Notable Cases - Thomas S. Worthington

During the infancy of the women’s rights movement, when the violent nature of rape was often minimized in courts of law, Mr. Worthington represented the accomplice in a case where a woman shot and killed her rapist. Famed attorney, Charles Garry (who later represented the infamous Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple in San Francisco and of Jonestown in Guyana, South America) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i59rc80tFY represented the woman. The woman was Inez Garcia and her accomplice was her roommate, Freddie Medrano.

On March 17, 1974, Garcia was taken into an alley behind the apartment where she lived with Freddie Medrano and was raped by two local Soledad men. The two men left the scene of the rape and went to a neighbor's house where they called Ms. Garcia laughing, taunting, and threatening her life. Garcia armed herself with her son's .22 rifle and she and Freddie Medrano drove the six blocks to the residence where the two men were located. Ms. Garcia shot one of the men and the other escaped into a nearby park.

When police arrived, Medrano and Garcia surrendered to them without incident and were both charged with first degree murder.

Together, Mr. Garry and Mr. Worthington argued to the jury that a woman's right to self defense extends even after the rape is completed, but before the perpetrator is caught.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict as to Mr. Worthington's client resulting in a hung jury. The District Attorney reduced the charge to manslaughter and the court granted probation to Mr. Medrano. However, Ms. Garcia was convicted of second-degree murder, sentenced, and spent two years in prison before her appeal was granted and her case was sent back for retrial. Ms. Garcia was exonerated during her second trial.

Four female family members, ranging in age from 6 to 74, were murdered in a blood bath chillingly reminiscent of the murders described in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. A 19-year-old male member of the family and his 14-year-old girlfriend were accused of the murder.

The prosecution was at a time when law enforcement had just begun the regular—but amateur—use of hypnosis of witnesses in unsolved cases. The defendants made admissions about their involvement, but their motives and the possible involvement of at least one of the hypnotized witnesses left the true facts a mystery to this day. Mr. Worthington represented the 14-year-old-girl and sought the assistance of Dr. Martin Orne, a psychiatrist specializing in the use and abuse of hypnosis as an investigative tool.

In another first, the prosecution enlisted the assistance of an anthropologist who claimed she could identify a person using various anatomical measurements. In this case, the "anatomical measurements" were bare, bloody footprints left behind by both the victims and the accused. Mr. Worthington objected to the introduction of this new "science," but the judge overruled his objection and the "expert" was allowed to testify.

Mr. Worthington fought vigorously in her defense and although the young woman was convicted by the judge of three counts of first degree murder and one count of second degree murder, Mr. Worthington was able to convince the judge to treat her with compassion and she was sent to the Ventura School for Girls.

At Ventura, she finished high school and then for two years was given furloughs to attend the local junior college. After less than four years she was paroled and attended University of California San Diego on a scholarship where she graduated with honors. She later married and had her own children.

Mr. Worthington authored an article published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and for several years after the trial, Mr. Worthington worked with California Attorneys for Criminal Justice to achieve a change in the law regarding the use of hypnosis in court cases. California law now strictly limits the testimony of witnesses who have had their memories “enhanced” by hypnosis.

A young woman from a devout Catholic family was charged with the attempted murder of her newborn infant after placing him in a dumpster at the apartment building where she lived. The young woman hid her pregnancy from everyone, including herself--the evidence introduced at trial showed she was in denial of her pregnancy. In fact, she lived in the apartment with the father of the infant and he did not know she was pregnant.

When she began having "stomach pains" which she thought was indigestion, she sent her boyfriend out to get her some Pepto Bismal. In the short time the boyfriend was gone, she delivered the infant on the toilet. She wrapped him in a blanket and placed him in the dumpster. When the boyfriend returned from the store he heard what he thought were cats in the dumpster. He opened the dumpster and there was the baby. Not knowing the baby was his, he returned to the apartment with the baby where he found her in bed. He called 911. When the paramedics and the police arrived they could immediately see there was something wrong with the young woman and discovered evidence that she had just delivered a baby.

At trial Mr. Worthington represented her and successfully invoked the “post-partum depression defense” at a time when the syndrome had only recently become a part of the medical/legal lexicon. http://www.webmd.com/depression/postpartum-depression/postpartum-depression-topic-overview

The jury acquitted on the attempted murder charge and rendered a verdict of attempted voluntary manslaughter.

During the final evacuation of Saigon in 1974, a Vietnamese Air Force officer managed to climb onto a helicopter and pull his infant daughter aboard but then a hail of gunfire forced the helicopter to lift off, knocking down his pregnant wife with the propeller backwash, leaving her behind.

