Four Mestizos get long prison room & board for brutal gang rape

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Four indicted on charges of rape
By Michelle Durand

Four men --including one minor --accused of gang raping and viciously beating a young woman at a Half Moon Bay beach last May are expected in court tomorrow, days after a criminal grand jury indicted them on multiple serious felonies.

Edgar Cardelas, Anastasio Flores, Celestino Guillermo, and Gerardo Resendiz, will appear in Superior Court Tuesday on charges of kidnapping during the course of a sexual assault, gang rape, assault with a deadly weapon, terrorist threats and intimidating a witness, according to court records clerks. Unless their attorneys ask for more time, the four are also expected to enter pleas and set a jury trial date.

Prosecutors took the case to the criminal grand jury last month and finished presenting evidence last week. Superior Court charges were filed Jan. 5 and each defendant remains in custody in



lieu of &#036
;1 million bail.

The grand jury transcript will remain sealed for 10 days before being made public. According to police and prosecution reports at the time of their arrest, however, the woman accepted a ride to San Jose from the group on May 29. Instead of driving, they took her to Miramontes Point Beach Trail and repeatedly raped and beat her, prosecutors claim. The woman suffered multiple severe injuries, including facial fractures.

The four men initially pleaded not guilty to all charges but the indictment leapfrogs over a preliminary hearing on the evidence and moves them closer to trial. The grand jury lets a group of chosen citizens --rather than a judge --decide if sufficient evidence exists to try a defendant. Prosecutors tend to supersede the standard procedure when hearings drag on too long, when defendants refuse to enter a plea or to keep certain information from the public.

While the criminal grand jury is used often in many jurisdictions, San Mateo
Cou
nty
has
a hi
story of only gathering it for specific cases. In recent history, though, the District Attorney's Office has increasingly used the confidential proceeding.

In December, the grand jury indicted three gang members accused of murdering a 24-year-old San Mateo man outside a liquor store in 2004. At the time, prosecutors cited the need to speed up the case which, like that of the rape suspects, had yet to go to a preliminary hearing.

If convicted, each defendant faces life in prison. In sexual assault cases of certain natures, convictions and the one-strike they carry are enough to bring a life sentence.

Prosecutors are even charging Resendiz, who was 16 at the time, as an adult. Under California's Proposition 21 law, the District Attorney's Office has the discretion to do so in grave cases and the local office has invoked it a number of times in sexual assaults with teen suspects.

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