Is the Marin County {CA} DA cooking the books on domestic violence prosecutions?
The numbers presented by the DA's office do not add up.
It started with a mind-boggling set of accomplishments from a defense attorney who practices in the Silicon Valley area.
Defense lawyer Robert Casper of the Law Office Casper and Biddle boasts of getting clients off in ways which can only include corruption.
Client was arrested for embezzling close to $ 50,000 from her employer, a bank. After significant negotiations with the president of the bank and the District Attorney, no criminal charges were filed.
- Client was arrested for several felonies, including residential burglary, and was facing nearly 8 years in state prison. After investigating the background of the alleged victim, Mr. Casper was able to convince the District Attorney to dismiss all charges.
- Client, an auto body shop estimator, was charged with insurance fraud after an undercover “sting” by the police captured him on tape. Client also had a “prior” for the same crime. After negotiations broke down, Mr. Casper took the District Attorney to jury trial. It took the jury less than 2 hours to reach a verdict of NOT GUILTY.
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Client was charged with embezzling $ 450,000 from her employer. Mr. Casper convinced the judge to grant her probation. Furthermore, client served only 5 days in jail.
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Client was charged in state court with participating in a high-end identity theft and conspiracy. The federal authorities were interested as well, as Mr. Casper had discussions with both the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney. At the conclusion of the case, Mr. Casper was able to convince the federal authorities to not file charges. As to the state charges, Mr. Casper was able to get client probation with no additional time spent in jail.
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Client was charged with several counts of sex with an underage girl, while he was on probation for DUI and possession of cocaine. If convicted of anything, defendant would be deported to his home country. After a thorough investigation, Mr. Casper was able to convince the District Attorney to dismiss the sex charges. Further, Mr. Casper then convinced the judge not to violate client’s probation on the DUI and/or the cocaine charge. Finally, client was freed from a federal custodial interrogation hold after all state charges were dropped and is now a free man.
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Client was charged with multiple felonies, which carry with it a potential sentence of over a decade in state prison, for having sexual intercourse and committing various other acts with 2 minors. Despite having admitted to the acts for which he was accused, Mr. Casper was able to obtain a grant of probation for client. Further, despite the charges carrying a mandatory term of lifetime registration as a sex offender, Mr. Casper was able to cite some new cases to convince the judge that such registration is discretionary, not mandatory. After the judge agreed with this, Mr. Casper was able to convince the judge not to order client to register as a sex offender.
There are dozens of these stories on the law firm’s website. Clients facing substantial evidence against them with substantial potential jail time, but somehow Mr. Casper gets these folks off.
I reached out to Mr. Casper for an explanation, but he did not respond to my email for comment.
Robert Casper is a former prosecutor in DA’s offices throughout the area, according to his biography.
Mr. Casper was a Deputy District Attorney at the Butte County District Attorney’s Office from 1999 through 2004. Prior to that, Mr. Casper worked as a Special Assistant District Attorney at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he worked for 2 ½ years. Further, Mr. Casper worked as an intern in the Marin County District Attorney’s Office while still in Law School, in 1996. Mr. Casper has tried over 100 cases before juries, as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, including matters involving homicide, robbery, assault, burglary, domestic violence, terrorist threats, sex crimes, financial crimes, drugs, driving under the influence (DUI), and countless others. In addition to the aforementioned jury trials, Mr. Casper has literally TENS OF THOUSANDS OF HOURS of courtroom experience, with matters ranging from complicated multi-day motions involving constitutional issues, to the simplest of arraignments, and everything else in between.
It appears he can negotiate deals using connections decades in the making. Unless I’m wrong and he can correct me and attest to his unique skills in arguing the law.
Casper’s penchant for deal making suggests that area District Attorneys (DAs) do not take crime, particularly violent crime, seriously.
I decided to test this hypothesis by asking the Marin County DA’s Office for their statistics on domestic violence prosecutions.
The DA for Marin County is currently Lori Frugoli and has been since the beginning of 2019.
Below is what the office provided me for the time period she has been the DA.
The numbers are unremarkable and show that Ms. Frugoli is making an effort to hold domestic abusers accountable. Out of 1427 cases filed 600 led to convictions or plea deals.
