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July 29, 2010 |
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| October 07, 2008 |
By: Evan Hill |
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he California state attorney general's office will decide whether to pursue rape charges against a longtime Contra Costa County prosecutor.
Fifty-one-year-old Deputy District Attorney Michael Gressett was arrested Thursday two blocks from the DA's office in Martinez and was booked on suspicion of forcible rape, oral copulation and sodomy, as well as penetration with a foreign object and the use of a firearm during a felony.
The alleged victim is a female prosecutor who worked with Gressett in the sex-crimes unit, said a source close to the investigation.
Gressett's attorney, Michael Cardoza of the Walnut Creek-based Cardoza Law Offices, said Friday that he questioned the credibility of the accuser and called the allegations against his client false.
Cardoza said that "there is such a thing as consensual sex, and there is such a thing as someone getting upset afterwards and making accusations that are blatantly false."
Gressett's case was referred to the attorney general's office because the Contra Costa County DA would have a conflict of interest, Martinez police Commander Eric Ghisletta said. DA Robert Kochly declined to comment Friday other than to issue a short statement that noted Gressett had been arrested on felony sexual assault charges and placed on paid administrative leave.
Now, the AG's office faces an uncommon scenario.
"We don't keep any statistics for anything like that, but it's fairly rare that we have to charge DAs with some kind of criminal behavior," spokeswoman Dana Simas said Friday.
When the office prosecutes authorities, whether police officers, judges or DAs, it's usually for misdemeanors like driving under the influence, she said. The trial team in the attorney general's San Francisco criminal division is reviewing the case, Simas said, and under state law has until today to make a decision.
Gressett is being held in county jail in Martinez in lieu of $1 million bail, said sheriff's department spokesman Jimmy Lee.
Lee declined to say if the sheriff's department was taking any specific precautions to protect Gressett in jail. "Obviously we are aware of his background [as a prosecutor] and are appropriately housing him," he said.
Cardoza said he would attempt to have Gressett's bail reduced today. If Gressett is out of custody, Cardoza said, the law gives the attorney general more time to review the case before charges must be filed.
"If they do a thorough investigation, it wouldn't shock me that they don't file charges," he said, "because they are going to find the accuser to be, from everything that I've learned so far, for her credibility to be in question."
Cardoza said he doesn't think the accusations against Gressett will put the prosecutor's past cases in danger of challenges by defense attorneys, and said pending cases will likely be assigned to other prosecutors.
Gressett has no criminal record, and he was arrested without incident on Thursday, Ghisletta said.
Police got a tip Sept. 26 that led them to contact the victim and begin an investigation. Though Martinez police officers have been involved in previous cases prosecuted by Gressett, Ghisletta said nobody involved in investigating or arresting Gressett "had a close relationship with him."
Gressett, a Contra Costa County prosecutor since 1987, ran for district attorney unsuccessfully three times, beginning in 1994. In 2002, he ran against a lineup that included then-assistant chief DA Kochly, who won and ran uncontested in 2006.
In his campaign in 1998, Gressett tried to outflank his opponents with a "tougher"-on-crime message. He said that he would not plea-bargain any serious violent felonies and told The Recorder he was not unopposed to the idea of making rape a capital crime.
Evan Hill reports for the Recorder in San Francisco, an IncisiveMedia affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
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