For eight years after the end of the Vietnam War, the man and his daughter lived as refugees with a sponsor family in the State of Georgia. After several attempts, the man was finally able to bring his wife and then seven year old daughter to the United States.

After his wife and youngest daughter finally arrived in America, a Georgia State judge, over the objection of the family, established a legal guardianship of the oldest daughter in the sponsor family—leaving the man and his family only visitation rights with their daughter and again separating this family.

Not knowing the laws of the United States, the man brought his family to Monterey, California where they had other friends. He enrolled his children in school and got a job. Within a week, the FBI tracked him down, picked up his children from the school bus stop, and arrested him on the charge of kidnap. Mr. Worthington was able to get the criminal charges against the man dismissed in California and he represented the family in the custody matter in Georgia.

The deck seemed hopelessly stacked against this poor Vietnamese family, given that both the foster family and the judge were white Southern Baptists, but after a protracted hearing, the judge ruled that the family could be reunited and returned to California--on three conditions: 1) that the family must post a bond in Georgia; 2) that the family must return the child to Georgia at their own expense for visitation with the sponsor family; and 3) that the child should be given Christian religious training, ". . .as our forefathers contemplated. . ." The family had no money to post the bond, so Mr. Worthington posted it himself, shepherded the family onto an airplane, and flew them to the relative safety of California.

But that wasn't the end of the story. When the appointed time came for the visitation back in Georgia, the family complied. Within a few hours of disembarking from the plane, the sponsor mother snatched the child and went into hiding. Mr. Worthington had to hire a lawyer and investigators in Georgia to locate the child and to conduct yet another hearing in court. This time, the judge ordered the child permanently reuited with her family. They returned to California where they have lived good lives ever since.

On Christmas Eve a woman shot and killed her husband in front of the Hollister home that they shared with their five children. The testimony showed that after years of abuse inflicted at the hands of her husband, she had a heightened sensitivity to danger. When arguments would occur, her husband would take her out of the house to his truck where he would have control over her outside of the presence of their children. Inside the truck, he would berate and physically abuse her. On one occasion, he actually pulled her from the truck through an open window.

Over the previous few months, the woman became more and more distraught over the deterioration of her marriage and the abuse she was enduring. She was not sleeping well and was losing weight. She sought help from friends and even went to the District Attorney for help.

On Christmas Eve morning 1994, after going most of the night without sleeping, she tried to go out to do last minute shopping for her children. Unable to concentrate, she went back home. Upon returning to the house an argument began and consistent with the usual pattern her husband insisted that she come out to the truck to continue the "discussion." Knowing what had happened in the past, she got a gun from their closet and put it in her purse. Once in the truck, the argument escalated until he angrily exited his side of the truck. Believing that he was going to come around to her side to once again drag her from the vehicle, she got the gun out and pointed it at him. She later testified that she was shaking so hard that the gun went off accidentally.

Mr. Worthington and his co-counsel James A. Michael did something very unusual for a defense team: They put on a "shotgun" defense. A shotgun defense is one where the defense puts before the jury all plausible explanations of what has happened and asks them to choose. Here, Mr. Worthington and Mr. Michael proposed four defenses:

1. Diminished mental capacity due to lack of sleep and emotional turmoil: She put a gun in her purse because her thinking was becoming irrational and overtaken by fear.
2. Battered woman syndrome: She got into the car with him even though she anticipated what might happen.
3. Self-defense: She pulled the gun out and pointed it at him because she thought he was going to come around to her side of the truck and pull her out.
4. Accident: She was shaking so badly that the gun went off accidentally. Expert testimony showed the gun had a "hair" trigger.

A shotgun defense is not usually successful, but in this case the jury was convinced that she did not intend to kill her husband and brought back a verdict of not guilty of murder and guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The judge sentenced her to four years on the involuntary manslaughter and an additional 10 years under a new California law regarding the use of a firearm which had just been signed by the Governor 15 days before the homicide.

Mr. Worthington took an appeal, the conviction was reversed, and after a retrial, the sentence was reduced and she was granted parole.

When the new owner of a home in North Salinas crawled under the house, she found a tennis shoe sticking up from the dirt. When she pulled on the shoe, she discovered the skeletal remains of a body.

The remains were of a 16-year-old boy who had disappeared from the home a decade before--the home he shared with his mother, sister and step-father. The step-father was ultimately arrested. Mr. Worthington represented the step-father and after a two week trial, which featured the testimony of an FBI profiler and the uncovering of police misconduct, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

As part of their case, the Monterey County District Attorney used an FBI profiler who testified that it was an inside job by a person who had a motive based on interpersonal conflict. Mr. Worthington put on evidence that this same profiler had been part of the FBI profiling team that had recently profiled a case in San Diego where they had named the brother of a victim and had said it was an inside job. When another murder occurred under similar circumstances, the FBI admitted that their profiling in the San Diego case had been wrong. Under Mr. Worthington's cross-examination, the FBI agent admitted to his part in the San Diego profiling.

