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LAKEPORT – Following a five-week trial a local woman has been convicted of felony financial elder abuse and neglect.
On Wednesday, a jury convicted Glenhaven resident Shauna Michelle Brewster, 53, of one count of felony financial elder abuse and one felony count of elder abuse/neglect, according to Senior District Attorney Rachel Abelson, who prosecuted the case and is assigned to all elder abuse cases in the Lake County District Attorney's Office.
Brewster, who was defended by attorney Don Anderson, faces five years in prison, Abelson said.
The crimes allegedly were committed over a year-and-a-half-long period against 75-year-old Glenhaven resident Lawrence Russell, for whom Brewster became private conservator in early 2003, said Abelson.
Russell had been previously conserved by a jury and found to be “unable to provide for his needs for physical health, food, clothing, shelter” and that he was “substantially unable to manage his financial resources or to resist fraud or undue influence.” The public guardian served as his conservator for a brief period of time before Brewster agreed to be his conservator, Abelson said.
She said the theft was most egregious during Russell’s stay at Meadowood Skilled Nursing Facility in Clearlake.
The financial abuse came to light when Russell's medical bills, mortgage and other bills went unpaid, said Abelson. Russell's home had gone into foreclosure after payments were not made for seven months, and almost no money was left in Russell's checking account.
Brewster, as Russell's conservator, had the authority and responsibility to control his finances for his benefit, said Abelson.
Thanks to the attention and care of Meadowood Skilled Nursing Facility Staff and other individuals involved with the conservatorship proceedings, the Lake County District Attorney’s office got involved in the investigation of abuse and filed charges, Abelson reported.
Abelson said the elder abuse/neglect charge resulted from a series of events in which Russell was placed in situations that left his health endangered, including a situation where he sustained second- to third-degree burns on portions of his upper body.
The burns were not treated properly and became infected, said Abelson. Thanks to the quick intervention of Lake County Adult Protective Services and other concerned neighbors he was hospitalized to treat these injuries.
Russell's last hospitalization on Jan. 17, 2007, resulted in a diagnosis of neglect by the treating doctors and ultimately led to his placement at the skilled nursing facility, where he remained until his death in May of 2007, Abelson said.
Brewster's jury trial commenced in front of Lake County Superior Court Judge Arthur Mann on Oct. 28. Abelson said the lengthy trial spanned approximately five weeks with periodic breaks.
During the trial it was revealed that Brewster was passing checks to her boyfriends, manicurist or at a local grocery store for cash back, according to Abelson.
During the approximate three months Russell was at Meadowood Skilled Nursing Facility there was approximately $4,000 in cash back she received, Abelson said. There was little evidence that the $4,000 in cash was used for Russell's benefit.
The prosecution’s case included more than a dozen witnesses and thousands of pages of evidence. Abelson said Lake County District Attorney Elder Abuse Investigator Martina Santor investigated the case.
Brewster, whose booking sheet lists her profession as mediator, also has used the last names of Armstrong, Fullmer and Barnes, and has warrants out of Sacramento County for violation of the felony probation cases she has there, said Abelson. Brewster remains in the Lake County Jail without bail due to those outside agency warrants.
Sentencing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 12, 2009, Abelson said.
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The VA clinic slated to open locally is one of 31 to be opened in 16 states. All but two of the clinics are slated to open in 2010.
Frank Parker, president of Lake County United Veterans Council, said he thinks the decision to locate a clinic here will have a profound – and positive – impact on local vets.
“It's going to make life a lot easier on the veterans in this county,” he said.
Dean Gotham, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 951, agreed with Parker's assessment about the clinic, which he said is needed.
In announcing the new clinics, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake said the new facilities will bring VA care closer to the veterans who have earned it.
The two states with the most planned new clinics are Michigan and California. Besides Lake County, California is expected to get new clinics in Oakhurst, Susanville and Yuba County, all of them having the 2010 opening date.
