A Troubled Rape Case

The rape allegations from within Contra Costa County’s District
Attorney’s office were bound to make big headlines. Michael Gressett
was a 51-year-old deputy district attorney who worked for the sexual
assault unit. His alleged victim was a 29-year-old coworker who said
Gressett violently assaulted her during a lunch break. The Martinez
Police Department’s September 2008 press release was replete with lurid
charges like “sodomy,” “forced oral copulation,” and “penetration with
a foreign object.” The alleged props — including a gun,
handcuffs, steak knife, ice cubes, and an ice pick — seemed
plucked from the pages of a Marquis de Sade novel.

Not surprisingly, the story attracted wide attention. The San
Francisco Chronicle assigned two reporters and the Contra Costa
Times posted a complete copy of the criminal complaint on its web
site. Television news joined the fray, and soon Gressett’s face was
plastered all across the Bay Area. And no one followed the story more
closely than the lawyers and politicians who work for Contra Costa
County. So many people have viewed the case file that clerks in the
courthouse keep it handy like it was a popular library book. When a
reporter asked for the file by its case number, the clerk immediately
said, “Oh, you want the Gressett file.”

The veteran prosecutor’s reputation as an office iconoclast only
added to the case’s newsworthiness. Gressett has run for the position
of Contra Costa County District Attorney three separate times, putting
him in disfavor with the old-boy power structure that has controlled
the office for decades. After the charges came to light, District
Attorney Robert Kochly did what he could to distance his office from
Gressett’s alleged behavior. “It’s a sad day for our office for
anything like this to occur,” Kochly told the Chronicle.
“Anything of this nature is devastating to the office. It’s
antithetical to what we’re about.”

After his arrest, Gressett might have been expected to cease being a
thorn in management’s side. Once he was released from jail on a $1
million bond, he was promptly fired. He now faces a possible life
sentence for thirteen felony counts including rape, forced sodomy,
forced oral copulation, and making death threats.

But instead of slinking away, his defense team has mounted an
aggressive investigation that is shedding a withering light on both the
DA’s office and the charges against him. The inquiry exposed an office
sexual culture so highly charged that it makes HBO’s Mad Men
look like pimply sophomores toeing their insteps at a high school dance
mixer. The inquiry also sheds light on an unusual contract hiring
system in which young attorneys like the alleged victim live in
constant fear of losing their jobs. “Pandora’s box has been opened and
what’s inside is not pretty,” said Michael Cardoza, one of Gressett’s
defense attorneys. “I was a deputy district attorney for sixteen years
and I am appalled at what goes on in that office.”

Both Gressett and his alleged victim, who is referred to in court
filings as “Jane Doe,” provide a remarkably similar account of the acts
that occurred during their kinky sexual encounter. The critical
difference in their stories is whether the sex was consensual. And the
defense has unearthed evidence that it could have been.

But that is not the only flaw in the prosecution’s case against
Gressett. Jane Doe appears to have misrepresented significant facts of
the case to investigators, co-workers, or friends, according to notes
from the official investigation. For instance, although she told
colleagues that she was seriously injured during the assault,
Gressett’s attorneys say this conflicts with medical records that show
no such injuries. She also did not immediately seek medical attention
or report the rape to police, but instead went to a private attorney
who is well connected to the power structure in the DA’s office.

The case’s final problem is the unorthodox way that the DA’s office
handled its investigation. After District Attorney Kochly was made
aware of the allegations, he took no action for four and a half months
— a period during which Gressett was allowed to continue working
alongside female deputy district attorneys and sex-crime victims.
Months later, once Kochly did take action, he assigned the
investigation to a lawyer who has bad blood with Gressett and a
significant stake in the office’s upcoming election.

Gressett’s attorneys say the prosecution is a politically motivated
witch hunt that has sidelined two of the administration’s internal
threats. Indeed, the case has bled into next year’s election for
district attorney by drawing both frontrunners into the fray. Kochly’s
anointed heir, whose law partner initially represented Jane Doe, has
hired his own attorney to keep Gressett’s attorneys from obtaining his
telephone records, which could have a bearing on the case. Meanwhile,
Kochly demoted Gressett’s supervisor — who also happens to be a
candidate for DA and a serious threat to Kochly’s chosen successor
— for complaining about the manner in which the DA conducted the
rape investigation.

“This case has stirred up a shit storm,” said Gressett’s lead
attorney Daniel Russo. “And the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office
is right in the middle of it.”

