Justice Dismissed: After 5 1/2 Years of Continuances, Riverside County Dismissed an Indecent-Exposure Case Simply Because a Courtroom Was Unavailable for a Trial

Amanda Sanders was just 16 years old, living with her mother in a condominium in Palm Desert, when her sense of security was shattered.

It happened on an evening in June 2018. Sanders and her mother had just parked the car in the assigned space for their unit.

“We were coming back home, around 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.; I was a sophomore in high school,” Sanders recently told the Independent. “We were walking back, and we see that his blinds are open vertically, so you can see somebody’s right there … and we just see him masturbating. I can see his arm moving. Basically, I started freaking out. I started just going off. … I’m telling my mom, ‘Look what he’s doing to us. You see what he’s doing?’”

Sanders said her mom—who grew up in Colombia, with a “different societal norm”—dismissed the incident, blaming Amanda for looking at the man.

As it turned out, that was just the beginning.

“Another time, we were going to school,” Sanders said. “I was walking with my mom, and I noticed that he had moved his blinds a little bit, like, just to the side. I was just like, ‘Oh, God, what’s he going to do?’ Basically, he sees us coming. He knows what time we’re coming, and we get into our vehicle. That’s when he opens his door, and we can see him just standing there, fully naked and masturbating. I start to freak out; I started to just go off and start telling my mom, ‘Look what he’s doing. He’s completely naked.’ And my mom’s telling me, ‘It’s your fault, because you’re looking at him. He’s doing it because you’re looking.’

“I got so fed up … with my mom blaming me that (when) I came home from school, I went over to his apartment to see what number he was living in, and then I went over to the main office, and I told the ladies in the office exactly what was happening. That’s when they called the police, and that’s when I was interviewed.”

Sanders said that after these incidents, the man would always smile at her when he saw her. “He knew where I went to school, because (his family) has a business right by Cook Street near Palm Desert High School,” Sanders said.

Sanders felt she needed to defend herself and take action, so she filed a police complaint. Riverside County ended up charging the man with several misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure, and one misdemeanor count of annoying/molesting a child under the age of 18. Sanders expected that justice would be meted out soon—but that never happened.

According to the Riverside County Superior Court public access portal, court proceedings began on Sept. 10, 2018. For the next 5 1/2 years, her case dragged on.

Twice during those years, Sanders requested, and was granted, protective orders against the defendant. The first came less than two months after the charges were filed, with the second coming in March 2023 after Sanders had an unnerving chance encounter with the defendant.

“For me, it’s hard to live a normal life knowing that in this society, somebody can do that while the mother’s child is present,” Sanders said. “You have to be sick—like, you have to be mentally disturbed. I used to work at (Ristorante) Mamma Gina after all this happened. I was a host, and I literally sat him (in the restaurant), and we made eye contact. He knew who I was, and he stared at me the whole time. That’s when I refiled my restraining order.”

The case history shows that PC-1050 continuances were granted on 51 occasions along the way. According to the Shouse Law Group website, “a 1050 motion to continue is a request by either the prosecution or the defense to postpone the hearing to a future date. The date can be for a pretrial matter or a trial. A judge will only grant a motion to continue if there is good cause to do so. Good cause is determined by the facts of the case. If granted, the hearing or trial is put off for a period of time that is necessary to resolve the issue forcing the continuance.”

Sanders said: “There were so many (continuances), and it’s just, like, you have to accept it. … One reason that they continued the case was because his lawyer was going on vacation. How was that even allowed? It’s been years. We were announced ready (for trial), and all of a sudden, she’s going to go on vacation? I understand that people have a life—but why then? And it was permitted.”

Meanwhile, the filing of motions and the requests for continuances proceeded seemingly unchecked—until March 11, when the case was suddenly dismissed, and Sanders’ protective order was terminated. Sanders’ long journey in the Riverside County Superior Court system was over, and justice had been denied.

The Riverside County Superior Court public access portal does not show any other criminal complaints against the defendant. Because the defendant has not been convicted, and he is no longer facing charges, the Independent is not publishing his name.

Antonio Fimbres is a deputy district attorney in the Riverside County District Attorney’s office. He supervised the unit of attorneys who handled Sanders’ case.

“This case fell right within the heart of the COVID continuances,” Fimbres explained during a recent interview. “A significant number of those continuances were the result of the judicial extensions of time in the court’s own motion of continuing the case because of the COVID-19 epidemic. … In October of 2022, the Riverside County Superior Court elected not to seek any further judicial extensions on cases, and all the cases then (on the docket) had determined last days. Since that time, we’ve had significant numbers of dismissals because of what is called ‘the backlog of cases’ that weren’t tried or resolved during COVID.”

