SLO County DA will appeal Tianna Arata case to the state Supreme Court

The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office cannot prosecute Tianna Arata and six other Black Lives Matter demonstrators, the California Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday, denying both the office and the California Attorney General’s Office’s petitions for a rehearing.

That now sets the stage for the DA’s Office to escalate the case to the highest arbiter in the state: the California Supreme Court.

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow confirmed to Tribune via text message Wednesday night that the office plans to appeal the case to do just that.

On Aug. 31, the California Court of Appeal upheld San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Matthew Guerrero’s decision to remove the office, citing a campaign fundraising email sent by San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow’s wife in which she said Dow was “leading the fight against the wacky defund the police movement” as a “clear conflict of interest.”

The District Attorney’s Office and the California Attorney General’s Office both filed petitions before the state Court of Appeal on Sept. 15, asking the judges to rehear the case to correct factual errors and omissions they say appear in the court’s opinion.

The offices also asked the court to address the impact those corrections may have on the initial ruling, according to court documents.

The court made one modification to the opinion that clarified wording regarding whether an attorney affidavit was required for evidence of the law that establishes when a prosecutor can be disqualified from a case.

“On page 7, second paragraph, the words ‘attorney affidavit required by section 1424’ are deleted and the words ‘motion’s supporting affidavit’ are inserted in their place,” the court ordered. “There is no change in the judgment. The petitions for rehearing filed on September 15, 2022, are denied.”

The opinion was also published in the official reports, making it citable case law that can be relied upon in future similar cases, the court ordered.

Dow told The Tribune in a text message that the office will be filing an appeal with the California Supreme Court within the required time period, which is the next 10 days, according to the California Rules of Court.

The Rules of Court also state that the Supreme Court will usually accept the Court of Appeal opinion’s statement of the issues and facts unless the party has called the appellate court’s attention to any alleged omission or misstatement of an issue or fact in a petition for rehearing.

The issue of recusing an entire district attorney’s office is “of great importance across the entire State of California and will impact all DAs of every political stripe,” Dow said.

Arata’s defense attorney calls DA ‘delusional’

Curtis Briggs, who represents Arata, told The Tribune that Dow’s vow to bring the case to the state Supreme Court is a “psychosis,” adding that the district attorney is “delusional” and has yet to take take any accountability in the situation.

“The only person that is shocked by the appellate courts ruling is Dan Dow,” Briggs said.“Anyone that listens to how the appellate justices treated their arguments would know it’s very clear that Dan Dow was in the wrong. And the judges are not going to help him out of this.”

Briggs said before the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office even appealed Guerrero’s decision, he told Dow “please do more” because the only way to protect the public from this kind of egregious conduct from prosecutors is to enshrine it in case law through an appellate court published opinion.

“We got exactly what we wanted out of this,” Briggs said. “We could have never gotten that type of victory if they didn’t appeal it. They did exactly what we wanted them to do.”

He added that it should be noted that four different judges have now disqualified Dow’s office from the case, all of them white men and three of them with “reputations of conservatives.”

“This happens to be the audience that you would think would not grant Black Lives Matter relief, but even this conservative, white audience is behind these protesters here on these principles,” Briggs said.