The new clinics will be part of the the largest integrated health care system in the country, run by the VA, which has 153 hospitals and about 745 community-based clinics. The VA’s medical care budget of more than $41 billion this year will provide health care to about 5.8 million people during nearly 600,000 hospitalizations and more than 62 million outpatient visits.
The community-based outpatient clinics, or CBOCs, will become operational by late 2010, with some opening in 2009. Local VA officials will keep communities and their veterans informed of milestones in the creation of the new CBOCs.
This new expansion in the health care system comes on the heels of Congress' recent passage of the largest veterans health care funding increase in the VA's 77-year history, according to Congressman Mike Thompson's office. Since January 2007, funding for veterans has been increased by more than $16 billion.
The increased funding means 15,000 new VA health care workers – among them 1,705 new doctors and 6,468 new nurses – as well as more medical services, better care and shorter waiting times for doctors' appointments for the 5.8 million veterans who rely on the system, according to Thompson's office.
The funding also will add more than 5,200 new case workers to reduce the six-month delay for the nearly 400,000 veterans backlogged in the system waiting to receive their earned benefits.
County Veterans Service Officer Jim Brown said Tuesday that the announcement means that the county's large veteran population – spanning the time from World War II to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – won't have to travel to clinics in Ukiah and Santa Rosa.
That will be especially important for older veterans, said Brown. “Care closer to home is far more important, especially when you've got some chronic illnesses.”
He said having a clinic closer also will be important for preventive care, such as routine checkups, which he said has been missing for local veterans.
Lake County is home to about 8,000 veterans; Brown estimated between 2,500 and 4,500 use the VA health care system. That high per capital population helped land the clinic.
Brown said a local clinic has been on the drawing board for a long time, and he's worked with Thompson's office since about 2000 to get a clinic here.
“The need has always been here, it's just been getting the VA's funding,” he said.
In a Tuesday statement, Thompson – himself a Vietnam veteran – lauded the VA for the clinic decision.
“We always have to remember that the services and benefits we have in place for veterans are not what veterans deserve to get, it’s what they have earned,” Thompson said. “That’s why we’ve been working in Congress to make sure that vets are treated with respect and have access to the care and services they have earned for their service. This new center will mean a huge improvement in the quality of care for Lake County’s 8,000 veterans.”
In 2006, Lake County was supposed to be on the list of new clinic locations but for some reason wasn't included, said Brown. Because of that, he's still a little cautious about the clinic actually becoming a reality, although he concedes, “It finally looks like it is going to get here.”
Brown said that he expects the clinic will be located in the south county – either in Clearlake or Lower Lake – because the area is home to the largest number of veterans in the county.
Normally, the VA rents space for their clinics, often near a hospital since the clinics usually don't have x-rays or labs, Brown said.
Just when the clinic will open isn't clear. “Nobody has given us a firm date yet,” he said. “My hope would be that if they could get that done sooner it would happen.”
More complicated health care procedures will still require that veterans travel to Fort Miley in San Francisco, said Brown. Five days a week, a van provided by the Disabled American Veterans and driven by volunteers leaves at 6 a.m. from Clearlake for the daylong trip to take veterans to health appointments at the VA facility.
Both Gotham and Parker say they drive to Ukiah or Santa Rose to be treated in the VA system.
“They do a good job over there,” Gotham said of the Ukiah clinic.
He added that the issue is not quality but, rather, the drive time for local vets to get back and forth to medical appointments.
A lot of veterans, particularly those who served during the Vietnam War, have post traumatic stress disorder, he said. “And they're making us drive all over the state.”
Not having to spend hours traveling to doctors will be a big boon to local veterans, who have wanted the clinic, said Parker. “It's going to take a big load off of them financially, mentally.”
