Update (Sat. 5-4-2019, 12:20 p.m.): Yesterday XBIZ was contacted by Joshua Castro, a Deputy Public Defender (PD) with the San Bernardino Public Defender's office, who is now in charge of Mercedes Carrera's defense.
Castro spoke exclusively to XBIZ to let us know he had prepared an official statement about the office's relationship with Carrera after her complaints regarding the conduct of the original PD assigned to her case. The complaints were first made public through the jailhouse interview, the first since her arrest, conducted by XBIZ at the West Valley Detention Center and published on March 28.
This is PD Castro's statement in response to the ongoing coverage of the Mercedes Carrera-Jason Whitney case by XBIZ:
"I am the Public Defender appointed to represent Ms. Carrera. Ms. Carrera has authorized me to disclose that we have had numerous lengthy and productive meetings at the West Valley Detention Center. We have a very good working relationship. Me and the entire team at the Public Defender's office are happy to represent her against these false accusations. Our office has investigators, social workers and other staff that are all available for me to use as appropriate. I can assure you that we are doing everything we can to protect Ms. Carrera's constitutional rights and provide her with an aggressive defense. I am not able to make any comments about the facts of the case because of the ongoing litigation. Joshua Castro, Deputy Public Defender."
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. — Attorneys for adult performer Mercedes Carrera and co-defendant Jason Whitney requested to extend once again the pre-preliminary phase of their ongoing trial for sexual abuse and possession of drugs and firearms, and the request to reconvene on June 6 was immediately granted.
Unlike the similar hearing on April 4 — heard by a substitute judge at the Rancho Cucamonga courthouse — which moved the date for the pre-prelim hearing to today, this hearing was presided over by Judge Stephan G. Saleson himself.
Saleson, a folksy 69-year-old Republican from East Lansing Michigan who served in the Marine Corps and holds a law degree from Christian university Pepperdine, runs his courtroom extremely efficiently. Mercedes Carrera and the man she calls her husband, Jason Whitney, were brought into the courtroom wearing the green uniforms that separate them from the orange-uniform-clad prisoners around 9:10 a.m. and the whole hearing lasted less than 15 minutes.
Like a month ago, Carrera (who is being tried under her birth name) and Whitney sat at opposite ends of the jury box. They have absolutely no privacy when consulting with their attorneys for only a few minutes, as the court continues going about their business in full view of all spectators.
Whitney seemed less self-assured and more animated than last month, when he towered aloof over everyone with his imposing frame and a proud, stoic stance. Like Whitney, Carrera has been held since the couple’s arrest on February 1 at the West Valley Detention Center, in what she described to XBIZ in our exclusive March 28 jailhouse interview as a hostile and dangerous environment with inadequate legal counsel.
Carrera has not been able to secure the services of a private attorney, and her case has been handled by a succession of Public Defenders (PDs), who have consistently refused to answer XBIZ’s questions about the case or Carrera’s allegation that the original PD who handled her case, Dennis Wilkins, had seriously neglected his duties.
Both the April 4 and today’s extensions were granted because Carrera insists that she needs more time to engage her own attorney. She told XBIZ in March that, without adequate legal representation, getting a power of attorney to her friends (so they could start selling her assets and pay the steep retainer to her own lawyer) had turned into a months-long ordeal.
According to our sources, Carrera had been hoping to sell her property before today so she could engage her own attorney. Last April, Wilkins did not appear at the hearing and her case was handled by a young lawyer named Shane Mathias, who took XBIZ’s information but did not contact us. Today Carrera was represented by a new PD, Joshua Castro.
Because Carrera and Whitney are co-defendants and they cannot both be represented by the same Public Defender Office, Whitney has a private attorney assigned to him by what legal experts refer to as a “conflict board.”
Whitney's conflict board attorney is Nicola Fitzgerald, from Rancho Cucamonga's Fitzgerald Law Group. Several accounts by people familiar with the case depict her as a competent attorney who has taken Whitney’s defense much more seriously than the San Bernardino Public Defenders Office has, has engaged a Private Investigator, and seems confident that the State’s case might not be supported by the evidence.
Today, Fitzgerald asked Judge Saleson to postpone Whitney’s pre-prelim hearing to June 6 because “his co-defendant [Carrera] is perhaps getting a new attorney.” Castro agreed with everything Fitzgerald requested.
The judge granted that extension for both defendants and also granted their request for a new bail hearing the same day. Whitney and Carrera are being held currently without bail.
If the June 6 hearing does not result in another postponement, the preliminary examination (aka, "probable cause hearing") should occur sometime between June 6 and August 6. According to a source familiar with the case "there is literally no telling at this point when the actual trial will begin."
For XBIZ’s ongoing coverage of the Mercedes Carrera trial, click here.