NORBURY MURDER TRIAL BEGINS with opening remarks. Tearful girlfriend testifies.
In his opening statement Tuesday in the murder trial of Billy Norbury, Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster described for the jury the “nightmare” scenario where Norbury allegedly shot and killed his Redwood Valley neighbor, Jamal Andrews. Norbury, 34, faces a murder charge with a special allegation that he used a gun to kill Andrews, 30, on the night of January 24, 2012. Eyster, who is prosecuting the case, said Andrews was home that night with his live-in girlfriend of nine years, Miranda Mills, and their eight-month old son when she heard the “distinctive” sound of the all-terrain vehicle (ATV) Norbury allegedly drove to their Road B home shortly after 9:30pm that night. “The first time (Mills) heard that sound was in September or October of 2011, at 2 o'clock in the morning,” Eyster told the jury. The first time Norbury appeared at the couple's home, he appeared “very disheveled.” During her tearful testimony later Tuesday, Mills said Norbury demanded repeatedly that Andrews come outside, and that he called Andrews “Jamar.” Mills testified that her boyfriend answered Norbury, saying, “I'm not coming outside, I don't know who you are, I don't have a problem with you, and my name's Jamal, not Jamar.” Norbury, she said, “kept calling him Jamar and telling him to come out … It was the same thing over and over and over again.” She estimated that four or five minutes passed before Norbury left when she'd threatened to call police. Mills described Norbury as looking “like a crackhead” during that visit. Asked to elaborate, she testified that he “looked very unstable” and “didn't look normal.” The second visit was near Thanksgiving, she testified, when Norbury “appeared sober (and) normal” and apologized for waking and scaring Andrews' family. “Mr. Norbury said he was sorry (and that) he was drunk,” she said. Andrews accepted the apology, Mills testified. “They shook hands, and then (Norbury) left,” Mills said, through tears. During both of those visits, Mills said, Norbury came at night and drove what she identified — by the sound of the engine, not by sight — as an ATV. She testified that she saw Norbury again while shopping in Redwood Valley at Little Bakers Market, where she saw him standing in the checkout line ahead of her, and Norbury turned around and smiled at her.
NORBURY’S Ukiah defense attorney, Al Kubanis, asked her during his cross-examination how Norbury had smiled at her. “(It was) like a creepy, perverted smile,” Mills said. Kubanis asked her what was creepy about the smile. “I was creeped out by him in general,” she said, and, prompted again by Kubanis, she added, “It was very flirtatious; it wasn't a normal, Hi, how are you doing' smile.” Mills testified that she then took her infant son and went to the back of the store until Norbury left, having purchased what she described as a 12-pack of beer. Mills also described Norbury's third and final visit to the home she shared with Andrews. She said she had just put her son to bed when she heard the ATV engine she associated with Norbury again. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Mills said. Andrews, who was shirtless on the living room couch, put on a hoodie and went outside, she said. Mills said she grabbed the phone, as she had on both of Norbury's previous visits, “because I was scared.” Andrews walked to the locked gate, out of the range of a motion-sensitive light on the driveway. Mills told the court that she heard Andrews say, “Are you serious?” The next thing she heard was a gunshot, she said. Mills saw Andrews running toward the front door with a “worried and scared” look on his face, then heard another gunshot and saw a flash of light near the gate, and saw Andrews fall to the ground. She heard another shot as he fell, she testified. Mills said she crouched behind the door “because I thought he (Norbury) was going to shoot at me,” coming out when she heard the ATV drive away.
FOUR PEOPLE at a home next door also took the stand Tuesday and testified that they heard one gunshot, a pause and two more. Neighbor Stephanie Bartman testified that she came to Andrews' aid, holding blankets to a through-and-through gunshot wound on Andrews' right shoulder. She said Andrews also had a gunshot wound to his head, later described by Mendocino County Sheriff's Office deputy Robert Moore as a fatal wound. Eyster also said during his opening remarks that Norbury told officers during his arrest that he had been home all night, then later admitted he had been at Taylor's Tavern.
EYSTER SAID he would show video of how Norbury's story “breaks down.” “What you're going to hear is, ‘I wasn't there, and if I was, I'm insane’.” Kubanis reserved his opening comments until later in the trial.