Months after the body was discovered the police conducted an additional search of the garage where defendant and the boy's mother had been living before the body was found. The police took various items from the garage, one was a baseball cap that the boy's mother said belonged to the defendant. Suspiciously, within days after that, evidence envelopes containing trace evidence that had been collected, sealed, and stored at the Salinas Police Department in the evidence locker, were sent to the Department of Justice for analysis. As to one of them, the analyst reported the envelope had been opened and resealed "by persons unknown." In that very envelope, and only that envelope, they found a hair that matched the defendant's hair.

Under cross-examination by Mr. Worthington, the lead investigator admitted that he had opened the envelope and resealed it but denied he had placed anything in the envelope and said he had only opened it to see what was in it. He also claimed he had properly documented the fact that he had opened the envelope, but Mr. Worthington confronted him with his copy of the evidence log which contained no such documentation. Mr. Worthington demanded the police department's evidence be ordered to produce the original evidence log. The Court made the order, telling the detective to bring the evidence officer and the original log to court after the noon recess.

After lunch, the evidence officer produced the original log and testified to its authenticity. Excused from the witness stand, she quickly left the courtroom, and Mr. Worthington recalled the detective. He began testifying confidently that all entries on the log were authentic until he got to the very last one--the critical entry concerning the opening of the envelope. The detective stopped in his tracks; that entry had apparently been backdated as it was off by one calendar year.

The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and the case resulted in a hung jury.

An African-American man was charged with the rape of a white woman visiting from Scotland. Mr. Worthington’s defense of this man included an investigation which spanned two continents. From information collected from other places the woman had traveled, the defense was able to present evidence at trial that she had made allegations of sexual assault on at least 19 previous occasions. After a trial that resulted in a hung jury, the District Attorney dismissed all charges.

A man from a prominent Carmel family was charged with the rape of an eight year old girl. The girl, then 15, had not reported the alleged rape for seven years and then only after claiming to have had “flashbacks” recalling the details. Mr. Worthington, along with the finest memory experts in the United States—Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, the leading authority on “recovered memory” (http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/) and her colleague Dr. Jeffrey Younggren, a professor at UCLA who had begun his clinical practice of psychology when he was a Captain in Viet Nam treating soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml) —were able to show that the claim of “recovered memory” could not be supported in this case and 10 days before trial, the District Attorney dismissed all charges.

After years of being molested and being introduced to marijuana by a state prison parolee who had moved into his neighborhood, an 18 year old young man who had never been in any kind of trouble in his life confronts his molester in the same garage where the molestations had occurred. Seemingly unprovoked at the time, the young man punched and knocked the man down and then began to kick him. The man suffered a brain injury and was in a coma for 45 days.

After the assault the young man, himself, called 911 and waited for the authorities. He was arrested on attempted murder charges.

Previously unable to tell anyone of the trauma he had suffered at the hands of his molester, the young man was finally able to tell his story of how he had been repeatedly taunted and molested in that dimly lit garage.

Mr. Worthington and his co-counsel, Mrs. Keeley, along with experts in the field of "Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome" (http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/child-sexual-abuse-accommodation-syndrome-csaas) and "Post-traumatic Stress Disorder" (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml) mounted a defense and presented to the District Attorney convincing evidence that the young man had no intent to kill and had acted irrationally and out of character as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The District Attorney's Office and the Court agreed to accept a plea to assault and the Court granted probation with no time in jail.

In an update to this case: After serving his entire probationary term, during which he asked for no special treatment by the court or the probation department, Mrs. Keeley filed a Petition to Dismiss all Charges under Penal Code Section 1203.4. Both the Monterey County Probation Department and the Monterey County District Attorney's office completely supported the motion. The Motion was granted by Honorable Terrance Duncan.

Thomas Worthington was retained to handle the sentencing hearing for a 26 year old man who was convicted of possession of marijuana for sales with an enhancement for specific intent to benefit a street gang, and street terrorism. The trial was handled by another firm, and Mr. Worthington was hired after the conviction. The young man was also on probation for assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury, and therefore technically ineligible for probation. He was facing seven years and eight months in state prison.

Mr. Worthington, with the assistance of two other attorneys in the Worthington Law Centre, Brian Worthington and Chester J. Phillips, prepared an extensive sentencing memorandum which not only contained legal argument but also presented other mitigating evidence. Mr. Worthington marshaled the support of no fewer than twenty people--family, friends, former employers--who wrote letters attesting to the young man’s good character and came to court to support him. During the sentencing hearing, the young man took the stand, admitted his error for selling marijuana, but denied any gang involvement.