The only number which stands out is the tiny number of actual convictions, most were pled. This is a dirty secret in the system, not with Frugoli. Most DA’s rely on plea deals and rarely take anything to trial.
That’s another story for another time.
Frugoli seems to be taking the matter seriously. Here is part of a press release.
District Attorney Lori Frugoli said domestic violence continues to be the most frequent violent crime reported in Marin.
“We also know these crimes are underreported,” she said. “We need our community to help solve this problem and end these crimes. You can be an active part of the solution by learning and sharing information about this important issue.”
While these numbers look unremarkable, they differ greatly from other numbers given by the same office to other media.
Here is part of a local news story. The article is behind the paywall, but below is a screenshot.
If the office handled 693 cases in 2021 and 695 cases in 2020, how did they handle a total of 1427 cases from the start of January 2019 to the end of 2023?
It also appears as though about forty-five percent conviction rate is down from years past. Here is part of a grant proposal by the Marin County DA’s Office from 2003.
The proposal submitted for the Grants to Encourage Arrest Project focused on the difficulty of prosecuting domestic violence cases. There are inconsistencies between the figures noted in the proposal and those obtained directly from the District Attorney’s Office. While the report indicated a disposition rate of only 25 percent in domestic violence cases, the District Attorney’s Office estimated a disposition rate of 72 percent, including those cases diverted to a county probation department.
I reached out to Frugoli’s office for clarification, but nearly a week later I still have no response.
It appears she is giving different numbers to different media: cooking the books.
There is anecdotal evidence that her office does not treat domestic violence seriously. Here is part of a police report.
That police report is from Joanna Rivera, formerly Hilliard.
I interviewed Joanna last March. This did not result in any charges. Casper represented her ex-husband.
In this story from Reason, a woman was jailed for sharing details about being strangulated. A family court gagged her, and this was a violation.
Ms. Frugoli prosecuted the domestic violence victim, Melissanne Velyvis, for using her first amendment rights while allowing the domestic abuser off.
A judge eventually threw out the charges against Ms. Velyvis.
Joanna told me that she has spoken to numerous Marin County domestic violence victims who have not had their cases prosecuted, but they are afraid to speak, she told me.
It might be the treatment Ms. Velyvis received that is making them afraid.
I did receive some anonymous correspondence with other victims who have not seen their perpetrators punished.
Frugoli has also been cited by a grand jury for creating an unreasonable backlog of all prosecutions, and she’s been sued for racial discrimination.
Joanna provided me this statement.
“The stories of dozens of victims all over Marin County have recounted to me are harder to process for me than my own. I knew that the DA at a minimum wasn’t doing her job in my case, but the collateral damage to so many victims and their innocent children is unfathomable.” Joanna told me, “I was never given the opportunity to give a victim’s impact statement, and now, I am desperately trying to find the words to give one for every victim in Marin County.”
{Check out my story on Julie Holburn for another example of a soft on domestic violence California DA.}
A few points. Firstly, a 45% rate of conviction on DV screams false accusations, not poor handling of the office. The whole reason DAs encourage these false accusations in family court, which feeds false accusations as an option to retaliate, is the corrupt nature of DAs and Family court. If she included false accusations of family court and not cases she actually tried, those numbers are probably accurate - except that family court does not follow the 14th amendment and instead regularly violates the rights of men. Still, every story you write is about poor, female victims and their stories about other victims they back up with no evidence or names and just claim they are "scared". Meanwhile, the real victims are ignored so women can pretend to be one on the very few reports that actually escape the media blackout on family court corruption. This failure leads to more misappropriation of funds to female charities who claim DV is mostly men, while facts like scientific studies show women are far more violent, especially to children, and even SA children more than men. Groups like this love to claim 99% of men are rapists or 99% of rapes are committed by men, while ignoring the SA statistics and the fact that this gynocentric society wont even charge women with rape of children. I ask that you seek victims that are actually victims, and not sour women who are the minority of corruption victims and as you know, more often than not, are falsely accusing, because they care less about their kids than harming their former partner and want that money.