In Esparza case, Fresno DA Lisa Smittcamp adds to her image of prosecuting Democrats

The case against Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza was flimsy from the start. Built off a few words during one conversation between two people.

It was flimsy in the middle, when the two counts of felony extortion were reduced to misdemeanors. And flimsy at its Monday conclusion, when the Fresno District Attorney’s office abruptly dropped the charges.

Nothing but a pointless, politically biased exercise.

District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp would dispute that description, certainly. Fresno County’s top prosecutor went on the defensive against any insinuation that the case against Esparza was politically motivated.

That is, when her office wasn’t issuing press releases written in the tone of a finger-wagging vice principal.

Opinion

“The District Attorney’s Office hopes that Mr. Esparza has learned from this experience and can move forward a better Councilman, to continue to serve his constituents with diligence and integrity,” it concludes.

Sounds like something freshmen get told after serving detention for cutting class.

In what smelled like a prearranged deal, Esparza read aloud a statement at the start of Monday’s scheduled pretrial hearing during which he essentially admitted to having the conversation with former City Attorney Doug Sloan that created this fuss, but said he didn’t know his words were misinterpreted as threats.

As soon as Esparza sat down, prosecutor Victor Lai moved to dismiss the charges “in the interest of justice.”

In the interest of saving face, more likely.

Convenient way out

Esparza has said very little about the case from the start. His most definitive statements, at least in the public domain, came from a defamation suit he filed (but later dropped) against fellow Councilmember Garry Bredefeld.

After the hearing, Lai told reporters that Esparza’s acknowledgement of the April 22 conversation was key to getting the charges dropped. Smittcamp, in an interview with radio station KMJ, more or less said the same thing.

Which strikes me (and should strike other logical-minded thinkers) as an awfully convenient excuse for not bringing the flimsy matter to trial. The prosecution’s entire case was built upon Sloan making a good witness. Except Sloan didn’t play along during the preliminary hearing. Sloan (who got a nice pay bump and now gets to ride his fixed-gear bike along the beach in Santa Monica) never even sought a clarification from Esparza.

The DA’s office faced this choice: Drop the charges now, or face another embarrassing defeat in a misdemeanor trial against a public official who just so happens to be a brown-skinned Democrat.

It was awful kind of Lai, who is in the DA’s Public Integrity Unit, to play good soldier and shield his boss from criticism.

Smittcamp, despite media speculation and accusations from local Democrats, was not heavily involved in the Esparza case. Nor, Lai said, has she ever directed him to investigate an elected official based on their political affiliation.

Ah, semantics. While the Public Integrity Unit may not initiate its own investigations, as Lai insisted, that doesn’t mean the DA herself doesn’t have ultimate authority over which cases go to trial and which never see the light of day.

The path the Fresno County DA chooses in these types of situations has become all too familiar.

DA’s track record of prosecuting Democrats

Here’s something else Smittcamp said during the KMJ interview: “We make decisions in the District Attorney’s Office based on two things — facts and law. That’s it. And the only facts we can use are the facts that we know.”

Our district attorney makes a good point. The only facts we can use are the ones we know. And here is what we know:

Smittcamp has a track record of going after elected Democrats, starting in 2019 when she unsuccessfully prosecuted state Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula for misdemeanor child abuse.

Her Public Integrity Unit has since tried — but ultimately failed — to dig up Brown Act violations against Fresno councilmembers involving Granite Park operator Terance Frazier, the romantic partner of newly elected state Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria.

And despite losing the Arambula case and filing zero charges over Granite Park, Smittcamp continued to cast aspersions over those involved in subsequent interviews. It’s her pattern.

But when elected Republicans step out of line, the Fresno County DA’s office issues a collective shrug.

Despite security camera footage showing Fresno Unified School District Trustee Terry Slatic initiating a scuffle with a Bullard High student in 2019, Smittcamp took zero action. And when Bredefeld kept a staff member in his employ for more than two years despite multiple domestic violence felonies hanging over him, poisoning the working atmosphere at City Hall, our tough-on-crime DA was silent.

As long as Smittcamp continues her office’s selective course of prosecutions, the “narrative” (as she calls it) won’t change.

Why not? Because we can only go by the facts we know.