Contra Costa Prosecutor Charged in Rape Case

The Contra Costa County prosecutor arrested on suspicion of rape will face state charges, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Jerry Brown said this morning.

Spokeswoman Dana Simas said she could not detail the charges that will be filed against Deputy District Attorney Michael Gressett, but that there will be a complaint.

Gressett was due to be arraigned in Martinez this morning at 8:30 a.m. His attorney, Michael Cardoza of Walnut Creek’s Cardoza Law Offices, did not answer a call to his cell phone.

The rather unpleasant list of charges and other case details, after the jump:

Gressett was arrested Oct. 2 on suspicion of forcible rape, oral copulation, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and the use of a firearm during a felony. Cardoza told the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday that the AG’s office told him they planned to file charges, and that he believed they would be similar to the original allegations.

The local DA’s office recused itself from Gressett’s prosecution. A source close to the case said in October that Gressett’s alleged victim was a fellow deputy DA.

In Gressett’s 21-year career with the office, he has run unsuccessfully for DA three times, beginning in 1994. In 2002, he lost to the assistant chief DA at the time, Bob Kochly, who won and ran again, uncontested, in 2006.

Gressett tried to outflank his opponents with a "tougher"-on-crime message during his 1998 campaign. He said that he would not plea-bargain any serious violent felonies and told The Recorder he was not unopposed to the idea of making rape a capital crime.

Further Reading: The Mercury-News has a story up.

— Evan Hill

Comments

[Steve White]

If this case comes down to he said/she said, I don't think it should even have been filed. However, this man has been a career prosecutor, and in sex crimes for at least a few years. Sex crime defendants are denied due process and a true presumption of innocence as a matter of course, so it does not bother me one bit if the monster created by prosecutors devours one of them. Too bad no death penalty like this guy wanted.