Since the 1960s, the district attorney has been perhaps the most
powerful person in Contra Costa County. The office has been run by a
line of Republicans who have always been favored by the county’s power
structure, which is largely funded by the county’s five oil refineries.
When John Nejedly, the county’s first full-time DA, retired in 1969,
the job went to William O’Malley. In 1984, O’Malley handed it to Gary
Yancey, who handed it to Robert Kochly, who is now hoping to hand it to
William O’Malley’s son, Dan O’Malley.

Gressett has challenged the line of succession in three elections,
which has perpetually put him at odds with the DA’s administration. He
ran against Yancey twice, once in 1994 and again in 1998. In 2002, he
ran against Kochly during his first campaign for office. Since then,
there has been tension between Gressett and Kochly’s administration.
One way the administration has demonstrated its disfavor toward
Gressett is by repeatedly passing him over for promotion, according to
his attorneys. There has been a long-standing policy that all lawyers
who reach their fifteen-year anniversary in the office automatically
receive a promotion to a level-four pay grade. Gressett, however, was
the only lawyer repeatedly passed over for that promotion, according to
his attorneys. They note that he only finally received the promotion in
his nineteenth year, presumably because he didn’t run against Kochly
again in 2006.

But despite being on the outs with his bosses, the 21-year veteran
deputy DA was popular with most of the 85 attorneys in the office. He
had a reputation for being a good attorney who worked hard and was fun
to be around, if a bit coarse at times.

Jane Doe, meanwhile, was a 29-year-old deputy district attorney who
had worked for the office for slightly less than three years when the
alleged rape occurred. She was considered smart, ambitious, and
aggressive. But several co-workers described her to investigators as
rough around the edges, and more than one of her supervisors described
her as mentally unstable. Even Assistant Chief District Attorney Paul
Sequeira, who conducted the investigation into Jane Doe’s rape
accusations, said she was “unstable,” “up and down,” and “manic,”
according to notes taken by Alameda County Investigator Cynthia
Hall.

Jane Doe wrote of herself that “drama is part of my charm” in a
September 2008 text message to co-worker Diana Weiss about a boyfriend
who had broken up with her because he said she created too much drama.
And in her November 5 statement to investigators, she admitted having a
difficult working relationship with at least four female co-workers
whom she regarded as sexual rivals for the attention of a male deputy
district attorney who was not Gressett. Jane Doe said she hated one of
the women with such intensity that it bordered on the “primordial.”

Indeed, the workplace environment in which Gressett and Jane Doe
began their office flirtation was sexually charged. The sex
conversations that took place in the district attorney’s office were
freewheeling and seemed to know few bounds. Although last year the
office moved into a new $26 million building, its culture seemed firmly
locked in the 1970s.

Administrators have long been known for hiring female attorneys
based partly on their appearance. The DA’s reputation for hiring a
particular type of attractive woman is so widespread that at a recent
retirement dinner for Public Defender David Coleman, one speaker
quipped that “someone should tell the DA that diversity doesn’t mean
different types of blonds,” according to several people who attended
the dinner.

And even though about half the attorneys in the DA’s office are
female, women are rarely promoted into the upper tiers of management.
There is only one woman in charge of a division and there is only one
woman who has reached the highest pay grade, according to Elle Falahat,
an outside candidate for district attorney who has never worked in the
office. “For women in the district attorney’s office, the ceiling is
not glass — it’s stainless steel,” Falahat said. “There are no
women in the top three administrative positions and there are no
minority women in management at all.”

It isn’t clear whether this culture existed before Kochly took over
in 2002, but if it did, he did nothing to curtail it, according to
several deputy DAs. During his reign, sexual banter was commonplace.
And it was not always men who initiated the conversations. According to
notes from the investigation and interviews conducted by this
newspaper, women participated equally in tales of rough sex, bondage,
extramarital affairs, and sexual encounters involving multiple
partners.

Explicit conversations are common in most sexual assault units,
noted Deputy DA Tom Kensok, who works in the DA’s gang unit. Attorneys
who work in sexual assault become desensitized to discussing extreme
sexual acts. But in Contra Costa County, the rest of the office also
proved to be fertile ground for sexual banter, Kensok said. “You could
hear the same types of conversations on the fourth floor of the
courthouse in the offices, hallways, and conference room where many of
the attorneys gather for lunch,” he said. “A lot of it was joking. I
made jokes myself.”

