#1 - Find the gun in the photos

Editor's Note: I draw your attention at the conclusion, to the newspaper stories by a journalist, Daniel DeBolt, who was in the court room when it transpired, and a follow-up story in the Mercury News by Tracey Kaplan.

To set the stage for that conclusion, I offer the following as background

I summarize my recollection of events as follows. During the guilt phase of the trial, Deborah Medved relied on a single still taken from a Walgreen's surveillance tape to help prove the use of a gun by Sargent Binkley in a menacing manner against pharmacist Dennis Pinheiro (COUNT 2).

Defense hired a forensic video scientist to visit the scene, measure the distances between like objects on the photo and superimpose a yellow image of what the actual gun would have looked like if it had been held by the defendant. The scientist, a former criminologist with the Santa Clara County DA's office and the founder of the video forensics laboratory in San Francisco County, pointed out the fact that he was extremely lucky that the photo in question contained three LED register displays on the counter which were not only identical, but were in a straight line with each other in the photo.

The culmination of his analysis was that the object in the DA's photo was the gloved hand of the defendant with the pointed object being the Sargent's Binkley's index finger.

In her final closing statement to the jury in the guilt phase, prosecutor Medved told the jury they would have a binder with 64 additional still photos from the same sequence of video tape from which her gun photo had been extracted. She challenged the jury to find the gun in these photos. That's right, she said that the jury would be able to find the gun in the photos whereas she had only shown one photo in court and that had been proved to be evidence only of Binkley's gloved right hand with his index finger pointed outward!

If found guilty of using a gun in a menacing manner, Binkley faced the elevated penalty of twelve years in prison for each of two counts of armed robbery that the DA had proffered. The jury was unaware of the penalty. They were only told that if they found the defendant guilty of use of a firearm in a menacing manner that they were to check "True" in each of two blocks under both counts. This would confirm that "SARGENT MCGREGOR BINKLEY, personally used a 9 mm Beretta, a firearm, within the meaning of Penal Code section(s)" …. 12022.5(a), 12022.53(b) and 1203.06. See the exact text of the charges in my Web pages beginning at CHARGES AND FINDINGS.

Fast forward to hearing outside the presence of the jury

In a hearing outside of the presence of the jury, the defense, yes Chuck Smith now called the DA's own crime lab photo expert to testify as to what he had found in the photos and what he had told Medved that he had found. Chuck Smith's purpose was to have the case dismissed because of the prosecutor's alleged false and misleading presentation to the jury contradicting what she had been told by her own crime lab photo expert. Medved was relegated to "second chair" being replaced in "first chair" by an Assistant DA who took the lead in defending the DA's office.

Conclusion

Now read:

a. Mountain View Voice story, "Sparks fly in Binkley trial", by Daniel DeBolt who was in the courtroom during both in and out of jury sessions. Click on "Sparks fly".

b. San Jose Mercury News story, by Tracey Kaplan, "Allegations of prosecutorial misconduct mar another trial". Click on "Allegations".

For further information on false and conflicting testimony flowing from the Santa Clara District Attorney's office during the time of the People v. Binkley trial, I suggest you read two articles by Tracey Kaplan from the San Jose Mercury. Mercury News Article One ; Mercury News Article Two