Most of Santa Barbara County’s residents didn’t even sit a day in court to listen to the brutal—and sometimes tedious—details of the murder of 28-year-old Anthony Ibarra, yet all of them will end up footing the bill in some small way.
Ibarra was found dead in a rented U-Haul moving truck on March 19, 2013, in an Orcutt neighborhood. A massive investigation and trial ensued. And on April 7, 2015, a Santa Maria jury found five out of the six men on trial guilty for Ibarra’s murder.
The high profile case has drawn some comparisons to the Michael Jackson trial held in Santa Maria in 2005. Both trials were huge logistical operations that were costly for the county. Although the recent trial didn’t have a mega pop star charged with child molestation, the U-Haul case was notorious for other reasons.
“The case was high profile; involved six defendants, all alleged gang members; the crime was incredibly violent; and [a] long-term commitment—from jury selection to the trial itself to the verdict announcement—[it] lasted several months,” said Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s hard to quantify exact dollar comparisons for each trial, but officials from the Santa Barbara County Superior Court were able to provide the Sun with some numbers.
According to Brian Duggan, business manager for the Santa Barbara County General Services Department, the cost of the Michael Jackson trial amounted to $52,944. But a breakdown of what those costs were, exactly, wasn’t immediately available.
For the U-Haul trial, the total price tag for the Santa Barbara County Superior Court amounted to $89,175, according to its executive director, Darrel Parker.
Here’s the breakdown:
Jury selection was tedious. Initially, 2,100 people were summoned for the U-Haul trial, but later the court summoned 800 more. To accommodate jury selection, the county rented the Santa Maria Fairpark at a cost of $19,000. Jury selection took 28 days, and 1,251 people reported for duty, according to Parker.
Santa Maria courts were too small to accommodate the trial—with six defendants and their six attorneys. The juvenile court on Foster Road was chosen as a big enough venue, although the space had to be modified to include a jury box, which cost $20,000.
The trial lasted 10 weeks, of which there were 50 days the jury spent in the courtroom. At a rate of $15 per day, jurors were paid a total of $27,030 for the trial. They were also given mileage reimbursement, which amounted to $11,806.50.
A retired courtroom clerk was hired to record the trial, which cost $11,338.50, Parker said.
There’s more statistics. With Jackson’s trial, 4,000 people were summoned for jury duty, but only 432 reported, according to Parker. The trial itself lasted 69 days. On average, the length of a trial in Santa Barbara County lasts between three to four days, Parker said.
There are, of course, other ancillary costs associated with each trial, too many to quantify in one article. The U-Haul trial pales in comparison to the Jackson trial in media coverage. Sheldon Alberts of CanWest News Service covered it in 2005 and described the scene in Santa Maria as an “orgy of media.”
“As many as 1,000 journalists—hailing from such far-flung locales as Germany, Japan, Australia, and Great Britain—have crowded local hotels and begun settling in for what could be a six-month stay,” Alberts wrote.
But the cost of a trial includes more than what the county and news agencies pony up; law enforcement agencies also devote significant resources to the investigation of a case and the subsequent trial.
Santa Maria Police Department Chief Ralph Martin said there was a “ton of overtime” involved with investigation of the Ibarra case. He said the crime lab spent at least 24 hours processing the crime scene at the house on Donovan after receiving the initial call on March 18, 2013. More than 600 pieces of evidence were collected between the Santa Maria and Orcutt crime scenes, Martin said.
When the trial began, SMPD personnel were called to court to testify, including a detective, three employees from the crime lab, a gang investigator, and all patrol personnel involved in the case, Martin said, adding that valuable man-hours were spent on testimony.
“It had such a domino effect; I had to [take] existing cases and give them to new detectives,” Martin said. “It just shows the magnitude and the depth of the trial.”
Martin also referenced money spent by the District Attorney’s office to house and feed prosecution witnesses for the trial, although those numbers were not immediately available. Ann Bramsen, the prosecuting attorney for the U-Haul trial, didn’t respond to the Sun’s inquiries before press time.
Dave Saunders, chief investigator for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office, said two of his investigators were on the case nearly full time for an entire year, but couldn’t give a breakdown of hours.
“We don’t do billable hours on a case,” Saunders said. “We just get the job done.”
The Sheriff’s Office spent a great deal of time “strategizing and planning” for the U-Haul trial, according to Hoover. It was responsible for maintaining a safe and secure courtroom during the proceedings. Ten deputies were posted in or around the courtroom at all times, eight for inside the courtroom, and two for transport of the defendants. So far, Hoover said, the Sheriff’s Office has dedicated more than 6,000 hours to the Ibarra trial.
Up next for all the agencies is the planned May 22 sentencing of defendants Ramon Maldonado, Reyes Gonzales, David Maldonado, Santos Sauceda, and Jason Castillo—all of whom are facing the possibility of life in prison without parole.
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 7, 2015.
