Grand jury could push Windsor’s Foppoli to quit
Rachel
Wilcock and Vanessa Petersen protest in Windsor last month to demand the recall
of Mayor Dominic Foppoli after several women accused him of sexual assault.
Faced
with a defiant mayor who has refused to heed mounting calls for his
resignation, Windsor officials requested Thursday that the Sonoma County
District Attorney’s Office authorize a grand jury investigation into Dominic
Foppoli’s “willful or corrupt misconduct in office.”
The
obscure and quasicriminal process is yet another route to potentially unseat
Foppoli, who was a rising Wine Country politician and winery owner until
several women accused him of sexual assault in Chronicle investigations last
month.
“I
have been asked by our Town Council to request that your office consider
commencing grand jury proceedings against Mayor Foppoli,” Windsor Town Manager
Ken MacNab wrote in a letter to District Attorney Jill Ravitch.
MacNab
cited the “magnitude” of the allegations and that they involved “conduct both
outside his official duties as Mayor and conduct alleged to have occurred while
the Mayor was acting in his official capacity, and may indicate a dangerous
pattern of behavior and troubling character flaws that render him unfit to hold
public office.”
In
a a statement, Windsor Town Council members said the action was “provided for
in California State law and is a method for removing local elected and
appointed officials from office.”
Brian
Staebell, the chief deputy district attorney for Sonoma County, said Thursday
that Ravitch had forwarded MacNab’s letter to the California Attorney General’s
Office.
One
of Foppoli’s accusers is Esther Lemus, who is not only his colleague on the
Town Council but also a deputy district attorney for Sonoma County. The office
had already referred a criminal investigation into Foppoli to the state
attorney general because its prosecutor was among the accusers.
Foppoli,
who has repeatedly and emphatically denied assaulting any women, did not
immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Earlier Thursday, he sent a
statement to the town blasting Windsor residents leading an effort to recall
him from office.
“They
do not have Windsor’s best interests in mind,” Foppoli said. “They seek to
advance their own leadership by any means necessary including tearing me down
with false allegations.”
In
addition to Lemus, six women have told The Chronicle that Foppoli, elected to
Windsor Town Council in 2014 and first appointed mayor in 2018, groped, raped
or otherwise sexually assaulted them in incidents that allegedly took place
between 2002 and 2019. Foppoli went on to become Windsor’s first elected mayor
in November 2020.
Foppoli
announced last month that he would “step back” from his mayoral duties, but
defied a near-universal chorus of calls for his resignation.
More
than two dozen elected officials, including his Town Council colleagues, all
eight other Sonoma County mayors, and both U.S. representatives from the North
Bay, have urged Foppoli to step down. Foppoli’s older brother, Joe Foppoli,
said the mayor had agreed to relinquish his title as chief executive officer of
Christopher Creek, the winery north of Windsor that they co-own.
As
an elected official, Foppoli can be removed from office by a felony conviction
or a recall vote. The civil grand jury process, which is rare and often
proceeds in conjunction with a criminal investigation, is another possible
path.
Although
the grand jury can’t remove Foppoli from office itself, it can make that
recommendation to a judge depending on its findings, according to Robert
Weisberg, a professor of criminal law at Stanford University.
“There
are a lot of levers of power here,” Weisberg said. “A civil grand jury,
although it can’t kick the guy out of office all on its own, can play a very
significant role in making the case for it.”
Robert
Pittman, counsel for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, said the Sonoma
County civil grand jury is empowered to investigate allegations of misconduct
against elected officials in the county and recommend their removal through
what is known as an “accusation.”
The
current grand jury, comprising 19 county residents, concludes its term on June
30. The next grand jury’s term will begin July 1.
Each
of California’s 58 counties has a civil grand jury, normally volunteer
residents selected annually under the supervision of the presiding judge of the
Superior Court. Although they have subpoena powers, civil grand juries
generally investigate matters related to local governments and produce reports
and recommendations that identify specific inefficiencies or mismanagement.
They are distinct from criminal grand juries that prosecutors convene to
consider criminal charges.
Under
state law, however, civil grand juries also have the unique power to
investigate allegations of misconduct against elected officials and, if they
decide the allegations are credible, file an accusation in Superior Court with
the assistance of a prosecutorial agency.
“Accusations
are rarely brought — less frequently than once a year in the state,” said Karen
Jahr, a retired attorney and a current trainer and past president of the
California Grand Jurors’ Association, which provides training and other support
to the California grand jury system.
For
accusation proceedings, Jahr said, all testimony is taken under oath in front
of a court reporter. There is no definitive list of the types of misconduct
that will support an accusation; however, past upheld accusations have involved
the alleged commission of crimes connected to the official’s duties.
In
addition, the alleged misconduct must have occurred while the official was in
office, and within the past six years. For an accusation to proceed, the
official must still be in office, and 12 of the 19 jurors need to sign on. The
accusation can also be rolled into charges that have been brought in a
concurrent criminal case.
“In
the case where there is a criminal investigation going on, the grand jury can
hold back to allow the criminal investigation to go forward first,” Jahr said.
“There can be concerns that concurring investigations might butt up against
each other.”
If
the defendant either doesn’t answer, pleads guilty or is convicted by a
separate trial jury of the allegations laid out in the accusation, the
punishment is immediate removal from office per a judge’s order.
Grand
juries ordinarily spend about six months conducting a civil investigation and
writing their report, Jahr said. Weisberg estimated that a process like that of
Windsor’s could take less than a year.
Although
relatively rare, the civil grand jury process has played out twice in recent
years in Contra Costa County.
In
2017, the Contra Costa civil grand jury found that the county’s district
attorney had engaged in misconduct when he routinely used campaign funds for
personal spending. Mark Peterson resigned and pleaded no contest to a felony
perjury charge as part of a concurrent criminal case.
Most
recently, however, Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer faced a civil grand
jury accusation that he had made sexual and racist comments to employees in his
office. The misconduct case ended in 2020 in a mistrial, and Kramer has now
filed a legal claim asking the county to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars
in legal bills.
San
Francisco Chronicle
Alexandria Bordas and Cynthia Dizikes
May 7, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment