Fairfield man charged in child sex case, gets a new court date
A Solano County Superior Court judge has reset a trial date in the case of a 32-year-old Fairfield resident charged with the multiple sex crimes against a child, nearly 20 felonies in all.
Felipe Jesus Rios-Angulo was scheduled to appear Jan. 20 in Department 9, Judge Carlos R. Gutierrez’s courtroom, for a jury trial, but the judge rescheduled it for 9 a.m. July 7 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
As part of the rescheduling, Gutierrez ordered the defendant, a Mexican national, to return for a series of pretrial matters, at 8:30 a.m. April 5 for a trial readiness conference and at 8:30 a.m. July 1 for a trial management conference, more than 2 1/2 years after the Solano County District Attorney’s Office filed its complaint.
Rios-Angulo, whose date with a jury has been delayed and previously rescheduled over the past months, in part because of the pandemic, is accused of continued sexual abuse of a child under 14 and six counts of lewd acts with a child 14 or 15 years old, among other charges. He is represented by Fairfield criminal defense attorney Vincent Maher.
Rios-Angulo’s latest court date comes after an early January 2019 arraignment on the charges following a December 2018 preliminary hearing.
During the arraignment, presided over by Gutierrez, Maher noted that his client had been arrested in Sacramento by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, the federal agency that enforces immigration laws and investigates criminal and terrorist activity of foreign nationals living in the United States. Rios-Angulo posted a $160,000 bond and was released but he still faces possible deportation.
Maher said that the bond and a previous $255,000 bond related to the sex abuse case had “crippled my client and his family,” and asked the judge, asserting his client was not a flight risk, not to impose an increase in bail in the abuse case.
Citing testimony from the Dec. 4 preliminary hearing, Maher further characterized some of the District Attorney’s charges as vague, adding that the DA’s investigation and the information it yielded may have been inconsistent with the police report.
Gutierrez denied the DA’s request for a bail increase but reminded RiosAngulo, who remains out of custody, about an existing restraining order not to go near the victim or her family.
In May 2018, Rios-Angulo pleaded not guilty to 18 charges, all felonies, and all involving the same child at various times between 2016 and 2017.
Court records indicate the DA filed a complaint on May 2, 2018. Shortly afterward, on June 21, the court issued a subpoena for records held by the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. Rios-Angulo posted the $255,000 bond on June 26.
If convicted on all the charges, Rios-Angulo faces a lengthy state prison sentence.