Gotham announced the new clinic to the Vietnam Veterans of America meeting Tuesday night, said Parker – news which received a round of applause.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Ivan Garcia Oliver, 30, of Lakeport is facing a murder charge for the November 20, 2007, death of 67-year-old Michael Dodele, who lived in the Western Hills Mobile Home Park in the unincorporated portion of Lakeport.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff said Oliver's preliminary hearing is scheduled to start at 8:15 a.m. in Judge Arthur Mann's Department 3 courtroom.
Besides the murder charge, Oliver is facing a charge of having a weapon in jail. Less than a month after his arrest for Dodele's murder, a jail correctional officer found him with a shank he had made from a plastic toothbrush.
Hinchcliff, who is prosecuting the case, said Oliver is alleged to have killed Dodele because he believed he was a child molester.
Following the murder last year, the murder drew national attention because Oliver had reportedly found Dodele on the Megan's Law Web site, which tracks those convicted of crimes of a sexual nature.
The unclear language of Dodele's list of charges is alleged to have led Oliver to his incorrect conclusion that Dodele had perpetrated a crime against a child.
However, Dodele – who had moved to Lakeport a few weeks before the murder – had actually been convicted of raping a woman in Sonoma County and sent to prison in early 1988. He had only been released from prison a short time before his death, as Lake County News has reported.
Oliver was scheduled for a preliminary hearing last June, but a number of delays pushed the hearing out farther.
One of the factors in delaying his local court appearances was his prosecution in San Diego County, along with his half-brother, on illegal dumping charges.
Oliver was indicted last December for conspiracy and aiding and abetting in dumping hazardous materials in a creek in San Diego County.
Assistant US Attorney Melanie K. Pierson of the US Attorney's Office's Southern District said that Oliver was convicted of the charges.
“In the sentencing in the federal criminal case he was sentenced to 15 months in custody for violating the federal hazards waste law,” said Pierson.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported arresting Matthew S. Bell, 25, in Montgomery County on Dec. 8.
Also arrested was Alexander K. Lojek, 28, of San Francisco.
The agency said in a written statement that a Missouri State Highway Patrol officer stopped a vehicle traveling along Interstate 70 driven by Lojek.
After Lojek and Bell allegedly gave the officer conflicting information, the officer began searching the vehicle with a K-9.
According to the report, the vehicle search revealed 9 pounds of marijuana, 102 pills of Hydrocodine, 174 pills of Valium and 86 pills of Oxycodine.
The contraband was located in packages wrapped as Christmas presents, the agency reported.
Lojek and Bell were arrested and charged with four counts of felony possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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KELSEYVILLE – A judge has ruled that the Lake County Record-Bee and a community member owe no damages in a libel suit filed over letters the paper printed earlier this year about the Clear Lake Riviera Community Association and its board.
Judge Vincent Lechowick entered his ruling in favor of the newspaper and Clear Lake Riviera resident Darrell Watkins on Dec. 3, deciding that neither owed any damages to plaintiffs Sid Donnell, Alan Siegel or Sandra Orchid, all former community association board members.
Donnell, Siegel and Orchid filed the suit in small claims court over the summer, claiming defamation of character over a series of letters Watkins had written and the paper had published which the plaintiffs said included false charge against each of them. They were seeking $7,500 each in damages.
Lechowick heard the suit on Nov. 6, and originally had indicated a decision would be issued within a few weeks.
“The judge’s decision was good for the Record-Bee, the media, in general, and for those citizens who have a desire to state their opinion,” Dickson said Tuesday.
Watkins felt vindicated by the decision.
“The little boy and the Record-Bee were victorious in their big battle at the OK Corral against the naked emperor and his gang,” he said. “Alan Siegel, Sid Donnell and Sandra Orchid's shut-up-little-boy bullets bounced right off the thick Free Speech and Freedom of the Press body armor worn by the good guys.”
Reacting to the decision, Donnell said the newspaper successfully smeared and defamed a California State Teacher of the Year, an executive secretary for the Chamber of Commerce and a retired U.S. Army officer.