After lengthy argument by both Mr. Worthington and the District Attorney, who argued for a five year prison sentence, the judge--acknowledging the community support and emphasizing that our client's supporters were themselves good citizens--ruled she had the discretion to grant probation and did so. The young man will receive probation and an opportunity to rehabilitate himself.

After a six day trial, a Salinas jury brings back not guilty verdicts on all charges against a Carmel Valley contractor falsely accused of rape.

What began as many other Friday nights for this 30 year old single man from Carmel Valley--a night out with some friends--turned out to be a nightmare. After meeting some friends for drinks in Carmel Valley, the accused and his friends went to a bar in Carmel where they met three women--one of whom had been a schoolmate of one of the accused's friends. The men partied and danced with the three women until the bar closed and they were invited back to one of the women's apartment.

At the apartment, one of the women engaged in a strip tease dance and invited all three men to have sex with her. When all the others had either gone home or gone to bed, our client and the woman engaged in sexual activities. But the next morning when they woke up, she immediately started screaming at him pretending not to know who he was and accused him of raping her. She began chasing him around the apartment with two knives that she got from the kitchen. All the while the others in the apartment were telling her who the man was, that they had spent the evening together, and that she did know him. He was asked to leave. He left and within minutes, the cab he was in was stopped by the police and he was arrested for rape.

He was charged by the Monterey County District Attorney with rape and sexual battery of an unconscious woman. The young man steadfastly maintained his innocence. Tom and Brian Worthington along with their defense team, including another Worthington Law Centre associate, Carolyn Keeley, and the firm’s investigator, Richard Lee, were able to prove to the jury that the woman was lying on more than one relevant point: Although four people, testified to the contrary, including her good friend, the woman denied ever having an interest in any of the men at the apartment; denied having stripped down to her bra and panties and performing for the men; denied inviting them to have sex with her. She lied to the jury about what she had told two police officers; she lied to the jury about what she was wearing to bed that evening.

In the three months it took to bring this case to trial, the woman was interviewed by two investigating officers, an examiner at the hospital, an investigator with the Monterey County District Attorney's Office, and a deputy District Attorney. But it was not until she took the stand, under oath, that she told a story of how she was too intoxicated to consent or know what had happened to her. But this testimony was inconsistent with laboratory testing of her blood drawn just hours after the events that showed she had 0% alcohol in her system. After some suggestion that she may have taken Ecstasy, the defense presented additional laboratory tests showing that same blood sample was negative for all common "sex" drugs.

In her two day testimony, the defense completely discredited this witness. The defense argued to the jury that this woman had come to town for a "girls' weekend," leaving her fiancé behind. She engaged in activities that she certainly did not want her fiancé to find out about. And that when waking the next morning in her friend's apartment with a man other than fiancé, she lied to protect her relationship.

After 45 minutes of deliberation, the jury came back with verdicts of not guilty on all counts.

To read more about this case, please see the story published in the The Carmel Pine Cone. 

In December, 2009, a Hollister man with no prior record was accused of having molested his niece when she was between the ages of three and eight. The niece is now 14 years old and was claiming she had seizures caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml ), as a result of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse (http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/). For at least six weeks she discussed with her mother and neighbor dreams she was having that she had been abused as a young child. After six weeks of these conversations she determined these were not dreams, but memories of true events. She claimed her uncle was the perpetrator.

Despite a report being made to law enforcement in January, 2010, no criminal charges were filed until summer, 2010.

Brian Worthington and Tom Worthington spent nearly two years investigating the case and developing the defense theory. The investigation and defense involved review of the entire family’s background, family court records, child protective services records, medical records, and school records. The man participated in a polygraph examination administered by a former FBI agent. He passed the examination. Preparation of the defense also involved consultation with a number of expert witnesses in the fields of diagnosis and treatment of sex-offenders, repressed memory, suggestibility of child witnesses, misuse of psychiatric diagnoses in court proceedings, and the motivations that can cause an adolescent girl to intentionally fabricate allegations of sexual abuse against a family member.

The defense investigation uncovered a wealth of medical records—none of which documented any seizure or diagnosis of PTSD. At trial Messrs. Worthington presented evidence and argument that these were fabricated medical issues used as an excuse to get out of school, and that the girl had used her “medical situation” and the child abuse story to convince her mother to be less restrictive with her boyfriends. Moreover, she had been inconsistent in her story when talking to friends and family members--with some, she denied it occurred at all; with others, she claimed another person had abused her at a different time in her life. Finally, it was discovered that the girl and her mother had destroyed documentary evidence that the Court had ordered them to maintain.