Other lawyers scoff at these claims. “We have one hundred attorneys
who are working very hard on different floors, different departments
and different buildings, and the idea they are all talking about sex is
an exaggeration,” said Deputy DA Mark Peterson.

Still, sexual banter appears to have occurred at levels far beyond
the norm. Anal sex was the hot topic among one group. According to one
deputy DA, the topic became such a regular part of conversation that,
about five years ago, two female deputy DAs founded the “Anal Club” at
a wedding reception for two of their co-workers. Prospective club
members had to state that they had participated in and enjoyed anal
sex. The club was more talk than action, but its existence became well
known. In fact, deputy DAs who didn’t meet the club’s membership
requirements felt so left out that they started their own “Butt Pucker
Club,” according to interviews conducted by Gressett’s attorneys.

Some people who have been following the case believe this highly
charged atmosphere is partly responsible for what has turned out to be
a shattering event for Michael Gressett, Jane Doe, and the district
attorney’s office. One longtime public defender says the office’s
reputation and effectiveness has been seriously compromised. “In court
these are the same people who act like sanctimonious prudes about the
people they are trying to convict,” he said. “They all ought to be
incredibly ashamed of themselves.”

Gressett himself was known for talking about sex, which made some
co-workers uncomfortable. But Jane Doe was not among them. Her former
co-workers say she used foul language even in casual conversation and,
like Gressett, talked about enjoying rough sex. In fact, Deputy DA
Andrea Tavenier told investigators that one day when she and Jane Doe
were at Starbucks, Doe talked about having a regular safe word, which
was “banana.” A safe word is a code word or phrase used by the
submissive partner in a rough-sex scenario to unambiguously communicate
to the dominant partner that things have gone too far. In one of her
statements to investigators, Jane Doe said that several co-workers
including Gressett joked with her about the safe word, but that it was
simply a joke.

Co-workers also told investigators that Jane Doe had expressed an
explicit interest in Gressett prior to the alleged assault. Tavenier
told investigators that during a casual breakfast with a group of
deputy DAs at the Copper Skillet restaurant in Martinez, Jane Doe told
everyone at the table that she wanted to “fuck Gressett.” Tavenier told
investigators that on another occasion, at La Tapatia Restaurant, Doe
told at least four attorneys, including Gressett, that she enjoyed
rough sex and the use of weapons during sex. Deputy DA Teri Leoni told
investigators that Doe told her in a private conversation that she
wanted to have sex with Gressett while using a gun as a prop.

Co-workers say they repeatedly warned Jane Doe not to tell people
about her feelings toward Gressett. Deputy District Attorneys Leoni and
Weiss say they warned her on separate occasions that Gressett was
radioactive as far as the administration was concerned. According to
prosecutors’ interviews with Leoni, Weiss and Doe, if she told people
she was sleeping with Gressett, it could cost her a permanent job.

Jane Doe’s three-year contract was about to expire around the time
of the alleged sexual assault. And, according to text messages obtained
by defense attorneys, which she sent to friends during the month before
the alleged assault, she was worried about losing her job.

In fact, according to a message she sent to Deputy DA Weiss, Doe was
rated seventh out of the eight contract attorneys in her class. These
attorneys are typically rated on a combination of a written examination
and supervisor evaluations. With such a dismal rating, it was almost
certain that Jane Doe would not be offered a permanent job.

Like about half of the 85 attorneys who work for the Contra Costa
County District Attorney, Doe was a contract attorney. New attorneys
are given a three-year contract and only about half of them land
permanent jobs when their contracts expire. Contract attorneys work
like dogs to please their supervisors and improve their chances of
landing a permanent job, said one former deputy DA. That makes them
keen to get along within the office culture.

“You have to be perceived as a good worker who doesn’t cause
trouble,” said the lawyer, who worked in the office for several years
after her contract expired. “You want everyone to like you. So for
example, if you’re offended by sex talk, you’re not going to say
anything. You’re just going to smile and nod your head.”

Critics of the system say it creates a dog-eat-dog environment in
which contract attorneys will do almost anything to keep their jobs
— including stabbing co-workers in the back. “Friends turn on
friends if they think they can gain a few points,” said another deputy
DA, who now works in a different county. “The contract system makes
animals out of people.”

Contra Costa County has the only DA’s office in the Bay Area —
and possibly all of California — that uses the contract system,
said former Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Michael Menesini, who
now works in the San Francisco DA’s office. Menesini said the system
was adopted in 1978 to help the county through tough financial times.
But since then, he said, it has morphed into something that abuses the
labor pool and the taxpayers. Most other Bay Area DAs hire new lawyers
on a six-month to one-year probationary period, after which they are
almost guaranteed a permanent job unless there is some kind of
problem.

“The idea is that the new hires are going to stay and be nurtured
into seasoned attorneys, which benefits them, the office, and the
taxpayer,” Menesini said. “In Contra Costa County, it’s not nurture,
it’s torture. Contract attorneys will do almost anything to be hired
and many are often hired not because they are qualified, but because
they are good at palace politics.”

When Jane Doe began letting it be known around the office that she
wanted to “fuck Gressett,” Leoni said she thought the two were sexually
compatible based on their boasting and blathering. But no one could
have seen how explosive their short attachment would be.

Jane Doe said Gressett invited her to lunch on May 8, 2008, and took
her to his Martinez condominium. After giving her a tour, she later
said, he produced a steak knife and began poking the end of the knife
at her sweater and running it along her arms, breast, and neck.

The two apparently began kissing, and Gressett led Doe to his
bedroom where they both removed their clothes prior to engaging in what
she said she thought was going to be consensual sex. But Gressett
suddenly became aggressive, she said. He turned her over and began
forcibly sodomizing her, she said, despite her repeated pleas for him
to stop.

Gressett then removed a handgun from a bedside drawer, pressed the
muzzle to the back of her head, and continued to sodomize her, Jane Doe
said. Gressett reached into the same nightstand for a set of handcuffs,
which he used to cuff her ankle to her wrist. Leaving her on the bed,
Jane Doe said Gressett left the bedroom and returned with a glass
filled with ice cubes and an ice pick. Gressett then used the ice
pick’s handle to insert the ice into her vagina and anus before
sodomizing her again. At one point, Doe said, she heard a garage door
open and called out for help, but Gressett told her to “shut the fuck
up.”

In her statement, Jane Doe said the rape was so violent that there
were significant smears of blood and feces on the sheets. Gressett
eventually led her to the shower, she claimed, where he forced her to
orally copulate him, raped her again, and ejaculated on her face, chest
and neck. During the ride back to the office, Doe said, Gressett talked
about killing her with the ice pick and then having sex with her
still-warm corpse.

Jane Doe said in her statements that when she returned to work after
the assault she was limping, disheveled, and bleeding from her rectum.
But she did not seek medical attention or notify either the police or
her bosses. Instead, about fifteen minutes after the alleged attack,
she went shopping with DA Investigator Shawn Pate at the Martinez
farmers market. Pate has since told investigators that he noticed
nothing wrong with her.

Other than calling a friend, Jane Doe did not contact any
authorities until four days later on May 12, according to the
prosecution’s investigation notes.

Jane Doe made two official statements to investigators, one on
September 26, 2008 and another on November 5, 2008. In the second
statement, numerous facts changed or were explained differently than in
the first statement. For instance, the two statements contradicted one
another about whether the ice pick came into play before the gun,
whether she was handcuffed before or after she took a shower, and
whether Gressett ejaculated on her face or her back.

Of course, it’s not unusual for rape victims to experience
post-traumatic stress disorder that makes it difficult to remember
details of an assault, according to the National Center for Victims of
Crime. But Jane Doe’s testimony to investigators also differed in
several regards that were unrelated to the alleged assault.

In her initial statement, she told investigators that she did not
participate at all in anal sex. She later said she had experimented in
high school and college. Her coyness about the subject surprised some
co-workers who are aware of her official statements because they knew
Jane Doe as a member in good standing of their office’s Anal Club. In
fact, Deputy District Attorney Karen Zelis told investigators that most
conversations about anal sex began with Jane Doe starting them. Jane
Doe told Deputy DA Johanna Schonfield that she was such an enthusiast
she had used a strap-on dildo to anally penetrate at least one of her
sex partners, according to investigation notes.

Once the charges became public, other parts of Doe’s story changed
as she retold it to co-workers and investigators. For instance, Deputy
District Attorney Theresa McLaughlin told investigators that one day
Jane Doe came into her office crying and confided that she had
sustained a severed ovary during the assault and would not be able to
have children. Deputy DA Melissa Smith told investigators that Jane Doe
told her a similar story, although in that account Doe also claimed
that she had suffered a substantial jaw injury and so much bruising
that she looked as though she had been in a car accident.

But Gressett’s attorneys say they have subpoenaed Jane Doe’s medical
records from January 2005 to October 2008 and that those from after the
alleged rape do not support any of her claims. There is no scarring
from the alleged assault nor does she show any damage whatsoever to her
reproductive system. Jane Doe was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis,
a thinning of the bladder wall, which is sometimes caused by trauma,
but defense attorneys say her medical records show the condition was
pre-existing. And there is no known evidence than anyone else observed
the bruises she claimed to have suffered, according to the
prosecution’s investigation notes.

Another area in which Jane Doe’s story has changed significantly
involves a previous sexual encounter between her and Gressett five days
prior to the alleged assault. Jane Doe told Deputy DA Diana Weiss that
she and Gressett had rough sex at her San Francisco apartment after a
lunch date at Caffe Sport, according to the prosecution’s investigation
notes. Weiss said that Jane Doe claimed that Gressett had choked her so
hard that she had bruises on her neck. But in her two statements to
investigators, Doe said she did not have sex with Gressett on that
occasion because he could not maintain an erection, although she hedged
by saying she tried to orally stimulate him and that there may have
been some minor vaginal penetration. And again, Gressett’s attorneys
say there is no corroborating witness for the bruises on her neck.

The final facts that seem at odds with the official narrative
concern the ongoing contact between the suspect and victim after the
alleged assault. In her November 5 statement to investigators, Jane Doe
admitted that she continued to send text messages to Gressett for at
least three days after the May 8 assault. The content of those messages
are no longer available, but Jane Doe told investigators that two days
after the assault she sent Gressett a pornographic picture of a woman
who had a pair of testicles resting on the bridge of her nose, a sexual
act known as “teabagging,” along with the message “Tag you’re it.” A
few minutes later, she said she sent the same picture to her
brother.

Jane Doe later told investigators that she sent Gressett the photo
in order to lull him into a false sense of security so that she and her
sister could murder him.

For his part, Gressett denies there was any blood or feces on his
bed sheets or that he ever talked about killing Doe with the ice pick
and abusing her dead corpse. But he doesn’t deny the sex acts occurred,
except in one critical detail. He claims that every act that took place
during that lunch break in his condominium was consensual.

A forensics team recovered Jane Doe’s DNA from the handle of an ice
pick in Gressett’s condominium and on handcuffs in his bedside table.
Authorities confiscated about 200 tablets of Viagra, a small amount of
marijuana, and several guns that Gressett kept in his condominium, most
of which belonged to his father.

Daniel Russo, Gressett’s lead attorney, said the lack of evidence in
the case is so significant that charges should never have been brought
against his client. “These prosecutors simply are not grounded in
reality,” he said. “A careful reading of the statements, police
reports, and the forensic evidence shows that this case is a complete
fraud. If Michael Gressett was a tattooed, sex-registered felon, they
would not have filed this case. They just wanted to destroy him.”

Jane Doe took an unusual route when she decided to report the
alleged rape. She did not go to the police directly. Nor did she go to
her or Gressett’s bosses. Instead she went to a private attorney named
Tom McKenna. She later told investigators that she chose McKenna
because if she ever woke up next to a dead body, “Tom McKenna is my
guy.”

But McKenna is best known for handling drunk-driving cases and is
not generally considered to be the type of attorney one would approach
in such a case. However, McKenna’s partner at the time was Dan
O’Malley, who happens to be running for district attorney next year.
And O’Malley’s connections in Contra Costa County and the district
attorney’s office are well-established.

O’Malley is the son of former District Attorney William O’Malley and
the brother of Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley. He is a
former Superior Court judge and is married to the current presiding
judge of the Contra Costa County Superior Court, Mary Ann O’Malley. And
his connections run deep in Kochly’s administration. The district
attorney has officially endorsed O’Malley as his replacement in next
year’s election and O’Malley regularly plays golf with Assistant Chief
District Attorney Paul Sequeira.

Gressett’s attorneys say they suspect Jane Doe was lying when she
told investigators she went directly to McKenna. They believe O’Malley
was actually her go-to guy, and have subpoenaed the phone records of
McKenna and O’Malley to prove it. And according to investigator’s
notes, during drinks with several co-workers shortly after her meeting
with McKenna, Jane Doe told Deputy DA Theresa McLaughlin that she had
gone to O’Malley because her father is good friends with his
sister.

