NCJ - AUGUST CASE TOSSED

AUGUST CASE TOSSED
North Coast Journal 6/30/05

Citing concerns over the defendant's right to due process, Judge John Feeney last week dismissed the last remaining charge in the grand jury's accusation case against Fortuna City Councilmember Debi August. The judge's decision, which came at the request of August's attorneys, followed a week of testimony from former grand jury foreperson Judith Schmidt, who told the court that the current foreperson, Darlene Marlow, had ordered her to destroy internal grand jury documents related to last year's investigation of and legal proceedings against August, who the jury eventually accused of "malfeasance conflict of interest" (see "The Debi August File," Sept. 9, 2004). Instead, Schmidt turned over the materials to the court hearing August's case. Many of the documents in her possession were not previously disclosed to August's defense team. In his ruling, Feeney said that the documents -- which, according to Schmidt's testimony, should have been included in the grand jury files provided to the court earlier this year -- demonstrated that August had not been provided materials necessary for her defense, and that the court had similarly been deprived of materials necessary for it to make a fair judgment on an earlier motion to throw the case out. Feeney dismissed the case "with prejudice," meaning it may not be resubmitted. On Monday, August attorney Greg Rael said that the content of the documents was such that if August's defense team had had them earlier, the accusation against her never would have progressed this far. "Our position is that if we had those documents, the entire case would have been dismissed," he said.