As a result of the investigative findings and the favorable polygraph examination, the Worthingtons demanded the case should be dismissed. When the District Attorney initially refused, the defense team produced a pretrial brief, complete with summaries of medical records and declarations from proposed expert witnesses, that was hundreds of pages long and renewed the demand to dismiss. After the District Attorney again refused, the case was set for trial.

The trial began October 31, 2011 and lasted nine days. During this time, the defense presented three expert witnesses and a number of character witnesses. Among the character witnesses were school teachers and a well known pediatrician in San Benito County. Each of the character witnesses testified the defendant was a good, honest man who would never harm a child. It took the jury less than three hours to deliberate before the man was found not guilty of all nine charges.

Mr. Worthington’s client was a 21-year-old college student who had had a younger girlfriend for several years. When the girl turned 15, they engaged in consentual sex on multiple occasions which can be charged as a felony under California law. The girl’s mother had approved of the relationship, but when her father found out about it, he insisted that the Monterey County District Attorney prosecute the young man. The young man was charged with multiple felonies and faced years in prison and registration as a sex offender.

After more than a year of investigation into all the surrounding circumstances, Mr. Worthington was able to convince the Monterey County District Attorney to allow the young man to plead to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse. The young man received probation, a minimal jail sentence which he was allowed to complete by doing community service; but most importantly, was not required to register as a sex offender (http://meganslaw.ca.gov/sexreg.htm).

In the fall of 2007 two brothers came from Texas to Hartnell College where they were stars in football and basketball. The brothers came from a very religious family and they themselves were religious. During the last week of October of their first year away from home, they were expecting a visit from their mother. On the night of October 26, 2007, the older brother had just returned from choir practice and started working on a paper that was due the next day; an argument ensured over use of the computer and the younger brother wound up with a single stab wound that pierced his heart. The older brother immediately called for help and cradled his bleeding brother in his arms begging for the fire department to respond faster. When medical help arrived they tore the brothers apart and made a decision to fly the younger brother to a hospital in San Jose. By the time he arrived there he had died of his wounds and the older brother was under arrest for murder, facing life in prison.

Within three days Mr. Worthington was able to arrange bail and the young man was allowed to return home to his family in Texas. Over the next two and a half years, Mr. Worthington tirelessly prepared a defense based on absence of intent to kill. He was able to develop forensic evidence consistent with the young man’s statement that the brothers had been struggling over the computer, had fallen to the floor, and that the younger brother was holding the older brother on the floor and that he was unintentionally stabbed during the struggle.

The court ultimately allowed a plea of no contest to involuntary manslaughter and in May of 2010, after an emotion-packed sentencing hearing, the court granted probation with 365 days to be served in the Monterey County Jail. Even with good time credits the young man would not be released until January, 2011. On December 23, 2010, Mr. Worthington filed a motion for early release which the Court granted. On Christmas Eve, the young man boarded a plane in time to spend Christmas with his family.

Mr. Worthington represented a local physician with an impeccable reputation in his profession and a clean past record. After a series of domestic disputes, the physician was charged in court with domestic violence. After nearly a year of negotiations with the District Attorney, Mr. Worthington achieved a dismissal of all charges on the day of trial.

19 year old boy faced the death penalty in the stabbing of a Taco Bell employee. In October, 2007, a Taco Bell restaurant in a rural part of Monterey County was closing up when two masked men entered with guns and knives and demanded money. During the robbery, one of the employees sought safety by running into a walk-in freezer, but one of the masked men followed him and stabbed him--he later died of his wounds.

Our client previously worked at that Taco Bell and was later identified by the store manager who miraculously escaped death when the gun that was aimed at him by the other masked man misfired.

Mr. Worthington had the young man submit to a SPECT exam (http://www.mesotheliomaweb.org/mesothelioma/diagnosis/spect/ ) (a brain scan that tests for mental function and impairment) and a battery of neurological and psychological testing. Mr. Worthington was able to give demonstrative evidence, particularly in the form of images of the young man’s brain developed during the SPECT exam, to the District Attorney and the Court that there was significant impairment of the young man’s cognitive functioning, his ability to reason and to exercise good judgment, and to understand the consequences of his acts.

The District Attorney agreed to drop the death penalty in exchange for a plea to life without the possibility of parole.

The step-son of a local Monterey County Sheriff Detective, was arrested for attempted murder in the shooting of his step-father.

A troubled young man who struggled with alcohol and drug abuse for many years lapsed into a paranoid and delusional state and entered the family home in the middle of the night. When the step-father heard the noise in the home and got up to investigate, the defendant shot him in the face. The shot miraculously glanced off of his temple causing serious but not fatal injury.