Jane Doe has said in her various statements that she delayed
reporting the alleged assault because she thought the case would be
un-winnable and because she didn’t want her father to know. But
investigators’ notes reveal that she had dinner with her father about
four hours after the alleged assault took place. Gressett’s attorneys
suspect that she told her father about her allegations that night and
that her father, a retired Alameda County public defender, contacted
Dan O’Malley, who arranged a meeting between her and McKenna. They also
suspect that O’Malley contacted the DA’s office behind the scenes,
which they hope to prove by obtaining his phone records. O’Malley has
hired an attorney to fight their subpoena.

“As far as the alleged victim, it looks like this is yet another
untruth,” Gressett’s lawyer Cardoza said. “She can never seem to tell
what actually happened. It’s always a story of convenience.”

Perhaps the single most troubling aspect of the case against
Gressett is the way the district attorney’s office reacted to the news
that one of its employees had been violently raped. On May 12, 2008,
four days after the alleged assault, Assistant Chief District Attorney
Sequeira was notified of the accusations. Two days later, according to
investigation notes, he sent Kochly a memo. But neither Kochly nor
Sequeira took any more action for four and a half months, which is
highly unusual given the serious nature of the allegations.

Jane Doe told investigators that she wanted Gressett fired, but did
not want to file a criminal complaint. Nonetheless, Kochly should have
assured the safety of his employees and the public by immediately
putting Gressett on administrative leave until they found out exactly
what had happened.

It is the responsibility of a district attorney to immediately
report any serious incident of workplace violence to law enforcement,
said W. Scott Thorpe, the chief executive officer of the California
District Attorney’s Association. Thorpe noted that he has no direct
knowledge of the Gressett case, “but normally a report of workplace
violence, depending what it is, should go directly to law
enforcement.”

The California Department of Occupational Safety and Health agrees.
“An employer has a responsibility to take action,” said spokesman Dean
Fryer. “The police should have been notified immediately in this case.
It’s a high-risk situation that puts women in the office in harm’s
way.”

Instead, Kochly and Sequeira allowed Gressett — who was never
notified of Jane Doe’s allegations — to continue prosecuting sex
crimes and freely roam the office where he interacted with female
attorneys, staffers, and sex-crime victims. The DA’s office didn’t
notify the Martinez police of the allegations until September 25, more
than four and a half months after the assault, and Gressett wasn’t
arrested until October 2, nearly five months after the alleged assault.
The delay was striking given the DA’s subsequent assertion that
Gressett is a violent rapist who should be locked away for life.

Once the DA’s office concluded that Jane Doe’s accusations had
value, it began a three-agency investigation on September 26 with
Sequeira as the lead investigator. But Sequeira was an odd choice to
lead the investigation. It was known throughout the office that he had
been hostile toward Gressett and Mark Peterson since both men
challenged Kochly in the 2002 election. After Kochly was elected, he
promoted Sequeira, who had actively campaigned for him and contributed
the maximum amount to his campaign. Since then, as the office’s number
three administrator, Sequeira has stood in the way of Gressett’s
promotions, Cardoza said.

But the coming election puts Sequeira’s powerful position in
jeopardy. Longtime Deputy District Attorney Peterson, a Concord city
councilman who was Gressett’s supervisor in the sexual assault unit, is
running for district attorney. Several deputy DAs believe that if
Peterson wins, Sequeira’s fall from grace will be swift and possibly
humiliating. “If Mark Peterson becomes our next DA,” said one deputy
DA, “you can bet that Paul Sequeira will spend the rest of his career
trying welfare fraud cases, and he knows it.”

Peterson, who is known by some co-workers as “The Preacher” because
of his strong religious beliefs, has never said he would demote
Sequeira if elected. In fact, several of Peterson’s supporters noted
that Sequeira is one of the office’s better attorneys and say it would
be counterproductive to demote him to a position beneath his skill
level. But they also doubted that Sequeira would remain third in
command.

Sometime in October, the district attorney’s office handed the case
over to the California Attorney General’s office to avoid the
appearance of a conflict of interest. But according to a filing by
defense attorneys, Sequeira was still in charge of the investigation.
He and his colleagues conducted an aggressive investigation in search
of evidence against Gressett. They interviewed dozens of people who
knew both the suspect and the victim: friends, family members,
ex-lovers, and more than twenty of their own deputy district attorneys.
Representatives from the Martinez police department, and sometimes the
attorney general’s office, were present, but they didn’t contribute
much to the interviews, according to defense attorneys. Kochly also
brought in two outside investigators from the Alameda County District
Attorney’s Office.