The result, he said, was that the spirit of volunteerism in a group of individuals who did nothing more than attempt to better their community has been extinguished – all on behalf of a group of individuals who have contributed nothing to their community and “demonstrated a total disregard for their neighbors and their neighborhood.”
Watkins was one of several writers who, over the course of this year, has written letters criticizing Donnell, Siegel and Orchid for a variety of association actions.
He's alleged that they have broken bylaws, not had the bylaws properly accepted by the association membership and have fined homeowners – in some cases, thousands of dollars – for not cutting brush without using an established judicial process.
The content of the letters included allegations of illegal activity, which the plaintiffs said the newspaper had failed to fact-check and which they said had, in turn, damaged their reputations.
The former board members have dismissed all of Watkins' allegations as false.
They also had accused the paper of playing “political football” with a rebuttal letter Donnell had submitted for publication, but which the paper initially refused to print.
At the hearing Dickson said a corporate attorney had advised him not to print Donnell's letter in light of the suit. Siegel insisted the letter was submitted well before the suit was filed. Lechowick suggested the paper should have published it in the interest of fairness.
Dickson indicated at the time that he would publish the letter; however, shortly afterward, Donnell withdrew his publication request. He explained that he, Siegel and Orchid were no longer on the board and wanted to get on with their lives without being subjected to further attack.
Before the Nov. 6 hearing began, Donnell, Siegel and Orchid were served with a lawsuit filed by John Stoddard and a group he formed called We the People.
Filed Oct. 20, the suit names the three as well as another past board member, Boone Bridges, and 100 Does. It seeks injunctive relief and special damages in an unspecified amount.
The suit alleges breaking of election laws, violating the association's covenants, conditions and restrictions and amending those documents without a 50-percent-plus-one vote of homeowners.
This is the second libel suit the Record-Bee has faced this year.
The first suit was filed by neurologist Dr. Camille Keene over an article published in April that claimed she had diagnosed a man with a disease he didn't have. A visiting judge dismissed that case on Oct. 24, but nonetheless said the newspaper had used language “irresponsibly.”
In both cases, the judges indicated during court that the plaintiffs had not proved the damage needed to support a libel case.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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NICE – As tribal disenrollments escalate among tribes in California and the rest of the nation, many Indians facing the loss of their tribal membership and identity are struggling to find justice.
The fear of what may happen if they are stricken from the tribe's rolls is dominating the lives of between 60 and 74 current members of the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomos, who were notified late last month that they are up for disenrollment.
John Gomez, president of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization (AIRRO), said there's no real way for disenrolled Indians to seek redress. Gomez himself was disenrolled from the Pechanga tribe.
Because tribes invoke sovereign immunity, and because the Indian Civil Rights Act doesn't involve a course of redress for violations of those civil rights, the courts don't take action even though they acknowledge that the disenrollment actions are highly suspect if not illegal, said Gomez.
A 1978, the US Supreme Court's decision in Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, set an important legal precedent for how the US government and the courts deal with matters of tribal enrollment, said Gomez.
In that case, a female member of the Santa Clara Pueblo and her daughter argued that a Pueblo ordinance that denied tribal membership to children of female members who marry outside the tribe violated the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, because it did not treat the children of male members who married out of the tribe in the same way.
District and appellate courts found for the petitioners, but the Supreme Court reversed the decision.
Writing the majority opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall noted that “Congress' authority over Indian matters is extraordinarily broad, and the role of courts in adjusting relations between and among tribes and their members correspondingly restrained.” The court held that tribal sovereignty protected them from being sued in civil actions for declaratory or injunctive relief.
Marshall quoted the Indian Civil Rights Act's chief sponsor, Sen. Sam Ervin, who said the 1967 bill “should not be considered as the final solution to the many serious constitutional problems confronting the American Indian.”
Justice Byron White dissented, saying the act was meant to insure that Indians had the same broad constitutional rights as other Americans.
