A year ago, dependency and delinquency court operations appeared to be drawing the last breath of a long local life. Inadequate space combined with an overflow of cases had forced all matters to be transferred elsewhere.
Dependency cases are those in which the minor is the victim. They usually address decisions involving possible removal of children from their homes.
Delinquency cases, on the other hand, are those in which the minor has run afoul of the law.
Thanks to a cooperative effort between county and court officials and a donation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, all juvenile court operations will be together again by January.
A year ago, all Antelope Valley dependency cases were relocated to Monterey Park. Six months earlier, all delinquency case had been reassigned.
Then in July, a $1.65 million courthouse addition and Sheriff's Department renovation were dedicated at 1010 West Ave. J.
The project's affordability was credited to a donation of trailers by the Sheriff's Department and hundreds of hours of camp crew labor made available by officials at Lancaster's state prison.
Some 15,000 square feet of the main vacated sheriff's building were renovated for child-abuse detectives and other deputies. Outside, eight modular trailers were combined to create 5,600 square feet of new court space.
Two rectangular courtrooms were designed with few frills for dependency and delinquency operations.
In September, Lancaster's dependency court reopened. Delinquency, which had remained closed for a lack of funding, will reopen in January.
The year's most interesting court case was the story of Catherine "Paula" Fimbres, the Lancaster mother accused of leaving her 9-year-old Down syndrome son to die in a mobile home fire.
Following a highly-charged weeklong preliminary hearing in April, Municipal Court Judge Pamela R. Rogers dismissed the case against the 37-year-old Fimbres, telling prosecutors they had insufficient evidence for a trial.
The mentally disabled boy, who had a fascination with fire, was believed to have used a butane barbecue lighter to set the blaze in a master-bedroom suite he shared with a younger brother.
The case, though, took its toll on Judge Rogers, who in late April announced she was taking a fiveweek leave of absence to combat acute migraine headaches and a problem with prescription medications.
Attorneys and others who watched the Fimbres case were critical of Rogers throughout the hearing, citing tardiness, lengthy diatribes from the bench and occasional mood swings.
Rogers has since returned and has said she is using diet, exercise and meditation to conquer her headaches.
Her woes came only two months after her husband, local attorney Randolph A. "Randy" Rogers was appointed a municipal court judge by Gov. Pete Wilson - creating the state's second household where husband and wife serve on the bench.
Randy Rogers replaced Judge Chesley N. McKay Jr., who was elevated last year to Superior Court.
In January, McKay will leave adult court at 1040 West Ave. J in Lancaster and take over Lancaster's new delinquency court next door.
Taking McKay's place will be Superior Court Judge Michael S. Luros, who started earlier this month as the final fill-in replacement for Superior Court Judge Frank Y. Jackson, who is on leave through the end of this month while working on a state Court of Appeal.
More cases
The following list is not a compilation of every publicized court case, but a selection of the year's most newsworthy:
On March 10, Palmdale "lien queen" and Freeman anti-government student Margaret Elizabeth Broderick, 53, was sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison for running a homemade checkscam business that sought to drain $900 million from the federal banking system.
On March 19, Joy Hooker, 42, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for her part in an arson insurance scam that went awry at her Littlerock home, ending in the death of her policeman husband. Hooker was convicted of planning a pre-dawn blaze April 19, 1993, in which retired LAPD officer Thomas Warren Hooker, 58, died. Hooker's step-son was convicted in a separate trial.
On April 1, Homer Tyrone Lewis, who was already serving 243 years in prison for soliciting the murder of nine people, was sentenced to an additional 50 years to life for killing his mistress and her friend. Lewis was convicted in January in what marked a third trial. Two mistrials were declared last year when juries failed to reach unanimous decisions.
On April 10, a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge stemming from a controversial 1994 goat abortion was dismissed against local veterinarian Dr. Larry F. Bosma, 44. After more than two years of legal wrangling in which the popular Valley vet made dozens of headlines, prosecutors dropped the case "in the interest of justice." Related civil lawsuits were pending.
On June 10, the second of two men convicted of participating in a killing in which an Antelope Valley drifter was chopped up and his body was stuffed into two garbage bags and dumped was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. San Fernando resident Edwin Contreras, 25, was convicted in a jury trial as was Scott Anthony Taylor, a 21year-old Bouquet Canyon resident. Taylor was sentenced in April.
On June 16, parolee Scott Douglas Hamby was ordered to serve two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1994 pipebomb killing of Pearblossom resident Lynn Standish. Hamby, 33, a former Littlerock resident with family still residing in the eastern Antelope Valley, was earlier convicted of four felony counts, including first-degree murder.
On Oct. 27, one of Antelope Valley's most infamous skinheads, Danny Edward Williams, 24, pleaded guilty in federal court to baseball bat and knife attacks on two black Lancaster men, crimes for which he now faces 20 years in prison. Williams made headlines throughout the state when he and two others were named in the July 8, 1996 knife attack on Marcus Cotton, a then-16-year-old who was walking with his female cousin on Division Street near Avenue J. At the time of his indictment, Williams was associated with a white supremacist gang known as the "Nazi Lowriders."
On Sept. 12, Lancaster businessman David Missman was sentenced to 10 years in state prison and ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution in connection with a 1980s Ponzi scheme in which investors were bilked out of millions of dollars. Missman, 60, and his wife, Karen, 47, were earlier convicted at trial. Karen Missman, who is awaiting a lung transplant, received probation. Although only 35 victims were named in the original complaint filed in October 1989, Lowenstein said some 800 victims were bilked out of an estimated $18 million between 1979 and 1988.
On Dec. 2, Marshall Redman, a developer accused of massive Antelope Valley land-fraud deals that targeted Spanish-speaking immigrants, lost a bid to have criminal charges dismissed. Redman, 68, who is out of jail on bail and has pleaded not guilty, awaits trial next year for allegedly selling undeveloped and nearly worthless land in Hi Vista, near 160th Street East and Avenue G, to more than 1,500 Latinos between 1978 and 1994, primarily through advertisements placed with Spanish-language media.
This month, two men, gang member Richard Nieto, and Arturo Martinez, both 29, were convicted by separate juries of a stack of felonies stemming from Lancaster's most-notorious home-invasion in which four women were sexually brutalized and four men were robbed and terrorized. Both face more than 100 years in prison at an upcoming sentencing.
Trial is tentatively scheduled in February for Lancaster resident Frank Joseph Ryan, 33, the Lancaster man charged with a host of sex crimes involving a home-based Internet business. Ryan is also accused of videotaping himself sexually abusing his stepdaughter, who was about 13 years old at the time.
Earlier this month, a member of the newlyformed Casualties of Garcetti support group for people with on-going problems with child support cases agreed to drop a small claims lawsuit filed against Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti. After receiving publicity on the case, Lancaster resident David LeRoy Johnson said officials from the District Attorney's Bureau of Family Support Operations agreed to help him settle problems with his child support bill.
A month earlier, Lancaster resident Richard F. McIntosh won a small claims lawsuit against Southern California Edison, which had refused to reimburse customers for losses during a short circuit that essentially fried appliances in westside homes. Edison claimed a crow clutching metallic tape caused the short. Edison has appealed the McIntosh ruling and several others.
