[ Home ] [ Terese Ranee Stewart ] [ Justice for Terese Part 1 ] [ Recent Developments ] [ Police Incompetence? ] [ Judicial Failures ] [ Protect & Serve? ] [ Helpful Links ] [ How You Can Help ]
Are Riverside
Authorities Stacking the Deck?
By Donna J. Wade
On August 15, 2002, as a result of the Citizen’s Complaint
she filed against Riverside County law enforcement and District Attorney
Investigator Martin Silva, Mary Stewart spent approximately two hours briefing the
Riverside County Grand Jury’s Justice Committee on her treatment by law enforcement
officials in the aftermath of her daughter’s death. She presented her one-hundred
seventy-six page Private Investigative Report, asking that the Grand Jury obtain all
information on the case from the District Attorney's Office, investigate Terese's death,
and bring indictments against her murderer(s). Touched
by the attentiveness shown by the Justice Committee members, Stewart left the hearing
feeling cautiously optimistic that someone in authority finally took her concerns seriously.
That glimmer of hope diminished considerably
when her Private Investigator, Jim Stice, testified on August 20. One of the female
committee members present on August 15 had been replaced by a male, who seemed oddly
familiar to Stice, himself a former Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy. Stice asked the man, Wayne D. Daniel, if he had
formerly worked for the Riverside County Sheriff’s department, and Daniel replied he
had not. When Stice asked him a second time, Daniel reiterated his denial.
At the conclusion of a contentious, two-hour
interview in which Daniel aggressively attempted to poke holes in Stice’s
investigation and subsequent conclusions, Stice again asked him about any former
association with the Sheriff’s Department. This time Daniel admitted he is a retired RSO Captain.
One has to wonder how it is that someone
drawing a pension from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was assigned to
replace another member on a committee investigating his former employer and colleagues,
without raising red flags about the apparent conflict of interest among other panel
members or the presiding Superior Court Judge. It seems apparent that Daniel was at least
aware that his position on the committee was unethical, at best, otherwise he’d have
had no need to lie (twice) during the hearing about his former employment.
What does it say about the integrity and
objectivity of a county’s Grand Jury and criminal justice officials when one of its
own so blatantly plays fast and loose with the truth in order to conceal such an obvious
conflict of interest?
What does
it say about the Riverside County District Attorney's
Office that, although Ms. Stewart proved thirty-one material misstatements and
omissions in Inv. Silva's affidavit, no disciplinary
action was taken against him?
[ Terese Ranee Stewart ] [ Justice for Terese Part 1 ] [ Recent Developments ] [ Police Incompetence? ] [ Judicial Failures ] [ Protect & Serve? ] [ Helpful Links ] [ How You Can Help ]
Copyright 2002 Mary B. Stewart
