I’ve said this before: the Preliminary Hearing got “trailed”.  So, once again, yesterday, December 15th, the scheduled Preliminary Hearing in the above, aforementioned case, got rescheduled to this Friday, December 18th.  And this time, I swear, it has been for at least the fifth time.

Court Room C-55 in Santa Ana Superior Court opened yesterday at 8:30 am.  But, the “Hector Porrata and the gang” case didn’t even get called until 11:30 am.  So, I sat there all that time—for three hours---with my cell phone turned off. 

The District Attorney, Tom Schultz, was present, and asked for a private Court Room for this Friday, December 18th.  But, I heard the Judge, Erick Larsh, tell Schultz that there’s no other Court Room available this Friday, and that he and the defense lawyers will have to come to this same Court Room, C-55. 

One defense lawyer, Fred McBride, was not present.  McBride is the attorney for Rene Montes. 

It’s very hard to hear what the lawyers are saying from the back seats, and even from the middle seats.  The judge has a microphone, so it is easy to hear the judge.  But the lawyers, including the District Attorney, speak with no microphones, so one has to be up front or else one simply cannot hear what they are saying.  It’s really dysfunctional.

I tried to sit up front, but some woman lawyer gave me a dusting off and told me I needed to go sit in the back.  I told her it was too hard to hear, but she insisted that I didn’t belong there, and that she had to move back and forth from the middle of this second row, to the side aisle, thus I needed to move because she didn’t like the idea of constantly stepping over me.  So, not wanting to be uncooperative, I moved to the back.  The last time I had appeared in this Court Room I got held up for Contempt of Court, therefore I was not interested in a repeat of that experience. 

But, I do wonder why they do not give the attorneys any microphones.

Well, nevertheless, bail remains.  It’s still at one million dollars each for each defendant.  Cara Cruz-Thompson was so hoping she’d get out of jail yesterday, the fifteenth.  In fact, she said in her interview with me on December 2nd that she was going to go out of her “fricken” mind if she didn’t get out on the fifteenth.  So, lo and behold, she didn’t get out.  So, she’s still in there going out of her fricken mind.

I suspect there’s got to be some plea bargaining that’s in the works.  I suspect that all or some of the defendants are going to plead guilty in exchange for lighter terms.  There was a case there yesterday where a defendant who aided and abetted a murderer in his escape from a crime scene, pleaded guilty and received only a year and a half in prison.  He waived all his rights to bla bla bla…  Dang, there was a list a mile long of all the rights he waived.  But, most likely the probability of a much longer sentence was highly probable if he exercised these rights, so he pleaded guilty in exchange for a year and a half in prison and gave up these rights. 

So, we’ll see what Porrata, Cruz-Thompson, Martinez, and Montes decide to plea on Friday—if it happens.  We’ll see… we’ll just see…

I’ll be there this Friday, December 18th, in Court Room C-55 at 8:30 am.   

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com