With the support of his mother and step-father who stood by him in spite of the serious injury, Mr. Worthington was able to get the charge reduced to assault and he was sentenced to six years in prison.

A Seaside woman was arrested on charges of felony drunk driving after seriously injuring a paramedic. The paramedic who had responded to a previous accident and was loading an injured person into an ambulance jumped off of a highway bridge 20 feet to the ground to avoid being pinned between the defendant's car and the ambulance.

The woman was a retired educator in Monterey County with no previous record. She was a member of her local church and did charitable work through her church and other organizations. She had been a teetotaler her entire life.

A few weeks earlier while visiting her granddaughter, she was given a sweet alcoholic drink whose taste the woman liked.

On the day of the accident, while at her home in Seaside, the woman, decided to make herself one of the drinks she had had with her granddaughter. Not knowing the concentration of alcohol in this drink or its potential effects, she got into her car and drove a few miles before the accident.

She was arrested on felony drunk driving, causing serious injury to the paramedic. She immediately admitted to her wrongdoing and expressed genuine remorse. Mr. Worthington marshaled all of the mitigating circumstances surrounding this tragic event and the woman was granted probation.

After a two week jury trial the two men charged were found not guilty of 23 counts of insurance fraud and perjury. Mr. Worthington and James A. Michael, another prominent Salinas Attorney teamed up to represent one of the two men accused.

After winning a $425,000 jury verdict in a civil case they had against Kawasaki Motorcycle Company for product liability, two men were charged criminally with subordination of perjury and insurance fraud for allegedly staging the accident that resulted in the civil verdict.

After some potentially new evidence came to light, Kawasaki filed a motion for new trial in front of the Honorable Harkjoon Paik, the judge that had presided over the civil trial.

The Santa Monica law firm that had won the civil verdict against Kawasaki entered into an agreement with Kawasaki that if the two men prevailed at the criminal trial, they would drop their motion and pay the judgment in full.

After entering into this agreement, the Santa Monica law firm hired Mr. Michael and Mr. Worthington to represent one of the accused.

During the two week jury trial, the defense team brought in experts in accident reconstruction, metallurgy, mechanical engineering and geology to prove that the accident occurred when, where and how the two men testified.

The two men were acquitted of all 23 charges against them and Kawasaki paid up.

After a year's worth of work, including an exhaustive investigation by the defense that the prosecution had not done themselves, the defense presented the Monterey County District Attorney's Office with evidence that proved the defendant in this case could not have committed the crime. In fact, the defense handed to the District Attorney the identity of the two men that did commit the crime.

The accused was a young adult male, who as a youth had been involved in gang activities, convicted of a felony resulting in one strike under California's Three Strikes Law (http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_1995/3strikes.html ) Here, the young man was charged with felon in possession of a firearm, possession of a stolen firearm, evading the police, gang enhancements. He was identified by a Salinas Police officer who testified that he was "positive, unless he has a twin brother." After an extensive nine month investigation, the defense found the "twin brother," a man whose facial appearance was indistinguishable from that of the defendant and who was associated with the driver of the car.

The defendant had proclaimed his innocence from the moment of his arrest at his home in Monterey more than 30 days after the crime had occurred. With the assistance of one of his co-workers, and a forensic computer expert, the defense was able to show proof positive that the defendant was using his computer and telephone in his office in Monterey at a time that would make it impossible for him to have been committing a crime in Salinas, 29 miles away.

After Mr. Worthington presented his 300 page investigative report to the District Attorney and after a three week delay of the previously scheduled jury trial, a motion to dismiss all charges against the young man was granted by the Court.

The defense then filed a Petition for Finding of Factual Innocence which the judge initially denied saying it was still "possible" that he could have committed the crime. That was the wrong standard, and Mr. Worthington appealed. The Court of Appeal reversed the decision and sent the case back to the court for reconsideration. The judge then spent months rewriting the opinion to satisfy the Court of Appeal. Distancing himself from his original conclusions—which were not supported by the law or the evidence—the judge denied the Petition. Mr. Worthington appealed again, but this time the Court of Appeal affirmed the judge’s decision.

Mr. Thomas Worthington represented a 19-year old Mexican immigrant with low grade developmental disabilities charged with statutory rape of a 14-year old girl. The sex act was not forcible. The girl became pregnant as a result. The young man was facing a lengthy prison sentence, mandatory deportation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender, despite the girl’s desire to have him involved in the child’s life.