Sanders responded that COVID-19 is not the only reason for the continuances. She said many of them were because of “either a lack of judges, or a lack of courtrooms for six years.”

Sanders called the state of the Riverside County court system “insane.”

“This level of incompetency makes the victim feel like they have to take it into their own hands … because the system isn’t protecting us,” she said. “The fact that (the defendant was) targeting minors is so angering; it literally gives me chills. That’s why, for the longest time, I wanted to expose him. I wanted to make fliers and put his face everywhere to show what he does, since he’s so proud of doing it, and so blatant with it. Of course, then I would face a defamation (lawsuit), because I’m slandering his character. It’s infuriating.”

Sanders described the shock she felt when the case was dismissed.

“They did it so fast, and (the defendant) wasn’t there, either,” Sanders said. “It was such a fast and insensitive process. … They basically said, ‘Oh, we’re just going to dismiss the case.’ They got up. I got up, and they were like, ‘Oh, would the victim like to say anything else?’ I was so pissed off that I left cussing. I was so angry. I yelled at the DA and my ‘victim’s advocate.’ She literally just sat on her phone the whole time that she was there.”

Fimbres explained that the case was dismissed “pursuant to section 1382 of the penal code.”

“The penal code specifies that a case has to be brought to trial within ‘x’ number of days from a time of arraignment,” Fimbres said. “In this particular case … (which) was continued quite a number of times, particularly during the COVID period of time, the penal code also allowed for the case to be continued well beyond what’s called its ‘original time,’ by either mutual agreement or by order of the court.”

However, Fimbres said those extensions ended after his office announced it was “ready for trial.” Why?

“The court did not have any (available) departments to send the case out to trial,” he said. “And because of that, the court dismissed the case by way of defense motion. The court granted the motion and dismissed the case, because it wasn’t brought to trial within the statutory time.”

Fimbres insisted that it’s “highly irregular” for a case to get dismissed due to section 1382. He also said his office could not re-file the case, because it was filed as a misdemeanor.

“It’s only (with) felony charges where we’re allowed to refile the case,” Fimbres said. “Once a misdemeanor is dismissed, it’s gone forever. In many ways, that’s the sad reality of the situation. Once a misdemeanor case is dismissed, it cannot be resurrected unless there’s some appellate process that gives us the ability to have the appellate courts take a look at it, and possibly resurrect the case.”

Riverside County is dealing with a shortage of judges. As of April 1, the county reported a shortage of just four judges, based on the state’s current established allotment of judges for the county. However, the Judicial Council of California maintains that, according to their analysis, Riverside County should have 22 more judges in their courtrooms. As Fimbres said, when that fact is combined with a shortage of other court staff and of actual courtrooms, it means cases get continued—and dismissed.

According to that February KESQ story: “Nearly 1,800 criminal cases were dismissed (in Riverside County) between October of 2022 and April of 2023. Over 1,200 of them were from Indio.”

A JCC report from 2022 includes the most recent statewide and countywide data on case dispositions. It says that in fiscal year 2021, in the category of non-traffic misdemeanors, 302,906 cases were filed statewide, with only 172,366 dispositions—leading to a case-clearance rate of just 57 percent. In that same year, just 40 misdemeanor jury trials were conducted in all of Riverside County.

A representative of the Judicial Council of California public affairs department informed the Independent that according to the Riverside County Superior Court, in 2023, the court dismissed 21 felony cases and 380 misdemeanor cases due to the unavailability of judges, courtrooms or other judicial personnel, while in 2024, as of this writing, it has dismissed five felony cases and eight misdemeanor cases.

Sanders said the most difficult challenge during her 5 1/2-year judicial experience was simply persevering and “being strong for myself, because it took so much for me. Like, there were days when I was extremely suicidal, just because your whole sense of security was robbed from you. … My mom was never there. Afterwards, too, she would just not respect how I felt, and she would keep saying I should stop bitching about it, so it was very hard. … The hardest thing was to keep myself fighting.”

Sanders said she is worried that the now-former defendant may victimize others now that he’s gotten away with it.

“It scares me that he’s out (there),” Sanders said, “and he could do this to somebody else … and it just continues. He feels so comfortable doing it. … For the longest time, I had to get out of that fear of being in public. I was afraid—like, this could happen to me anytime with anybody, not just him. You know what I mean?”

Edited on April 30 to clarify Riverside County’s judge-shortage statistics.