To: David Michaelson, Branch Chief (the boss of Dov and Todd Leung)
I am a former Commissioner on the Board of LA Animal Services of the city of Los Angeles, and am currently sitting on the city’s Spay/Neuter Ordinance Advisory Committee, as a District-11 appointee.
Animal Services Dept. wants to kill an owned dog in an obvious miscarriage of justice that is playing out before our eyes. The owner’s due process rights at the administrative hearing and at the administrative Appeal were stymied in multiple ways. 1) Expert evidence supporting the dog was kept out at the hearing level, 2) a city Commissioner hearing the Appeal engaged in ex parte communications with the appellant, formed a personal bias, and pushed the others toward her personal bias formed in that ex parte communication. Evidence that in the four intervening years the dog has had no problems has also been kept out.
The Commissioner engaging in the ex parte communications is gone. A majority of the current Commissioners, having heard the due process accusations, and one of the Commissioners being personally aware of the due process accusations, want to drop the case. However, their efforts have been obstructed. A State Court decision that will let LAAS kill the dog, “Stu” is imminent. But after two separate Commissioners formally requested that an agenda item for a vote to drop the case, the item was kept off the agenda. Their last scheduled meeting for June 8, 2009 would have been their last chance to vote before the State Court decision that will likely kill Stu. That meeting was abruptly canceled for no reason. The public has consistently spoken to save Stu and they have been summarily ignored. The owner has done this mostly without a lawyer, having spent all his money trying to keep his beloved dog alive.
This case goes far beyond the one dog. This case demonstrates the abuse of process which has taken place and the due process violations now being tolerated by the city. As a result of the city not taking responsibility for the past violations, city’s time and monetary resources are being spent to continue its prosecution even after the city’s due process violations came to light.
Even murderers are allowed to go free when their due process rights are violated. In this case, there are so many due process violations I lose count. More detail is in an article at this link:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-1779-LA-Pet-Rescue-Examiner~y2009m6d17-Playing-political-games-with-a-dogs-life
I’ve been fighting for this dog’s life and fighting for the city’s integrity since I was on the Commission. Stu has been kept behind bars for 4 years already. He’s old now, and probably has only another year or two to live his natural life unless cut short by this travesty.
In my letter of resignation from the Commission on the Board of Animal Services Dept. to Mayor Villaraigosa almost two years ago (http://marie310.blogspot.com/2007/09/resigning-from-laas-commission_03.html), I wrote the following, and it was referring to Stu’s case:
“Recently, the Commission discovered its serious procedural problems with a past appeal. I was not involved with this particular appeal, however, I felt it was the Commission’s sworn duty to right its wrongs, and restore its integrity, when the process was violated, with unfairness and prejudice appearing high and harmful.
“Unfortunately I have learned that certain members of your administration, this department and the Commission are incapable of acknowledging errors, therein misleading the public. Such actions (or inactions) are resulting in the needless suffering and death of many animals, mistreatment of the public, and wasting of financial and human capital.”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bubMhSLA3sU)
It is significant that, in the lower State Court case regarding the owner’s other dog, the Judge ruled in favor of the owner on the same issues of due process.
Meanwhile, this case has been an ongoing battle for four years! For four years, it has been draining city human and financial resources, to pursue a case with due process violations by the city. I’m really astonished with the wasteful and negative behavior of Mr. Todd Leung, the city attorney, along with others who perpetuate this inhumane condition for Stu. I wholeheartedly understand his owner’s frustration, and the growing public anger as the city tolerates this failure of justice.
Since Stu’s owner is not a lawyer, he may not have done a good job framing the due process violations for the Court, but the Commission is aware of them, and so am I. Attached please find my Declaration in the case.
If we are to believe the Mayor’s statements that the city has a budget crisis, shouldn’t we see the City Attorney’s resources better directed than wasted on so many years of litigation over a now 10-year old dog when the initial hearing was tainted with due process violations!?
This is 1) sheer animal cruelty 2) a total waste of our tax-dollars. The city attorney’s office should not be accepting due process violations against any constituent.
I urge you to take immediate measures to correct the procedural and due process violations by withdrawing the city’s opposition to the case. Anything less is supporting constitutional violations. The State Court decision is imminent and this needs to be cleared up right away. I hope you can and will help.