The case involved lengthy pretrial negotiations aimed at preventing mandatory deportation so that the young man could assist in raising his child. After these negotiations failed, Mr. Worthington assigned the task of drafting a motion to dismiss the charge for Denial of Due Process to his then-law clerk, Brian Worthington. Mr. Brian Worthington drafted the motion, arguing that refusal to consider the young man’s immigration consequences was a violation of Due Process when other “collateral consequences” are often considered in pretrial negotiations.

After Tom Worthington submitted the motion, the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. The young man avoided deportation and a prison sentence.

Since Brian Worthington drafted this motion, other attorneys have approached him about using his research and arguments. Versions of his brief have been filed by other criminal defense and immigration attorneys in Monterey County Superior Court, the Sixth District Court of Appeal, and the Washington State Supreme Court.

A man from South Monterey County had been previously convicted of a sex crime that did not involve touching a child or possession of child pornography. The offense included mandatory lifetime registration as a sex offender (http://meganslaw.ca.gov/sexreg.htm), despite the lack of any previous convictions.

In his second-year of law school, Mr. Brian Worthington, petitioned the California State Bar for "Certified Law Student" status. This status allows second and third year law school students to handle matters in court under the supervision of a licensed California Attorney. His request was granted.

In his first assignment at the Worthington Law Centre, Mr. Worthington was to research and argue for post-conviction relief. After extensive research, Mr. Worthington petitioned the Monterey County Court to relieve the man from the registration requirement. During a lengthy hearing before Honorable Gary Meyer, during which the Monterey County District Attorney's Office objected to any relief, Mr. Worthington argued that mandatory sex offender registration for this crime violated the man’s right to Equal Protection because statutory rape and oral copulation did not require mandatory sex offender registration, despite the aggravated nature of those offenses. Mr. Worthington’s motion was granted and the man was relieved of the requirement to register as a sex offender.

It is believed Brian Worthington’s was the first motion of its kind granted in Monterey County, and among the first in Northern California. Since this time, numerous other attorneys in Monterey County have contacted Mr. Worthington for guidance on handling this issue.

As a result of a domestic dispute on New Year’s Day, a 24 year old prison guard stabbed her husband in the chest in front of his two young children. The man later died. The woman faced life in prison. Tom and Brian Worthington teamed up to defend this young woman.

With the assistance of experts in the field of forensic pathology, biomechanics and Intimate Partner Battering (more commonly known as "battered woman syndrome”), Messrs Worthington developed a defense based on Intimate Partner Battering (http://www.rainn.org/get-information/effects-of-sexual-assault/battered-woman-syndrome) and argued to the Monterey County District Attorney's Office that the history of abuse in the relationship caused the woman to arm herself during an argument, in hopes that the presence of a weapon would make her husband stop abusing her. They also argued that the kinetics of the event showed the stabbing could not have been intentional and premeditated, but was instead reflexive and a product of her fear of abuse.

Days before the case was to go to trial, the Monterey County District Attorney agreed to reduce the charge of first degree murder to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. The woman was sentenced to seven years in prison.

A well known and respected coach at Robert Louis Stevenson School was charged with the murder of his daughter’s boyfriend. . The man's daughter and boyfriend had a tumultuous relationship. They had been living together off and on for two years. They had an infant son together. On many occasions the daughter called her father for assistance in resolving arguments or to help her in move out of the residence she shared with her boyfriend. The man always came to her aid. At the same time, because the boyfriend was the father of his grandchild, the man repeatedly set aside his ill feelings and tried to give guidance to the young man. But there were also angry confrontations, including on the day of the homicide.

After receiving a disturbing call from his daughter asking him to come pick up the baby, he arrived at the apartment his daughter and the young man shared. He believe his daughter was in distress and wanted to help. He left his wife, and two grandchildren in the truck while he went to the apartment in an attempt to talk to the boyfriend and to see what was happening. The daughter followed him. When he got into the apartment, the boyfriend charged the man with a baseball bat. In fear of his life and the life of his daughter and grandchildren, the man went to his pickup and got a gun. The young man continued to come at him with the bat. The man fired the gun several times and hit the young man in the forehead with one bullet. Paramedics were called to the scene, but it was too late, the young man was already dead. The police were called and the man was arrested on charges of first degree murder, a charge that carried a potential sentence of life in prison for this man who had never been in trouble with the law.

Mr. Thomas Worthington and his associate, Mrs. Carolyn Keeley, waived jury trial and went to a court trial in front of Honorable Terrance Duncan. The defense made many pretrial motions which would ultimately affect the results of the case, one of which was researched and written by Brian Worthington: A motion to oppose the District Attorney’s theory that the man could be charged with “second degree felony murder.” Brian Worthington wrote a motion arguing that there was no such charge, specifically not on the facts of this case.

