A former Butte County grand juror will stand trial in August on charges of disclosing grand jury secrets. She is accused of giving the media information on her investigation of an excessive force complaint against two police officers. –DB
Contra Costa Times
May 9, 2009
By Terry Vau Dell
OROVILLE, Calif. — Barring an unexpected resolution of the case, a former Butte County grand juror will stand trial in August on charges that she illegally disclosed confidential information after leaving the public watchdog group.
Georgie Szendrey is accused of providing information to the media last year regarding an investigation she had conducted as a member of the 2006-07 Grand Jury into an excessive force complaint against two Paradise police officers.
The ex-grand juror has pleaded not guilty to a single misdemeanor charge which could carry up to a year in jail upon conviction.
The case is being prosecuted by the California Attorney’s General’s Office because Szendrey’s husband is a retired chief Butte County District Attorney investigator. Last month, Superior Court Judge Gerald Hermansen denied a defense motion to dismiss the case against the former grand juror on grounds that a lack of specificity in the criminal complaint makes it difficult to properly defend the charges.
At a pre-trial hearing Thursday, the judge asked the lawyers whether a resolution was likely and was told no.
The judge has set an Aug. 24 jury trial in the case and directed Szendrey also to be present at a scheduled hearing earlier that month to confirm the trial date.
The misdemeanor charge alleges that she disclosed confidential statements made by herself or other grand jurors, and how she or they voted.
According to the criminal complaint, which was filed in early February, the alleged disclosures were made well after her term on the Grand Jury had ended, during a 28-day period between Feb. 7 and March 6, 2008.
The latter date coincides with a joint article by the Enterprise-Record and Paradise Post concerning the Grand Jury police probe, after it was revealed in open court. Szendrey was quoted in the article as acknowledging that during her investigation, she determined that two Paradise police officers, Timothy Cooper and Robert Pickering, failed to inform an underage drunken driver, Justin Baltierra, that he was under arrest before violently tackling him to the pavement as a neighbor videotaped the incident.
Szendrey’s unpublished grand jury findings in the Baltierra case were later used by the attorney for a resisting arrest suspect, Max Schumacher, to persuade a judge to release the names from the officer’s personnel file of three individuals who had filed previous complaints against Pickering. Schumacher was subsequently acquitted at trial on all charges.
A third ridge resident, Harold Funk, was later acquitted by a separate jury of unrelated resisting arrest charges after the grand jury information in the Baltierra case was also used to unseal Pickering’s file in an identical pre-trial motion.
On the witness stand, Funk testified that the two ridge officers dislocated one of his arms after pursuing him into a public lavatory while investigating a vandalism complaint outside a Paradise market.
The FBI cleared both officers of any wrongdoing following an investigation into excessive force complaints lodged by the families of Baltierra, Funk and Schumacher.
Copyright 2009 Contra Costa Times