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March 11, 2008
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March 11, 2008
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Hobbs Conviction Overturned--Victory for the Righteous.
Earl Hobbs was an Assistant City Auditor in Long Beach.?? He discovered that the City was being shorted on the utility tax by two phone companies.?? He tried to persuade the elected City Auditor to sue the phone company to recover millions of dollars which should have been credited to the citizens of Long Beach.?? When the City Auditor, decided that he did not want to pursue the telphone companies, Mr. Hobbs decided that he would file suit against them.?? Mr. Hobbs was a lawyer as well as a CPA.?? Mr. Hobbs legal strategy was to file suit against the city of Los Angeles which was having the same difficulties with the phone company.?? When the mayor of LA found out that he was being sued by an employee of the auditor's office in Long Beach, he called the mayor of LB and requested the lawsuit be terminated.?? Mr. Hobbs was called into the office and ordered to stop the suit.?? Hobbs said he had a right to sue for the good of the citizens of Long Beach.?? He was given a choice--stop the suit or be fired.?? He was fired.
His home was searched and when the police discovered a document used to file the suit, he was arrested for embezzlement.?? Hobbs claimed that the document was addressed to him, was his and besides under the Freedom of Information Act/the Public Records Act, he was entitled to all the documents.
??The case was not filed for over a year after Mr. Hobbs was arrested.?? After the filing, the DA presented the case to the Grand Jury.?? The Grand Jury was misinstructed on the law and the case was forwarded to the Superior Court.?? The first judge who heard the case dismissed it.?? He decided there was no criminal intent. The People Appealed and the Appellate court came to the conclusion that as a strict matter of law, they could not say there was no criminal intent, but they said that this is not the sort of event that should trigger a criminal prosecution.?? With that admonition, the DA proceeded to trial.?? The case resulted in a hung jury of 7-5.?? The DA proceeded to try the case again, but the DA didn't like the judge for the next trial because the judge had indicated that he saw no loss and had trouble seeing it as a criminal case.?? The DA dismissed the case.?? The case was refiled and Mr. Hobbs was convicted when the judge took the issue of the Public Records document away from the jury and decided to tell the jury that the documents that Hobbs took were NOT public records.?? An appeal followed.
Appellate Court Reverses
Posted by: Rich Poland
March 11, 2008
The appellate court determined that the trial judge had taken the case away from the jury by ruling that the documents in question were not subject to the Public Records Act, as a matter of law. This instruction was requested by the District Attorney, in spite of the warning from Hobbs' Lawyer (me) that this was improper. In addition to the Appellate court finding the impropriety, it also found that the documents might well BE subject to the PRA. The district attorney has not determined whether or not it will try Mr. Hobbs for a third time. We are ready and waiting.
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The Long Beach criminal defense lawyer at the Law Office of Richard L. Poland defends people accused of committing crimes throughout southern California and the South Bay area, including the cities of Long Beach, Torrance, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Hawthorne, San Pedro, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, Palos Verdes, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, Carson, Lawndale, Seal Beach, Signal Hill, Sunset Beach, Huntington Beach, Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, Gardena, Lakewood, Carson, Compton, Buena Park, Fullerton, Norwalk, South Gate, Downey, Irvine, Inglewood, and Bellflower. Attorney Poland also represents clients throughout the communities in and around Los Angeles County and Orange County, and his law practice takes him from San Diego and San Francisco.