After a three day court trial during which the defense maintained that the shooting had been in defense of the man and his daughter--that he had acted in protection of his daughter as any father would--the judge reached a verdict of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter. The man was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 1987 a man was charged with the 1972 murder of a young woman in Carmel Valley. At the time, it was the oldest case ever brought to trial in California. Mr. Worthington represented the man and notwithstanding a supposed “jail house confession” the jury voted 10 to 2 for acquittal. The District Attorney later dismissed all charges.

Within a short time of the girl's disappearance, her partially decomposed body was uncovered in a Carmel Valley riverbed. Mr. Worthington's client was a suspect from the beginning because he had a romantic relationship with the young woman. However, no arrest occurred until 15 years later, when our client was in jail on a minor offense and supposedly made a jailhouse confession.

The prosecution’s theory was that our client and the victim had engaged in sex and then he killed her; but one piece of evidence found at the scene was torn panties, and the defense’s theory was that the girl had been raped by someone else and killed. The murder occurred long before DNA evidence, and no samples remained by the time of trial to exonerate our client or identify the true perpetrator.

By the time the case was brought to trial witnesses had spread all over the country. In fact, one was in the military stationed in Guam. Mr. Worthington's legal team conducted a yearlong investigation to round up the witnesses and bring them to California to testify. The defense witnesses and the defendant, himself, testified that he had had a romantic relationship with the deceased girl and had never wished her any harm.

The trial occurred at the height of a scandal over manufactured jailhouse confessions. Inmates desiring favorable treatment in their own cases had developed a cottage industry in the California jails and prison system—often aided and abetted by police detectives anxious to close out cases—where the inmate would get just enough information about a crime to then “drop a dime” on the target inmate. Mr. Worthington’s cross examination of the informant in this case showed how the process worked, and the defendant denied that he had made any such confession to the other inmate. After two days of deliberations, the jury was deadlocked. Because the vote was 10 to 2 for acquittal, and because of the serious credibility problems with the informant, the District Attorney dismissed all charges without a retrial.

In Santa Cruz County, a transient man was charged with the brutal murder of a well-known dentist and with assault and attempted murder of a houseguest of the dentist. The man’s fingerprints were found at the scene and on multiple occasions he confessed to his girlfriend of committing, not only this crime, but of committing other murders--one in a prison in Michigan and at least one while serving in Viet Nam. Mr. Worthington was able to show that the man had never been in Michigan and had never served in Viet Nam.

In his representation of the man, Mr. Worthington gathered strong evidence showing the likelihood that another person actually committed the crime and successfully invoked the “Compulsive Confessor” defense.

On the witness stand, the defendant admitted that he was present and that he had confessed to committing the murders. He also admitted to the jury—as he had to the police—that on multiple occasions he had confessed to his girlfriend. But he said he had only “confessed” to impress her.

There were four key pieces of evidence in the case: The “confessions” by the defendant; testimony from the surviving victim that the perpetrator had bad teeth; testimony from a neighbor that a car with a loud muffler had fled the scene; and, testimony by a jail inmate that a cellmate had confessed to him.

The defendant did have bad teeth and, when added to the confessions, the District Attorney thought he had an airtight case. That’s not how it worked out.

The jailhouse snitch told our investigator that while incarcerated in Santa Cruz, his cell mate admitted he had done the murder. The man said he had shared this information with the police but they were not interested in hearing it. This information presented the mirror image of a case only three years earlier where Mr. Worthington successfully challenged the reliability of supposed “jailhouse confessions,” and so the defense embarked on an arduous investigation seeking corroboration. By the time the defense assembled sufficient corroboration, the man had been transferred to a prison in Oklahoma. Mr. Worthington went to Oklahoma to talk to him. He agreed to testify, and was transported in custody across the country back to Santa Cruz. On the stand, he repeated the story he had told to the police and to our investigator.

Next, Mr. Worthington brought in the person who had made the “jailhouse confession.” Although he took the Fifth and refused to testify, Mr. Worthington got an order from the judge that he show his teeth to the jury. He did so. His crooked teeth were exactly like those described by the living witness.

Finally, we completed the circle with evidence about the car with the loud muffler. Several hours after the homicide, the police had taken pictures of a car abandoned within two miles of the scene. One picture just happened to show a hole in the muffler. We brought to the witness stand the neighbor who told about “a car with a loud muffler” speeding away in the middle of the night. Then we introduced DMV records. The car was registered to the same man as Mr. Worthington called to the stand for the display of his bad teeth.

After two hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted on all counts. Several jurors shook the defendant’s hand as they left the courtroom, and two female jurors hugged him and wished him well.