Defender seeks meeting with DA

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

On his 15th birthday, Ricardo “Ricky” Juarez stepped into Department 8 of the Superior Court on Wednesday to be arraigned for the third time in the past 11 months.
Like many of the dozens of hearings that have been held over the past year, the arraignment was rescheduled for another day.
But as court proceedings grind on, the past three days have been full of twists and turns and swift action on the part of Senior Deputy District Attorney Hilary Dozer, who had Juarez rearrested on Monday evening after a judge ruled that the boy’s case be dismissed.



By the end of business on Tuesday, Dozer had re-filed charges against Juarez that will try the boy in adult court for the murder of Luis Angel Linares, who was 15 years old when he was stabbed to death during a March 14, 2007 downtown gang brawl.
When Juarez is arraigned next week, he’ll likely enter a plea of not guilty as he has done two times before, and barring any changes to the District Attorney’s charging document, a new prelim will be held in the near future.
But before that happens, Deputy Public Defender Karen Atkins said yesterday she wants to sit down with Santa Barbara County District Attorney Christie Stanley and review the case.
Atkins told the Daily Sound she wants to discuss with Stanley new developments in the case that law enforcement were not aware of when they made the decision to charge her client with murder last year.
“We want to see, in light of everything, if there’s any common ground we can reach to resolve this situation,” Atkins said. “It’s always good to keep talking.”
At the top of Atkins’ list of new developments are a pair of gloves worn by a boy named Ricardo R., who she said has been tried in juvenile court for crimes related to the March 14 stabbing. Atkins said all of the participants in the gang melee that were charged with crimes have been tried and sentenced in juvenile court.
During Juarez’s lengthy preliminary hearing last August, at which Judge Brian Hill found sufficient evidence existed to order a trial for Juarez, Atkins presented evidence that suggested Ricardo R. may have been responsible for killing Linares.
After all, DNA testing showed the gloves worn by Ricardo R. were dotted with Linares’ blood, while the gloves worn by Juarez contained only his DNA.
But during the same preliminary hearing, Dozer put on evidence that showed a knife recovered by Santa Barbara Police detectives from a garbage can near State and Carrillo Streets contained Linares’s blood on the blade and Juarez’s DNA on the handle.
When the case was dismissed by Judge Frank Ochoa on Monday due to a technical error made by Dozer, Atkins said she hoped the District Attorney’s Office would take time to reconsider their decision to try Juarez as an adult.
Whether that was done or not is unknown. What Atkins does know is Stanley and Dozer stuck with the original charges, which she said isn’t surprising due to time constraints specified in the penal code.
“I expected this entirely,” Atkins said. “They had the time pressure. They went the most prudent course, which was to file the same charges.”
If and when the meeting does occur, it won’t be the first between Atkins and Stanley, who met on May 18, 2007 to discuss the case.
“There’s evidence we didn’t know in May,” she said. “Both sides understand the evidence more. We have more information and we just want to discuss it.”