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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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