SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – On January 30, 2016, Dennis “Spike” Wright, Jr. died after being shot in front of the Beverly Lodge in South Lake Tahoe after a failed 100-pound marijuana transaction and a subsequent attempted robbery.
Investigations led by the South Lake Tahoe Police Department with assistance from multiple other agencies, six male suspects were identified as having a part in the robbery that lead to Wright’s murder. They were found from Vallejo, Calif. to Oklahoma City and Harrison County, Texas. Their arrests started on February 16, 2016, with the final arrest on September 15, 2016. A seventh suspect, a female, was arrested for her knowledge of events after the fact.
The court dates for the men arrested have been numerous, all while they remained jailed in the El Dorado County Jail, both in South Lake Tahoe and Placerville.
There have been two trials with guilty verdicts, two have pleaded guilty, and two trials remain.
One of those who hasn’t made it to trial yet is Harvest Davidson who was 20 at the time of his arrest.
His mother, Tina Perry, is questioning why her son is stilled jailed without his day in court.
There are two main points of Perry’s concern: She says not all of the evidence has been turned over to the defense teams, and she says El Dorado County is using excessive power.
All of the defendants are men of color and Perry is now receiving support from the Greater Sacramento NAACP and Black Lives Matter.
There was a protest on the sixth anniversary of the murder, January 30, in front of the El Dorado County Courthouse in Placerville, then another after Davidson’s latest court date in South Lake Tahoe on Friday, February 4, 2022. The vocal group started outside of the courtroom then moved outside the Johnson Avenue courthouse, calling for justice for Harvest Davidson. They also had a protest after a previous court hearing for Davidson in October, 2021.
“The DA is supposed to turn over all evidence,” said Perry. She believes not everything has been released.
She is referring to recent “Motion to Compel” filings from Davidson’s attorney as well as the others.
Perry says the current actions by the County are a “Brady Violation.” This is what happens when the prosecutors in a criminal case fail to perform their constitutional duty to turn over helpful evidence to the people they have charged with crimes. Everyone has the right to due process and a fair trial.
During Friday’s Motion to Compel hearing, Deputy DA Casey Mandrell had a witness go over what the defense is calling missing pages of evidence. Since the arrests, the County has gone through a computer program change and the numbering of documents might have been inadvertently changed. Davidson has also gone through four lawyer changes as have many of the other defendants. Mandrell has said they’ve determined some of the written discovery was misnumbered in the change which created gaps in the pagination. He said these gaps do not represent missing discovery or missing evidence.
Judge Kingsbury asked, and Mandrell agreed, that the DA’s office work with the defense teams to see what it is they think is missing, including video and audio files. Some files do not need to be turned over, including DMV and criminal history records on the other defendants.
During the first few years of hearings, El Dorado County paid for the transcription of all phone calls made by the defendants to and from the jail. They also paid for iPads for each one so they could review evidence from their jail cells.
Perry said she offered to bring in an unbiased computer expert to determine what could be missing. She said nobody acknowledged her offer.
During the trials of both Dion Jermaine Vaccaro and Tevarez Lopez, evidence was shown that Davidson was parked in a nearby car when Wright was shot. The definition of murder changed in California on January 1, 2019, with SB1437. It scaled back the ability of prosecutors to use the “felony murder rule” which previously allowed accomplices to be charged in a homicide. El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Kingsbury ruled that nothing had changed in these murder suspects’ cases as they still fit the new law requirements that state murder convictions can be sought because “he or she commits
ts or attempts to commit a felony or is a “major participant” in a felony.”
“This County is corrupt and I’ve asked the California Attorney General Rob Bonta to take over,” said Perry.
Davidson has been held without bail, and Judge Kingsbury asked Davidson if he and his lawyer wanted a bail review. That is scheduled for March 14, 2022 at 1:30 p.m. In the meantime, Probation will gather background information to provide at the hearing. Davidson told the Judge he did not want to waive time, an action that caused his attorney Hayes Gable to tell him “kinda pisses me off.” The defendants have waived the right to a speedy trial throughout the proceedings of this multi-faceted case. During the first few years, before COVID, the defendants and their attorneys would appear as one group in the courtroom. Since there is very little courtroom space, and only a couple of judges, they kept together at first since components of the case were the same for all.