Rising jail infections halt murder trial

Virus-fueled court interruptions could be the norm with defendants, attorneys, judges at risk of exposure

SAN JOSE >> A spike in coronavirus infections in a single high-security jail unit has halted a murder trial for at least two weeks, in what some court observers believe could portend a future in which trials abruptly start and stop because defendants, attorneys or perhaps even judges were exposed to the virus.

Attorneys were notified last week that a trial centered on a December 2016 fatal shooting in San Jose will be on hiatus until at least July 20, after four inmates in the 5B module of the Santa Clara County Main Jail tested positive for the coronavirus, resulting in the entire unit being placed on quarantine. At least one of the three defendants left in the shooting trial is among those quarantined.

“These are incredibly challenging times for everyone, and everyone is doing their best to do this essential work that is constitutionally mandated,” said Sylvia Perez-MacDonald, director of the Independent Defense Counsel Office, whose attorneys represent the trial defendants. “They are trying to do that fine balance of how to keep and preserve their health and limit the spread of this terrible virus while doing their work.”

The sheriff’s office confirmed the positive cases and said in a statement that one inmate was initially symptomatic, prompting testing of the four other inmates in the unit. That testing revealed that three of the remaining four inmates tested positive for the virus and that one of them was symptomatic.

The agency declined to specify when the new infections were identified, but based on COVID-19 data from the sheriff’s office and the timing of the trial suspension, the cases appear to

have surfaced Tuesday or Wednesday, when a total of six new COVID-19 cases were recorded in county jails.

A law enforcement source confirmed that the two symptomatic inmates in 5B were transferred to the infirmary and that the three other inmates are being isolated in their module. Four of the unit’s inmates had been there for some time; the fifth had transferred from the Elmwood men’s jail.

After just a handful of inmate infections were recorded in the first two months of Santa Clara County’s shelter-in-place orders, jail cases rose sharply in the last month. The county jails tallied 13 cases between late May and June 13; since then, the overall count doubled from 19 to 38. To date, nearly 2,000 county inmates have been tested for the virus.

As local courts across the state resume hearings and trials after largely shuttering from March to May, officials have to treat COVID-19 cases and exposure in court as an eventuality, said Steven Clark, a criminal defense attorney and former county prosecutor.

“The lesson learned is there needs to be a Plan B. There is no reason that the court system is going to be immune to an outbreak,” Clark said. “It’s not a question of if, but when it happens. How does the court respond? What do we do in a scenario if (trial) litigants or the judge becomes ill? How do you handle that midstream?”

Last week’s murder trial delay wasn’t the first instance of COVID-19 disrupting a trial since court proceedings resumed in Santa Clara County in early June.

The trial for former San Francisco 49ers star Dana Stubblefield on a charge that he raped a prospective babysitter in 2015 was paused for a week after it was reported to Judge Arthur Bocanegra on June 23 that “one of the parties in the courtroom has come into contact with an individual who has tested positive for COVID-19,” according to court minutes.

For jailed defendants, the sheriff’s office asserts it has mandated 14day quarantine periods for new inmates and typically tests them twice before they are moved to general-population settings.

But inmates and their families have been tireless in calling attention to what they describe as the extreme difficulties of adhering to physical distancing advisories in a jail setting and getting adequate sanitation and hygiene supplies.

In late May, a string of COVID-19 cases in the Elmwood minimum-security camp led to the entire unit — nearly 350 inmates — being tested.

And jail officials are in the midst of a legal fight with the county public defender’s office, which last month filed a writ of habeas corpus alleging the sheriff’s office has been violating the purpose of an emergency $0 bail schedule by putting arrestees through the jail intake process when they are eligible for release upon their booking.

For its part, the county Superior Court has instituted an array of courtroom measures built on the mandated use of face masks and social distancing.

That has come to include restructured courtrooms with liberal installations of plexiglass, increased accommodations for videoconferencing, and widely spaced seating. The volume of prospective jurors called to court at any given time also has been decreased.

But if the coronavirusfueled court interruptions are any indication, Clark says the public and the court system have to prepare for a lot of, well, trial and error.

“This is what is happening in society broadly. The rules keep changing, the health directives keep changing, and the court will have to change with them,” he said. “It’s never going to be business as usual until there’s no such thing as coronavirus. It doesn’t mean we can’t have an effective and fair system, but it will be a different system, and we’ll have to make the best of it.”