OAKHURST – The Sheriff’s Substation in Oakhurst is now home to a satellite office of the Madera County District Attorney’s Office.
At 4 p.m. on Friday, Mar. 6, District Attorney David Linn made it official by cutting the ribbon on the new Mountain Division at 48267 Liberty Drive, where the D.A. will share space with the Probation Department.
“It’s so important that we get people like an investigator, a deputy district attorney and myself occasionally up here on site,” said Linn, who sees speeding up the legal process as a top priority.
“Now this lieutenant is going to be able to send somebody across the street, and we can put paperwork in the electronic transmitter and have it in our office in a matter of seconds,” said Linn. “So a lot of those delays that are keeping the bad guys on the streets will be eliminated.”
Investigator David Engstrom will be available at the office Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Deputy District Attorney Ashley Allred will be assigned there two days a week, in addition to her duties at the Bass Lake Courthouse.
“I will occassionally be coming by the office so I can meet with witnesses and victims, and any of the criminals that want to come in,” said Linn, who credited the people in the Probation Department for making the transition very smooth.
“We already have the IT in place, so the only thing we had to pay for is the little sign on the door,” said Linn. “Very few tax dollars were involved. As the population of Madera County continues to move up Highway 41, we’re going to need more of a presence here – more District Attorney presence, more Sheriff and more Highway Patrol.”
The office is now open for business and the phone number is 559-683-3300.
He will meet with “any of the criminals that want to come in”?
Has Mr. Newly-Elected District Attorney Linn forgotten the California State Bar Association’s Rule of Professional Conduct 2-100(A)?
“While representing a client, a member shall not communicate directly or indirectly about the subject of the representation with a party the member knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the member has the consent of the other lawyer.”
The District Attorney should not be meeting with “criminals”—by which he presumably means people accused of crimes with cases pending in his jurisdiction—if they are represented by their own attorneys. And nearly all criminal defendants have an attorney. If the District Attorney wishes to communicate anything to a criminal defendant that his office is prosecuting, he should be meeting with the attorney for that defendant, not with the defendant. That is, unless he wishes to violate Rule 2-100.