I’m headed to Oakland next week in February March to attend Mike Vandeman’s trial. Don’t know Mike? Here’s the gist: Vandeman has spent the last decade and a half advocating against trail access for mountain bikes. Until recently, though, he shook his fist from afar, engaging through Internet forums and academic papers. Then, in April, he allegedly attacked two riders with a saw.
Police cuffed him in May when more victims came forward. In September, still awaiting trial, he started emailing me.
The trial resumes March 4, follow me (@frickwright) on Twitter for the very latest from the court room and check back here during the trial for daily roundups, thoughts and multimedia shenanigans.
My story on Mike Vandeman is out in the November issue of Bike magazine. You should be able to find it on newsstands in the next few days; my copy just arrived in the mail. It’s not online, though I suspect that if you KindlePad your iNook together as an e-reader there’s a Bike mag application that will fetch it for you. I could be wrong about this.
Check it out. Thanks for reading.
Peter
November 1st update: buy a copy online at Zinio.
Found guilty on three of six misdemeanor charges three weeks ago, Mike Vandeman’s long dance between various Alameda County courtrooms came to a close this morning at his sentencing.
I wasn’t there, but here’s how it all shook out:
Vandeman was sentenced to 30 days on the Sherriff’s Work Alternative Program (S.W.A.P.). Those are the folks in the orange jumpsuits, you’ll see them working on the side of the highway sometimes, though there are 30 possible work sites around the county.
Thirty days is the maximum sentence allowed in the S.W.A.P. program and with the eight days he served in jail after his arrest, Vandeman will end up working 22 eight to ten hour days in the program. He’ll be free to go home each night.
Vandeman will also be on probation for three years, which includes a “Stay Away” order for trails in the Claremont Canyon Reserve and the UC Berkeley hiking trails. If you see him on the trail, it will be in violation of his parole.
Word is that the DA asked for a much greater sentence and the judge cited Vandeman’s age and lack of any kind of previous record in his decision to forego more jail time.
Also, the fact that the handsaw charge resulted in a hung jury and the DA declined to pursue it further means that the charge wasn’t taken into consideration during sentencing.
You could call the sentence a slap on the wrist, but it may be even less than that. Throughout this process, local mountain bikers said they’d like to see Vandeman get some sort of ironic community service—building mountain bike trails or teaching kids to ride off road—but it seems he may have gotten just the opposite.
Twenty-two days on a work crew is no picnic, but you get the feeling that for a guy like Vandeman, putting himself and his life on display during the trial was more punitive than picking up litter will be.
I mostly try to limit the action in these updates to the proceedings themselves. I’m going to be turning this trial into a short graphic novel with artist Pyar Anderson, and writing a more complete and carefully told version of this story for BIKE Magazine. Not that I’ve been holding back important things learned outside the courtroom, (I totally have, and they’re juicy. I’m sorry.) but I needed to have some limits so I could offer something new in those stories.
But, on my way to the courthouse this morning, I witnessed something that gave me a better understanding of the charges—and now the verdicts that the jury reached this afternoon.
The standard of proof in criminal cases is so high, if the defense can make their case to the jury that the defendant has a substantial enough reputation for peacefulness, that alone can be enough for reasonable doubt.
The morning after Vandeman’s testimony, three character witnesses testified that he is not an angry, vindictive or violent person.
The first was his wife, to whom Vandeman has been married 30 years. She testified that while they have gotten into arguments, their arguing style is to keep talking until they have some common understanding. She’s raised her voice in the past, he never has.
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It should be clear by now that anytime District Attorney Chris Cabanero gets to talk for any length of time in the trial, his first statement hammers home the same point. Mike Vandeman hates mountain bikers. Cross-examination was no different. Cabanero got to it before he got out of his seat.
“Mr. Vandeman, you really hate mountain bikers, don’t you?”
For the next half hour, Vandeman’s answers seemed to matter a lot less than Cabanero’s questions. Cook objected to this one but was overruled. Vandeman answered that, no, he didn’t hate them.
“Well, let’s talk about that,” Cabanero said. more »
So let’s get right back to it. Vandeman is on the stand under direct examination and he’s just laid bare the technically accurate, but not terribly useful logic that makes him so interesting: Mountain bikers have the same access rights as hikers do, they just can’t bring their bikes.
He continued: “Hikers have the right to be anywhere they want to be on the trail,” he said. “Bikes must yield the right of way to pedestrians, which basically means, ‘stop.’
“Sometimes I’d have to put out my hand to hold the handlebar to keep from being hit or they’d ride into me.”
There was testimony regarding the saw incident from two more witnesses this morning, and their comments introduced some new wrinkles to the case, but I’m going to skip all that because at 11:40 a.m. Vandeman himself took the stand and possibly made moot most of that “which hand was the book in?” and “was there a lunging motion with the saw?” stuff.
In an attempt to answer some questions I received over the weekend, here’s what the logistics look like for the rest of the trial.
Just before lunch on Thursday, after Detective Vincent’s testimony, the prosecution rested. They won’t be calling more witnesses or presenting any more evidence.
Court was not in session on Friday or Monday because of scheduling conflicts, though it wasn’t clear what took priority.
The defense will begin presenting its case on Tuesday, and while Vandeman was originally supposed to testify last, a conversation between the judge and both attorneys may have changed that. more »
Trials are supposed to answer questions rather than raise new ones, but after testimony from two more victims and the arresting detective this morning, the trial opened up was left with one big question: what did Vandeman write in his statement to the police?
Based on the progression of events depicted by UC Berkeley’s Detective Vincent, it seemed to indirectly lead to his arrest. But that paper was lost before the trial, and no one asked Vincent in court whether he remembered what was on it.
First, however, there was more victim testimony.
The trial covered a lot of ground today. Jury selection ended, the prosecution and defense presented their opening arguments and the court heard from James Lanham, the only victim with first hand knowledge of the business end of Vandeman’s handsaw.
There were few surprises during jury selection, though one potential juror was dismissed because her strict belief in karma would not allow her to return a guilty verdict (and karma seemed to get a few converts in the juror pool when they saw how easily the judge dismissed her), and another got the boot because he was part owner of a bike shop and had previous knowledge of the case.
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