The whole “innocent until proven guilty” line is a great saying. But so is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Both of those phrases were battling in my head as I read about Clive Decomarmond, a man authorities say is a suspect in multiple cases of lewd acts with a minor.
As I understand it, this guy—who has already pleaded not guilty in court and will be considered innocent unless a jury of his peers decides otherwise—twice found himself in jail and twice found himself back out again after posting increasingly larger amounts of bail.
More of his alleged victims were discovered between two of the times he was arrested—and I say “two of the times” as opposed to “the two times” because he’s been arrested again, this time after failing to appear at his early September court date.
That makes three.
At the beginning of the month, law-enforcement agents with the Santa Maria Police Department sent out an alert that they were searching for Decomarmond, who never arrived for the start of his trial. Turns out he was in Texas.
Now I’m all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Presuming innocence is the cornerstone of the U.S. justice system.
But let’s look at how this all went down, and see if there were warning signs that a little more caution might have been in order when dealing with him.
On May 10, 2013, the Santa Maria Police Department announced Decomarmond’s arrest in Grover Beach, capping a two-week investigation into “numerous counts of crimes against children.”
Just six days later, the department distributed another release, saying, “This is an update on a previous arrest. Since the original arrest, additional victims have come forward and the investigation resulted in the second arrest of the suspect … .”
At this point, if I’m a part of the criminal justice system, I may be presuming Decomarmond is innocent, but I’m also really, really keeping my eye on him. Seriously.
So now, more than a year later, he’s set to start his trial, and he skips town. My guess is that his departure wasn’t because he wanted to visit the Alamo before facing 12 angry men and women.
When you’re arrested three times in about a year as new alleged victims come forward and you make a run out of the state instead of showing up to your scheduled trial, you’re asking a lot of everyone to continue holding to that first saying I quoted at the beginning of this column.
The Canary starts by believing anyway. Send comments or tips to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 11-18, 2014.
