Opening statements given in Gonzalez-Buttner trial
BRAWLEY — Opening statements in the trial of Annette Gonzalez-Buttner began Monday before 12 jurors at the county Superior Courthouse here. Gonzalez-Buttner is a trustee for both Imperial Valley College and the Imperial County Office of Education.
She is facing four felony charges — two counts of perjury, one count of grand theft and a violation of the state election law.
The charges allege that, in 2014, Gonzalez-Buttner was untruthful when listing her domicile in her 2017 candidate filings for the position of ICOE trustee.
Gonzalez-Buttner has pleaded not guilty to all four charges.
The case is being prosecuted by the Imperial County District Attorney’s Office.
Both the prosecution and the defense — county Deputy District Attorney Anthony Valente is prosecuting, while attorney Jill Cremeans is representing Gonzalez-Buttner — gave opening statements Monday.
In his approximately 23-minute statement, Valente acknowledged that in 2013, Gonzalez-Buttner was living in Calexico. “She registered to vote at that time in Calexico, and she was also living there,” he said.
That was also when Gonzalez-Buttner first decided to run for the position of ICOE trustee, Valente said. “In 2013, she was elected to serve our children and this county, and elected to basically help education in general,” he said.
Valente alleged that after Gonzalez-Buttner was elected in 2013, she decided to move to the city of Santa Clara around July 2014.
Upon doing this, she registered her children for school in Santa Clara, he said. “When she moved up to Santa Clara, what she did was, she basically violated her duty to live in this county, as an elected official, as a trustee for the Office of Education,” Valente said. “She violated that duty.”
Sometime after 2014, ICOE received a complaint from the Santa Clara school district where Gonzalez-Buttner’s children were attending, Valente told the jury.
The complaint basically told the superintendent of the ICOE that Gonzalez-Buttner, a trustee, was basically living in Santa Clara, he explained.
“She’s provided proof of residency for her children to go to school up north,” Valente said in reference to the Santa Clara district’s complaint. “How is she on your board when there’s a legal requirement for her to live in Imperial County and in a particular district?”
Valente said the DA’s office sent an investigator in 2015 to go speak with Gonzalez-Buttner at her Santa Clara residence — a conversation that was recorded. Valente said Gonzalez-Buttner told the investigator that one of the reasons she decided to move was to be with her boyfriend.
“But she also says that she moved because she wanted her children to go to better schools up in Santa Clara,” Valente said. “But she’s on the board of education here to improve the schools here.
“Now, she also said she wants to go to work up there,” he continued. “She took a job up there for employment, but she says it’s just temporary.”
Not only did Gonzalez-Buttner refuse to resign from her position on the ICOE board, according to the DA’s office, she continued to insist her permanent residence was in Calexico. “That’s not true,” Valente said. “The domicile that she’s claiming — we didn’t find this out until years later — is her parent’s residence, who are very elderly.”
In her approximately 19-minute opening statement, attorney Cremeans emphasized that Gonzalez-Buttner was born and raised in Calexico.
“They say, home is where the heart is — her heart is in Calexico,” Cremeans said. “And it has never left — even though she did establish temporary residence up north.”
After the opening statements from both sides concluded, the evidentiary portion of the trial then commenced, during which a few witnesses were called to the stand Monday.
There are 28 possible witnesses.
The trial will continue to Friday, and possibly continue on into next week.