Response to Keoni Allen: Why I Defend Matthew Coulter
The Matthew Coulter case: Adding fuel to the fire.
At first, I was not going to respond to Keoni Allen’s article, ‘Caring for People is Great; Hiding Bad Behavior is Not,’ published in The Union, on June 15th. We must remember that there is an upcoming trial over the Sept. 1st, 2022 incident in which two employees of Mr. Allen (Sierra Foothills Construction), beat the shit out of Matthew Coulter and sent him to the hospital.
Instead of calling the police and letting them handle and sort out the situation, as Mr. Coulter suggested, the two men, Mark Olsen and Marc Nelson, chose beating and kicking as a way to handle disputes, all caught on the City Mast Cam video. Amazingly, the mast cam video is edited out at a certain point and does not capture the remaining events following the initial beating and before the police arrived. What happened to the remaining video which was in the hands of the police? The mast cam certainly kept rolling and captured other pertinent evidence of the scene.
Instead of waiting to view the City Mast Cam video and phone videos from Matthew Coulter’s phone and Mr. Nelson’s phone, the police automatically believed the two construction workers and arrested Coulter on the spot. Then, after viewing all the footage, Chief Gammelgard sent the videos to DA Jesse Wilson to build the case of Felony Assault and Battery for which Mr. Coulter spent a month in jail. Subsequently, bail was reduced from $50,000 to $4000 and the charges were reduced to misdemeanor battery. Why now a ‘misdemeanor’ battery charge?
Chief Gammelgard did not return Matthew Coulter’s phone for five months, which may have been useful when Keoni Allen filed for a restraining order. Matthew Coulter could have used the phone video to present in court to defend himself. Also, the city mast cam video was not made available to him because the Public Defender’s office either didn’t have the video at that point, or if they did, they hadn’t viewed it yet. The Public Defender didn’t give the videos to Coulter until early February 2023, to late for entering them into the restraining order case and the granting of the judgement in favor of Sierra Foothills Construction by Judge Tice-Raskin.
One of the main focuses of the trial will be the insistence by the two construction workers that Mr. Coulter pulled an orange box cutter from his pocket and brandished it as a weapon at the two men. There was no orange box cutter visible in any of the videos and I have looked at them dozens of times. It was Mr. Nelson who later pulled an orange box cutter out of his back pocket and gave it to police ‘with’ a rubber band around it. Mr. Nelson admits on police body cam it was never opened, meaning, ‘not brandished’.
What I do know is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Just because a person has a problematic past does not equate to a guilty plea for something he did not do. This is why I am sticking with Matthew Coulter, whom I have known for over ten years. I consider him a kind and thoughtful human being who cares for his community, despite having issues with local government for which he asserts his First Amendment right of free speech.
Since the trial for the Sept. 1st 2022 incident is scheduled for July, I didn’t want all of Keoni Allen’s disparaging and exaggerated comments to taint public opinion.
The other issue is that City Attorney, Michael Colantuano’s rant, at the May 28th city council meeting, was also riddled with unsupported and false statements following Coulter’s public comment, a possible Brown Act violation. False and negative publicity preceding the trial makes for an atmosphere in which a person is not likely to get an objective jury pool.
In a court hearing last week we find out that the DA’s office offered Mr. Coulter a diversion program. Often, to qualify for diversion, you have to admit your guilt and offer a guilty plea or (no contest) plea. The court will then put your guilty plea on hold while you participate in a program similar to probation for a set period of time.
Why would Matthew Coulter, who has pled innocent of the misdemeanor battery charge, and waited two years to go to trial, now change his plea to guilty?
Will Matthew Coulter get a fair trial in this Superior Court? Two of our Superior Court Judges (Kent Kellegrew & Kelly Babineau) rulings have been overturned by the California Third District Appellate District Court in favor of Matthew Coulter. Can’t make this stuff up.
It may be a venue change is in order to get a fair trial, which Matthew Coulter surely deserves to clear his name of the misdemeanor battery charge. I am all for that.
Pauli Halstead
Nevada City