One legal scholar told the Contra Costa Times that the DA’s
office should have stayed out of the investigation completely. “It
should be run entirely by the attorney general, even if necessary with
help by a DA from another county,” said Robert Weisberg, director of
the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. “And if you need any of the
internal DA’s to work on it, find ones who are as neutral as possible
and under unbelievably strict rules. This just smells terrible. Why
take the chance on this?”

But despite Sequeira’s history with Gressett and Peterson, Kochly
put him in charge of the investigation. And Sequeira appears to have
brought politics into the inquiry almost immediately. When he swore out
Gressett’s arrest warrant, he noted in writing that Gressett ran for
district attorney three times as though it were a crime.

Gressett’s attorneys say Sequeira bullied some of the deputy DAs he
interviewed. He threatened known Peterson supporter Doug MacMasters
with his job in order to get him to give testimony, according to the
transcripts of the interview. Sequeira also was aggressive and hostile
during his interview with Peterson, according to defense attorneys.
Sequeira went so far off topic during the Peterson interview that when
Deputy DA Bob Hole, who assisted in the investigation, listened to the
taped interview, he wrote in his notes “no relevance to criminal case,”
according to evidence obtained by defense attorneys.

After Peterson pointed out that Sequeira had a clear conflict of
interest and should not be leading employee interviews, Kochly demoted
him from supervisor of the sexual assault unit to attorney in the
homicide unit. Peterson declined to discuss the interview other than to
say that he’d expressed the opinion that Sequeira’s aggressive
interviews reeked of impropriety. “I raised my concerns about how the
investigation was being handled and I was subsequently demoted.”

The demotion shocked several deputy DAs particularly because
Peterson had just won a high-profile death penalty case against
sex-crime killer Darryl Thomas Kemp for the 1978 murder of Armida
Wiltsey while she jogged around Lafayette Reservoir.

Despite the apparent flaws and glaring conflicts of interest on
display in the case, the California Attorney General’s Office decided
to press charges against Gressett. In August, Judge Carlos Ynostroza
ruled that Jane Doe would have to testify at a preliminary hearing.
Under the Crime Victims Justice Reform Act of 1990, which is designed
to reduce the number of times victims have to appear in court, rape
victims typically aren’t asked to testify at preliminary hearings. But
Gressett’s attorneys were able to demonstrate enough inconsistencies in
Jane Doe’s various statements that Ynostroza ruled that they could call
her to the witness stand during the preliminary hearing. Defense
attorneys were eager to finally question Jane Doe, but Deputy Attorney
General Peter Flores Jr. opted to seek an indictment through a grand
jury, where jurors would only hear Jane Doe’s side of the story.

Last week, a 19-member grand jury indicted Gressett on thirteen
felony counts after hearing from 33 witnesses. He was indicted on four
counts of forced sodomy, four counts of forced sexual penetration, two
counts of rape, and one count each of forced oral copulation, criminal
threats, and false imprisonment. There also are criminal enhancements
for use of weapons. If convicted, Gressett could spend the rest of his
life in prison.

Gressett’s defense investigator, Mark Harrison, a former police
officer who has worked in Contra Costa County criminal justice system
for the last 21 years, said he was not surprised that the grand jury
indicted his client. “The grand jury only hears a one-sided narrative,”
Harrison said. “The DA comes in and tells the jury that they have
enough evidence to convict and the grand jury usually believes them.
There’s an old saying that the first version of the story you hear is
always very convincing until you hear the truth.”

Jane Doe is now working as a deputy district attorney in another
county. She was contacted for this story but declined to comment.
Neither Kochly nor Sequeira returned calls to discuss their handling of
the investigation. Nor did Flores from the attorney general’s office
respond to calls asking for comment. Supervising Deputy Attorney
General Joyce Blair said she does not comment on any of her cases, but
noted that prosecutors are confident in taking the case to trial.

As for Gressett, since he was fired he has apparently devoted
himself to working on his case, friends say. He has attempted to
maintain some normalcy in his life by attending college football games
and spending time with his son, and he was recently re-elected as
president of his condominium association. Asked to sit for an
interview, Gressett declined. “It’s just not my turn to talk yet.”