Lake County California

You may not know of Lake County California, the place where, on a pitch black night in '06, Sheriff Deputy Russell Perdock slammed his powerboat into a nearly stationary O'Day sailboat at high speed, killing passenger Lynn Thornton, a just-retired employee of the state of California. In a move that drastically undermined our faith in law enforcement and district attorneys, Lake County District Attorney Jon Hopkins inexplicably didn't charge Perdock with any crime, but rather charged Bismarck Dinius, a passenger on the idle sailboat who happened to be sitting in the helm position, with manslaughter. His defense cost Dinius a small fortune, but he was acquitted by a jury in a matter of minutes — about as big a slap in the face that a jury could have given Hopkins.
In a move that pretty much finished off what little faith we had left in the U.S. legal system, Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, declined to reopen the case. Why, Melinda, why? You see nothing wrong with not charging someone for slamming his boat into another boat and killing someone? As for former D.A. Hopkins, who charged Dinius but not Perdock, he claims there was no corruption in his handling of the case. He reminds us of a woman who once tried to convince us that buttermilk was a diet beverage.

As for Dinius, he and his attorneys are suing the county of Lake, the Lake County Sheriff's Office, 34 county employees (in their inpidual and official capacities), Jon Hopkins, former Sheriff Rodney Mitchell, Russell Perdock, Dennis Ostini, Lloyd Wells, C. Brown, Captain James Bauman, James Samples, Wesley Frey, Dean Pick, Andy Davidson, and Sacramento County Sheriff's Dept. Sgt. Charles Slabaugh. Attorney Laurence Masson alleges that the county's conduct was “unconstitutional and corrupt” following the incident and throughout the court proceedings, accusing the employees of “conspiring” or “aiding and abetting one another” to conceal and fabricate evidence and defraud the court in order to prosecute Dinius for a “homicide that he did not commit.” Masson argues that this not only constitutes malicious prosecution but is also a violation of Dinius's civil rights as granted by Title 42 section 1983 of the United States Code.