Graciously,
Marie Atake
On the Board's first pitch to the City Attorney at hand, Dov Lesel, Board members asked what actions were in their ability to take to stop the madness of the 4 year persecution of this innocent animal. Mr. Lesel's first response: The Board can do nothing. It's in the hands of the Court of Appeals, he claimed, as the case was submitted (final argument was heard) to the Court on June 18.
Commissioner Quincey was boiling. He stated the he had asked for his motion regarding Stu (the motion was for the Board to direct the City Attorney to withdraw opposition to Stu's owner's appeal in the Courts) to be placed on the agenda more than a month prior (actually , it was more than two months ago, on April 14, 2009) but it had never appeared on the agenda and now his motion was moot. He had intended, apparently, to save the Court the burden of rendering a decision over the life or death of the dog, Stu by instructing the City Attorney's Office to throw in the towel on a case it should not have opposed in the first place, in Quincey's opinion. Quincey wanted an explanation. Commissioner Riordan asked for an explanation. Commissioner Ponce demanded an explanation. Dov Lesel said, "I don't set the Board's agenda. Assistant General Manager Linda Barth disappeared into her chair back and remained silent. There would be no explanation.
At considerable length, Quincey went on to report to the Board and to the public, that he had reviewed the "whole" case file. The 30-year veteran Animal Control Officer reported that he had determined that the case should have been dismissed from the get go. Quincey reported that the bite was reported over a month after the incident and that it was a civil matter--that "there was no violation of the Municipal Code" by Mr. de la Rosa and therefore, there should have been no involvement by the Department of Animal Services. Following Quincey's statements, Commissioner Irene Ponce said, "you could hear a pin drop in here." The Board was stymied and the supporters of Stu, seated in the gallery, just smiled.
It was then that President Tariq Khero told Quincey that if he ever wanted an item placed on the agenda, that he need only send Khero an email. Riordan cautiously erupted.Vice President Kathy Riordan told the room that she had not had much (or any) success in having items placed on the agenda. She implied that not only was it difficult for her to have items placed on the agenda for consideration by the Board, that it was near impossible to achieve this over the obstruction by management.
In the end, through dogged persistence, the Board was able to force City Attorney Dov Lesel, to lay out exactly what the Board could do to settle Stu's case, save his life and return him to his home. Lesel came forth with all kinds of ideas for the Board. They could:
- Recommend whatever they wanted to City Council as a Board or as individuals. Lesel corrected himself (from his earlier statments that action was out of the City's hands) by saying that settlement of this case was actually in the hands of City Council.
- Make recommendations to the Council's Public Safety committee which oversees the Department of Animal Services.
- Direct the City Attorney to file a supplemental paper to the Court of Appeals which stated the Board's position that the Department had botched the case and denied Due Process of law (this is our favorite- Ed.)
- Schedule an "emergency meeting" of the Board to take whatever action it deemed appropriate.
All of these things are a far cry from Linda Barth's assertions to concerned callers that the Board can "do nothing." Throughout the heated discussion of this item, President Khero appeared to feign that Department management was innocent of any obstruction of the Board 's intentions. It is worth saying that along with the usual copies of the agenda and accompanying documents laid out at the back of the room, were several sets of full-color pictures of Tatiana Edwards's (the dog bite "victim") injuries to her right arm. Nobody seemed interested in them and they did not even bear any identifying information which might have informed the public as to what these pictures were and what they were doing spread out among the meeing literature.Khero persuaded the Commissioners that no emergency meeting was necessary. Lesel and the Board forced Linda Barth to pledge that , in the event of an unfavorable decision for Stu by the Court, prior to the next regularly scheduled meeting, that the Department would take no action to kill Stu. She added that it was the General Manager who had made the gallant committment that Stu would not be "euthnanized" (read: KILLED) while any actions in the the Court of Appeals or the California Supreme Court were still possible.
So, we wait. We wait to see what, if any, action the Board will take to move City Council to end this fiasco. Will they appear as individuals during the Public Comment period at the next Council Meeting? Will they draft and approve a resolution decrying Stu's innocence and the Department's denial of Due Process of Law in this case? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, we await the opinion of the Court of Appeals. President Khero said , as though he knew, that the Court would surely not release their decision before the next regularly scheduled Board Meeting currently on the books for July 13.
By the way, where was the fifth Commissioner, Ruthanne Secunda? She was conspicuously absent. If the Board had tried to take action, Secunda's vote may have been crucial, since she has previously been sympathetic to the cause of Stu and has let it be known that she would like to see this nightmare end favorably for Stu.