Today, a group of California legal and advocacy groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison. The suit alleges that prolonged confinement in so-called secure housing units (known as “the SHU,” pictured above) amounts to torture, and that, in denying SHU inmates […]
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Yurok Embezzlement Fugitive Surrenders
Roland Raymond, the primary suspect in a $900,000 embezzlement case involving the Yurok Tribe, turned himself in this morning and has pleaded “not guilty,” according to the Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office. “I’ve been in contact with his attorney for the last two days arranging it,” Chief DA Investigator A.C. Field told the Journal […]
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Recycling center sues waste authority
The Arcata Community Recycling Center has filed suit against the Humboldt Waste Management Authority, alleging that, as reported by the Courthouse News Service, the HWMA “tricked it into allowing the public trash district to do a ‘comprehensive study’ of its business, then disclosed trade secrets to competitors, driving down the value of the business, so […]
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Eureka’s Insurer May Appeal Cotton Verdict
It likely will never be known exactly which blow to the head killed Martin Frederick Cotton II on Aug. 9, 2007, but a federal jury has now ruled that on the night the 26-year-old died, he was subjected to excessive force by officers with the Eureka Police Department. As the Times-Standard reported Saturday, the jury found […]
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List of Items Confiscated at County Courthouse
Here’s a partial list of items confiscated and/or rejected by Humboldt County Courthouse security over the past year six months: Three guns 2,024 knives 294 pairs of scissors 202 razor blades 824 “pointed devices”* 31 “sharp objects”* 94 knitting needles 54 screwdrivers 53 corkscrews 96 metal forks 52 bullets 21 toy/replica guns 127 chains (12 […]
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County Will Hop To It On Rezone
We went to press before Humboldt County’s Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard came out of closed-door negotiations on Tuesday to announce a settlement with Housing For All, the housing-advocacy outfit that intervened in a lawsuit filed by Humboldt Sunshine. In the settlement, the county agrees to set a firm deadline to finish its plan […]
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Former Pastor Dino Cardelli Takes Plea Deal in Child Abuse Case
Dino Cardelli, the founder and former pastor of Arcata’s Calvary Chapel, has struck a plea deal in which he admits to the continuous sexual abuse of a minor under the age of 14 who was living in his custody. Cardelli was arrested last September and charged with one count of recurring sexual conduct, three counts of […]
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Photos and Video from Pedreros Child-Murder Case [Updated]
In this week’s issue of the Journal interns Travis Turner and Preston Drake-Hillyard report on the tragic case of Claudia Pedreros, the McKinleyville woman accused of drowning her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Sophia in the Trinity River last weekend. Here we offer supplemental material that we were unable to include in the print edition. In […]
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Locals Nabbed in South Dakota for, well, You Can Probably Guess
Don’t let the city’s name fool ya: Highway Patrol in Rapid City, South Dakota, are sticklers for speeding. And they don’t like marijuana posession much, either — at least not when you’ve (allegedly) got 23.5 pounds of it moving through The Mount Rushmore State in a rental car. Kenneth Jordan, 29, of Ferndale, Scott Mitchell, 32, […]
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$2.5 Million For Hansen’s Truck Stop
On Wednesday, a jury awarded Hansen’s Truck Stop $2.5 million in the eminent domain case between the truck stop and Caltrans. (We wrote about the Caltrans-Hansens case in December; you can read that story here.) The Hansens, who’ve long operated a multi-faceted empire just south of Fortuna, have had notorious battles with the state agency […]
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Woman Sues County For Lost Fingers
In a complaint filed in November in Humboldt County Superior Court, Nancy Nunez accuses Redwood Memorial Hospital for improperly treating her after she was in a motorcycle accident, resulting in the loss of parts of her fingers that had been cut off in the accident. Nunez’s complaint alleges that she was not transfered quickly enough […]
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Trial Briefs in the Martin Cotton Case
Last week we previewed the upcoming federal civil suit over the strange death of Martin Cotton II back in 2007. Cotton died of a subdural hematoma in the Humboldt County Jail following a violent struggle with the Eureka Police Department. After the jump: The three trial briefs filed with the Federal District Court of Northern California. […]