“Given Congress' concern about the deprivations of Indian rights by tribal authorities, I cannot believe, as does the majority, that it desired the enforcement of these rights to be left up to the very tribal authorities alleged to have violated them,” White wrote.
Because of that decision, Gomez said the government, and particularly the Bureau of Indian Affairs – which manages relationships with 562 Indian tribes – tends to defer to tribal councils in what it considers internal matters.
“There's just nothing that we can do to step in,” concedes Bureau of Indian Affairs Deputy Regional Director Dale Risling. “It has to be resolved internally.”
Ideally, the issues can be resolved if tribes have courts or internal review processes, Risling said.
The BIA also is taking a hands-off approach to an election dispute within the tribe. EJ Crandell won the vice chair seat in a June 14 election, which was decertified by an election committee dominated by his rival for the seat, current Tribal Chair Tracey Avila.
Crandell and tribal members up for disenrollment say the action is in retaliation for his election.
A new election date, set for next month, will see Avila running for her seat unopposed, since the election committee ruled Crandell is ineligible to run on what he asserts is a trumped up technicality.
Superintendent Troy Burdick of the BIA's Central California Agency wrote Crandell a letter last month in which he said that, while the tribal council's decision to reschedule an election was “unusual” and not fully in compliance with the tribe's election laws, “it is not the Bureau's place to interfere in this process or to take a recognition action at this time that would disrupt a tribal process.”
Constitutional process gives Robinson members hope for justice
Still, in the matter of Robinson's disenrollment, the BIA may be able to intervene.
Last week the BIA did just that in a dispute involving the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians in San Diego County.
The BIA told the tribe they couldn't disenroll about 60 members whose ancestry was disputed, according to press reports. However, the agency said the tribe could appeal the decision.
In that case, the BIA could intervene because San Pasqual's constitution gives the BIA oversight in such
membership decisions.
Gomez, said that's because most tribes' constitutions don't include such language providing for oversight. “It doesn't happen as a matter of course.”
The San Pasquale development could have important implications for Robinson Rancheria, whose constitution – ratified in 1980 – has a provision to allow the BIA to hear rule on disenrollment appeals.
“In this particular situation, according to their laws, their constitution and enrollment ordinance, the BIA will become involved in a disenrollment appeal,” said Risling.
Robinson members who are disenrolled can appeal to the BIA, which will then make a determination. “That's not the case with most tribes,” Risling said.
The tribe's constitution sets up an appeals process, Risling explained. The appeal would have to be made through Burdick's office, which would prepare an administrative recommendation. If his decision was appealed it would go to Risling.
BIA hasn't done a full review of the case, yet, Risling added.
The agency would have to review a number of membership rolls that were passed, said Risling.
“We would act as fast as we could because these are really imp issues,” he said, adding it would be hard to give a timeline. “It depends on the circumstances.”
He said he didn't think the disenrollment action would be stayed while they're reviewing the appeal, meaning members would lose financial and other services. Any payments or services withheld would be an issue for separate agencies such as the National Indian Gaming Commission and state health services officials.
So are people who are disenrolled from their tribes no longer Indian?
Risling said no. “They would certainly be considered Indian.”
However, not being a member of a federally recognized tribe means they are no longer eligible for many services and programs, he said.
In California, descendants from the state's judgment roles make people eligible for Indian health services. That provision is due to many tribes being terminated in the 1950s and 1960s.
Some members up for disenrollment are considering the possibility of forming their own tribe. But Risling said that can be an extremely complicated and difficult matter involving a federal acknowledgment process.
That process requires applying tribes to show longterm existence, and cultural and historical ties to an area.
“I'm not saying that it can't be done,” said Risling, but with another, larger tribe already there, the difficulties are manifest.
Lake County News will continue to follow the Robinson Rancheria disenrollment situation and provide updates on as soon as they are available.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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