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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[soverein]

"Feel the warmth of Mexico."

Attention white women: Don't accept rides with hispanic males. They are not completely human and therefore not trustworthy. They don't belong here but our government wants them to stay so that Americans will become poorer and less able to defend them selves. Mexicans have la Raza - white people need an activist group like that to help them fight the system!

[Whitebear]

Maximum sentence imposed on rapists
Nov 14, 2007

REDWOOD CITY (Map, News) - Calling their crimes “cruel, vicious and callous,” a judge on Wednesday imposed the maximum sentence on three of four men convicted in the 2005 gang rape and beating of a young woman on a Half Moon Bay beach.
“These were horrendous, heinous crimes. This is going to affect (the victim) for the rest of her life,” San Mateo Superior Court Judge Jonathan Karesh said before handing down sentences to Edgar Cardelas, 20, Anastasio Flores, 20, Celestino Guillermo, 23, and Gerardo

Four men sentenced for HMB rape

Four Given Lengthy Prison Sentences In Half Moon Bay Rape

The defendants listened to the sentencing proceedings through a Spanish-speaking interpreter.

One fateful night

The men lifted her into the air and slammed her down, said Deputy District Attorney Greg Devitt, who picks up the story. "They took turns, and while they were raping her they beat her," said Reed.

"During the course of it, they kicked her in the face, causing a major fracture - it pushed the bone in an eighth of an inch." She was beaten severely and injured in other ways. There was another attempted rape on the way back to the parking lot.

"The 16-year-old was actually the most brutal one of the bunch," said Reed.

The couple from the beach walked by and heard her screaming. They heard a male voice yelling "shut up, shut up." They went back to their car and tried to call 911, but were having trouble with a signal.

It had been a big night for the local police already. An attempted murder had two officers occupied and a missing person call left only Reed able to drive out to the edge of town, alone except for a police dog.

"You have to realize, at this point, I don't know what the call is," he said. "We get these all the time, screaming calls from the beaches at night. It could be people just yelling and partying; it could be someone just playing around."

The men have Emily back in the car by the time Reed pulls up. When they see the police car take a turn into the small parking lot and start to swing up behind them, they start driving, leaving behind the youngest one.

"If they weren't pulling out of this parking lot, they would have got away. If they were driving, I probably would have just passed them," said Reed.

It's then that Reed's long experience made the difference, according to Devitt.

"It's pitch dark and these guys know they are in real trouble," said Devitt. "They're not running and they don't run. He played it really cool."

A recording of the stops shows Reed approaching the car. His dog barks in the background and Emily is visible in the back seat of the two-door Toyota with her hand on her face. Reed is deliberate and controlled as he asks for identification, but the key moment comes very quickly.

"She's sitting there with her hand covering one side of her face," said Reed. "She takes her hand off her face - just an inch - and we locked eyes. She nods slowly at me.

"I'll never forget that look on her face, in her eyes," he said. "I'll never forget that."

Reed called for backup. When another officer came, he took Emily out of the car and she told him she had been raped, and one of the men was still loose in the area. Dogs and a helicopter were called in, and the 16-year-old, Gerardo Resendiz, who had raped her twice, was quickly caught.

The men were interviewed and Emily was taken to the hospital. The evidence quickly mounted in what Reed calls the most complex case he has seen.