Posted on 10/20/2007 7:13:35 PM PDT by Ladycalif
Full Story
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/09/27/news/top_stories/11_01_459_26_07.txt
A jury on Wednesday acquitted an anti-illegal immigration activist accused of beating up day laborers and shouting racial slurs during a brawl at a makeshift hiring site in Rancho Penasquitos in November.
John Matthew Monti, 36, was cleared on all charges, including three battery counts, three hate-crime counts, and one count of filing a false police report. The jury deliberated more than a day before reaching its verdict.
"I feel good," Monti said after the verdict, which was read in a San Diego courtroom late Wednesday. He said he would return tomorrow to his job as a sixth-grade bilingual schoolteacher in East Los Angeles.
The case highlighted seething tensions between anti-illegal immigration activists and day laborers who for more than a year have confronted one another at hiring sites in North County.
Monti said immigrant rights activists orchestrated the case against him, calling it an "outrage."
"It's a hatchet job against me," Monti said.
Monti is a member of an anti-illegal immigration group, Save Our State, and has ties to Jeff Schwilk, the leader of the Oceanside-based San Diego Minutemen. Both organizations have protested at day-labor hiring sites.
After the verdict, Monti said the charges he faced were to shut him up after he filed a complaint with the San Diego County grand jury in March, alleging that the San Diego Police Department failed to adequately respond to an incident of prostitution and human trafficking in migrant camps near McGonigle Canyon. Monti has long railed against sex trafficking in the camps, and the smuggling of young girls forced into prostitution.
The canyon, where hundreds of migrant squatters were evicted last year, is not far from the hiring site where Monti was alleged to have brawled with day laborers.
In court during Monti's trial, each side blamed the other for starting the brawl that ended up in the middle of busy Rancho Penasquitos Boulevard about 11 a.m. Nov. 19.
San Diego Deputy City Attorney Scott Pirrello told jurors during the weeklong trial that Monti started the fight when he allegedly grabbed one of the laborers and chased him into the street. Monti was at the site to photograph day laborers and people who hired them.
Day laborer Estanislao Gonzales testified that he didn't want his picture taken and tried to leave. He said the sweat shirt he was using to cover his face may have brushed against Monti as he passed him, and that Monti subsequently grabbed his right arm. Gonzales testified that he pulled away and ran, but Monti chased him into the street, knocked him down and beat him.
Monti then battled Gonzales' friends when they came to help, Pirrello argued.
But Monti's attorney, Allison Aranda, argued to the jury that before the brawl, the day laborers had threatened Monti as he snapped photos, and that the fight started when one of them hit the Los Angeles-area schoolteacher from behind.
"It is illogical to accept this theory that Mr. Monti started a fight with nine of them," Aranda said. "By himself?"
Aranda is with the Ramona-based United States Justice Foundation, which represented Monti free of charge, foundation director Gary Kreep said in an e-mail to the North County Times on Wednesday.
-- North County Times wire services contributed to this report.
must listen to ping
Good deal.
B T T T
BTTT!!!
What’s the City Attorney’s office doing prosecuting this case? I thought they were just the lawyers for the city and that the District Attorney was the prosecutor.
The DA would not prosecute the case so the City Attorney did.
“The DA would not prosecute the case so the City Attorney did”
You can always find a whore to do the dirty work in politics!
Henry,
RE: the March For America link on the start page of The Minuteman Project web site.
PLEASE, IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ANY REFERENCE TO “SAVE OUR STATE” (SOS). Specifically, the two contact links highlighted in the red, large font pasted below:
A very visible member of SOS has been complicit with the hijackers who attempted to illegally steal the Minuteman Project several months ago. This person continues to engage in very hostile, anti-Minuteman Project propaganda, including recently FALSELY stating that Jim Gilchrist “is under criminal investigation”. Malicious and defaming lies like that are spoken for the sole purpose of destroying the integrity of The Minuteman Project. These antagonists are neither friends nor allies of the Project or the mission to bring our nation’s illegal alien invasion crisis back under the rule of law.
The Minuteman Project no longer supports, nor will it work with, three particular organizations blatantly hostile to the Minuteman Project, and therefore incompatible with the mission of the Project. These groups are associated with the hijackers either as co-conspirators or as close friends.
The particular groups are: Barbara Coe’s California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), Save Our State (SOS), and the Crispus Attucks Brigade.
Each of these organizations have participated in the failed attempt to hijack and plunder the Minuteman Project either by actually participating in or publicly supporting those who engaged in that criminal activity.
The Minuteman Project encourages participants in this movement to “operate within the rule of law” and with some reasonable integrity and moral character. Affiliation with any person or organization that cannot meet these easily attainable standards would not be in the best interests of the Minuteman Project or the minuteman movement in general.
The Minuteman Project has gotten one of the hijackers arrested without bail and he faces a 20 year prison sentence. Criminal indictments against others are pending the decision of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute. Information on that will be forth coming sometime next year.
Please, REMOVE ANY REFERENCE TO “SAVE OUR STATE” IMMEDIATELY!!! THANK YOU.
CC: SOS, Don Silva, Steve Eichler, Tim Bueler, Tommy Crenshaw, Linda Muller, Jim W. at “Freedom Fighter Radio”, et. al.
Cheers,
Jim Gilchrist, BAJ, BSBA, MBA, CPA - Founder and President
Jim Gilchrist’s MINUTEMAN PROJECT, INC. (DBA The Minuteman Project)
- A multi-ethnic, immigration law enforcement advocacy group.
- Operating within the law to support enforcement of the law.
- The power of change through the power of peace.
MAILING ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE AND DONATIONS:
JIM GILCHRIST’S MINUTEMAN PROJECT, INC.
DBA “THE MINUTEMAN PROJECT”
JIM GILCHRIST, PRESIDENT
P.O. BOX 3944
LAGUNA HILLS, CA. 92654-3944
I was gonna edit the above to "whore OR lawyer" then I realized that would be redundant.
Oh dear!
A small bit of irony to this story. Recently the same illegal alien protest group went to the site where Monti’s matter supposedly occured. One of the lying illegals who lied to the court and testfied against Monti showed up to the site AGAIN! Eagle-eyed protesters recognized him and shot video of him hidding his face and walking quickly away when he knew he was caught again there. Why isn’t this person felony arrained for lying in a court case by the DA?
CC
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