THE TRIAL is expected to last three weeks, and will include a phase where the jury will decide the question of Norbury's sanity (assuming he’s found guilty). Norbury in July changed his not-guilty plea to one of not guilty by reason of insanity (commonly called an NGI plea). The trial continues Wednesday with Kubanis' cross-examination of Mills, to be followed by testimony from three sheriff's deputies who were at the scene the night of the shooting.
— Tiffany Revelle. (Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)
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THE BODY found last week in a burned home on the Greenfield Ranch has been identified through dental records as James Collins Courtney, 66. There is no evidence of foul play but the official results of the forensic autopsy conducted on October 5, 2012 are pending blood alcohol and toxicology analysis.
A READER suggested we revisit the September 11 meeting of the Board of Supervisors concerning some remarks about Supervisor Hamburg regarding the Bassler case. Most of the Board’s September 11 meeting was taken up by the Board’s consideration and approval of the County’s 2012-2013 budget (July 2012-June 20130. But one of the consent calendar items pertained to that Chesbro bill which the Board previously discussed last April which would allow cops to pull over cars if they had black plastic irrigation pipe in plain view on private timberland. Back in April the Board voted 4-1 to send a letter in support of the bill to the legislature, with Hamburg voting no because he thought the definition of “timberland” was too vague and that the bill wouldn’t do much good while giving cops yet another reason to pull people over. Hamburg also objected to the bill’s singling out of pot growers for increased fines associated with the environmental damage their grows generate since there are already fines and punishments in existing Fish and Game rules.
SO WE CHECKED. On September 11 the question was whether to send a similar letter of support for the same bill urging Governor Brown to sign Chesbro’s bill. Turns out Supervisor Hamburg wanted to pull the item because he didn’t agree with one of the citations in the bill’s background materials saying that “illegal marijuana growing sites create a hazard for those who recreate on these public resource lands. Some of the most recent events that showed the relative danger was the murder of Fort Bragg City Council Member Jere Melo who surveyed the forest for illegal marijuana growth in connection with local law enforcement and was killed in the course of his job.…”
WHEN THE ITEM first came up on the consent calendar, Supervisor Hamburg asked to have the draft letter to the governor pulled for discussion.
Hamburg: “Mr. Chairman. I'm sorry but I need to pull two items. I believe they are g. and h.
McCowen: “Another option would be to register a no vote. But you prefer pulling them?”
Hamburg: “Yes.”
McCowen: “So we can replay the same discussion we had last time?”
Hamburg: “Yes. Yes.”
McCowen: “Okay.”
THE ITEM WAS PULLED along with another forestry item, but they were put over for discussion until hours later after the budget was reviewed. So the discussion was easily overlooked.
Hamburg: “I had not planned to bring this up until I read the bill analysis. The analysis connects the bill to the tragic death of Jere Melo, saying that he was a man who was surveying for illegal marijuana grows. I would let this go because nobody wants to talk about it and whenever I bring this kind of stuff up I feel like the skunk at the garden party. But I think it does matter, the stories that we tell about things that have happened. I for one have never believed that this is the reason that Matt Coleman and Jere Melo are dead — because of illegal marijuana grows. I don't think that Councilmember Melo stumbled into an illegal grow. I think he went out to the woods specifically to look for a man who he knew to be causing problems, a man he knew to be mentally unstable and who had actually been seen carrying — according to the DA’s report — had actually been seen carrying an AK-47 near the site of the Boy Scout camp near Fort Bragg. I believe that Mr. Bassler was a mentally ill survivalist and that he had established a camp in the woods and that Mr. Melo in connection with his job with Hawthorne-Campbell was going out there to find him. So I don't believe that the cause of these tragedies was illegal marijuana grows and it does bother me, just my sense of what is true and what is not true, that this bill is being tied to those deaths. Again, I think that both Melo and Coleman died because of untreated mental illness. I know, and everyone who has read the DA’s report knows that Bassler had been arrested some years earlier for throwing packages into the Chinese consulate in which he claimed that the Martians were landing and that Communist China was going to help the Martians takeover the earth. I am also aware that the Bassler family tried pretty hard and unsuccessfully to contact county officials and tell them of the fears that they had. Unfortunately for a number of reasons that I am not going to get into the County was not able to be responsive to those pleas by the family. So basically I think this bill is kind of based on a mythical version of what happened regarding these tragedies in the year 2011. Even if I did not support the bill on the substance of what it does and doesn't do, I certainly could not support it based on the kind of mythology that I think is built into it. So I will vote no.”
