in terms of the possibility of corruption.
GARY: We give law enforcement so much authority over us because we need it for our security, but in giving up that authority over ourselves, we have to trust in their integrity. And when their integrity is not there, I mean, it’s a horrible situation. And I don’t know if this is unique to Santa Barbara County, and particularly northern Santa Barbara County, or whether this is just the way things are going. But God help us all if this is the way it’s going in other parts of the country or in other counties in the state.
RON: Agreed. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Gary. We really appreciate all of your time. You’ve been very generous in giving us all of this information, you know, pertaining to your case and to other cases in the Santa Barbara County area.
GARY: It’s my pleasure, and I hope you’re able to cull something productive out of our conversation.
RON: I think we will, Gary. Thanks so much for your time. Gary Dunlap, attorney in Santa Barbara, California. Thanks for joining us.
GARY: Anything that you publish, Ron, would you be kind enough to e-mail me so I sort of know what my words are that are going out and that kind of thing?
RON: I certainly will. I’ll probably send that to you tonight.
GARY: Okay, that would be great.
RON: Thanks so much, Gary.
GARY: My pleasure. Goodbye, Patricia, thank you.
TRISH: Okay, thanks, goodbye.
en el fondo es logico que el mejor artista tenga los mejores fans
