Story Published:
Mar 4, 2009 at 9:10 PM PDT
Story Updated:
Mar 4, 2009 at 9:29 PM PDT
LYNWOOD — Former City Councilmen Louis Byrd and Fernando Pedroza were back in court Feb. 26 for a pretrial hearing, where one defense attorney requested a motion to continue, citing a need for “more time” to review the case.
Hearing the motion was Compton Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter, who set a new pretrial date for April 21. An actual trial start date must be set within 15 days of April 21.
While the case of the two former council members — which started off with five former council members charged in April 2007 with allegedly misappropriating public funds — has gone from postponement to postponement and a turnover of attorneys over the course of the case, the court naturally has to be open to the possibility of other postponements, Gary Nielsen, the prosecutor for the District Attorney’s Public Integrity Division’s office said when asked “why another postponement?”
“Whatever the reason is, they say they need more time,” he said. “So naturally, judges listen to requests. … I think it would be [the judge’s] desire that the case go to trial sooner rather than later, but they have to be open for the possibility of postponements.”
The case started off with a total of five former council members — Byrd, Pedroza, Arturo Reyes, Ricardo Sanchez and Armando Rea — but in March 2008, Superior Court Judge William Chidsey Jr. ruled that there was only sufficient evidence brought forward by the district attorney’s office to hold three of the five to answer to charges. The charges against Rea and Sanchez were dropped leaving Byrd, Pedroza and Reyes to go to trial.
But six months later, Reyes pled guilty to one count of grand theft as part of a plea bargain he made with the D.A.’s office.
Byrd and Pedroza are the two remaining defendants charged with misappropriating public funds, including the alleged abuse of city-issued credit cards, per diems and travel and monthly stipends that when totaled added up to $150,000 each while serving on the City Council between 1999 and 2003.
According to Herbert Weiss, Reyes’ attorney, there are four areas of focus under the charge of misappropriation of public funds charge.
In the case of Reyes, the D.A. agreed to add a second count of grand theft, in exchange for the plea bargain in which Reyes plead guilty to, said Weiss during an interview back in September. His plea does not specifically apply to the other four charges, which range from city credit card abuse, excessive per diems, getting paid for sitting on two alleged “sham agencies” the Lynwood Information Inc. and Lynwood Public Finance Authority and for getting paid cash in lieu of medical benefits.
Nevertheless, Reyes’ plea is conditioned. In exchange for his plea bargain, Reyes’ sentence will be suspended after he is placed on probation for three years, serves 1,250 hours of community service and pays restitution to the city — an amount to be determined along with his sentence at the conclusion of Byrd’s and Pedroza’s trial.
The two new defense attorneys, Tomas Requejo and Ricardo Torres, along with Byrd and Pedroza, will be back in court on April 21, at 8:30 a.m.
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