McCowen: “With all due respect Supervisor, I think your comments perpetuate some degree of mythology of their own. We can agree to disagree on some specific points. But your comments don't go to the substance of the bill. The intention of the bill, I think, is right in line with Supervisor Pinches’ earlier suggestion that there be checkpoints on the way into the national forests to try and exclude black plastic pipe specifically. Is this bill the be-all and end-all? No. But I think it does give law enforcement one additional tool that they can use. There were amendments to the bill to address some of the concerns raised earlier.”
(Deputy CEO Kristi Furman pointed out that the bill would only become operable in Mendocino if the County chooses to implement it.)
Hamburg: “Well, we can talk about it again.”
Pinches: “I reluctantly support this legislation. But I think, as Supervisor Hamburg laid out, there are some real holes in it regarding the effectiveness. Basically, your private timberland companies, with this bill, they adjoin miles and miles of public road. Whereas the whole Mendocino National Forest has only six or seven actual entry points, so checkpoints would be real effective. I just don't feel this bill is effective. If law enforcement feels it's a tool they need it, then so be it.”
Supervisor Carre Brown moved to send the letter of support to Governor Brown and the motion passed 4-1, Hamburg voting no.
WE RECHECKED the DA’s report. There is absolutely no reference to a boy scout camp. And the only reference to an AK-47 is when Mr. Ian Chaney, the man who was with Melo when he was shot, said that whoever was shooting at them in the woods (who turned out to be Aaron Bassler) was using an AK-47. There is nothing in the DA’s report which indicates or implies that Mr. Melo knew that Bassler had a rifle, much less an AK-47. There is some indication that Melo meant to investigate a marijuana grow which he thought belonged to someone named “Aaron,” which turned out to be Bassler’s small opium poppy patch near which Melo was shot and killed by Bassler.
HAMBURG may have some valid points about how hard Bassler’s family tried, and failed, to get him some mental health treatment. The trouble with that is that even if the family had been successful in someway at getting the County to try to treat Bassler, it seems unlikely to have gone very far since Bassler refused voluntary treatment and would have had to have been forcibly detained and incarcerated to get any “treatment.” Aaron Bassler had refused treatment before. Besides, the limited experience official Mendo had with Bassler indicated that he was not mentally ill, and while in jail Bassler was a trustee and a cook, allowed access to kitchen knives and other dangerous implements. If they thought he was dangerous – and they didn’t — they never would have allowed Bassler near the jail kitchen.
AND THE IMPLICATION that Melo may have somehow known that Bassler was armed and dangerous or that he was ignoring a warning or a known risk by going out to confront Bassler cowboy style certainly isn’t supported by the DA’s report. Melo went out to the grow site unarmed, indicating he didn’t consider Bassler to be a dangerous risk. In fact, as Sheriff Allman has said and as the DA’s report also says, if either of Bassler’s parents had told law enforcement of their documented suspicion that their son had murdered Matt Coleman a few days earlier, then law enforcement would have advised Melo of that very salient fact when Melo emailed law enforcement with his plans to go out to “Aaron’s” site before Bassler shot Melo to death.
WE HAVE NO IDEA where Hamburg got the notion that Melo knew that Bassler was carrying an AK-47 type rifle. The only mention of Bassler being seen with a rifle in the DA’s report was this paragraph: “On September 10, 2011 [two weeks after Melo was killed] an informant reported to law enforcement his having face-to-face contact with a man he identified as Bassler at approximately 5 o’clock that morning along the railroad tracks. While camping in the woods, the man accidentally stumbled into a camp and surprised Bassler. Bassler was armed at that time with a rifle, as well as a smaller pistol. The man characterized Bassler as paranoid that his camp had been discovered but eventually calmed down, with the two men ultimately sharing the informant’s marijuana cigarette. Bassler was informed during this interaction that he was a wanted man, and it was suggested that Bassler either surrender or flee the area. Following directions provided by this informant, a law enforcement apprehension team went to this location where they only found signs of a recent camp, as well as a bunker-type structure.”
IF SUPERVISOR HAMBURG has simply misread the DA’s report, then we can write it off as another mistake — which Hamburg should quickly correct. But if Supervisor Hamburg is saying or implying that Melo somehow contributed to his own death by knowingly taking dangerous risks, then Supervisor Hamburg should either prove it, or publicly retract his remarks and apologize to Melo’s family. Because, as Hamburg said, “it does matter, the stories that we tell about things that have happened.”
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