I guess I can start with what we don’t know: so far there has been zero press coverage surrounding this rather sensational trial and I think I know why: the San Francisco Bay Area is quite liberal and all about That Trans so, rather than risk upsetting the transgender community, they just prefer to not talk about it and hope nobody else noticed.
Doesn’t jive with the narrative, natch, because - as the trans community would have you believe - This Never Happens.
The Story So Far
Just after midnight on November 11, 2016, police received reports about gunshots being fired at a home on Dunbar Drive, in Oakland, California. When they responded, they found Rivers drenched in blood and running from the doorway of the house. He was in possession of knives, ammunition, and metal knuckles. The house was on fire. Inside the house, the police found two women whose bodies were riddled with bullets and stab wounds. They also found a young man laid out in front of the house who had been shot to death. Rivers has been charged with numerous serious and violent offenses, including murder and arson.
The victims: Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed, a married lesbian couple, and Toto Diambu (known as Benny Diambu-Wright), their 19-year-old son.
Rivers had been active in “Camp Trans,” a campaign against the rights of lesbians to hold the women-only annual festival called “Michfest” on private land (the last official Michfest occurred in 2015). Patricia and Charlotte were regular attendees at Michfest.
One suspects the lesbians didn’t want Rivers, precisely because he’s a man, so he murdered two lesbians because - to his mind - they refused to validate him but Rivers has yet to proffer a motive for his actions.
In 2017, Rivers was arraigned in court where he entered a plea of not guilty.
The reason this case has taken so long to get to trial is because Rivers could be facing the death penalty so his defense attorneys can have adequate time to prepare and that the pandemic dragged things out even longer.
A moratorium on the death penalty was issued by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019. California voters twice rejected to repeal the death penalty by popular vote in 2012 and 2016, and they narrowly adopted in 2016 another proposal to expedite its appeal process.
Somewhere along the way in October 2020, Rivers changed his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity which prolonged the whole process as now the court is obliged to have him undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if he’s competent to stand trial. The case had been significantly delayed because of the pandemic. Mental health experts have been reluctant to visit Rivers in the jail due to health concerns.
However, the court finally found a mental health expert to examine Rivers and report on the merits of the insanity defense and on Rivers’ competence to stand trial.
On January 7, 2021 there was supposed to be a determination made on Rivers’ competence but, for reasons unknown, that report wasn’t received until sometime between July 18 and August, possibly September of 2022. According to the updates provided on Kara Dansky’s website:
The prosecutor’s office tells me that this is relatively normal, that a new doctor had been appointed, and there are still COVID-related reasons why it is hard to get in and out of the jail. I have no obvious reason to suspect that there is anything more nefarious than that going on. The trial is currently scheduled for October 10, 2022. That could change again.
Which brings us to now.
The Trial of Dana Rivers began on October 10th, 2022 and will be continued to the 17th, 18th, and 19th. As this seems to be a capital murder case, the prosecution has the onus of proving beyond reasonable doubt that Dana Rivers did murder Patricia Wright, Charlotte Reed and Benny Diambu-Wright and did so with deliberation, premeditation and intent.
Basically, murder in the first degree.
Under California’s first-degree murder law, the prosecution must also show that the defendant acted with “malice aforethought,” a term that refers to the mental state required for a person to be liable for murder. As it pertains to murder, malice aforethought can either be implied or express. Express malice means the defendant had a deliberate intent to kill, while implied malice means the defendant did not have a deliberate intent to kill, but rather demonstrated a conscious disregard for human life. In order to get a guilty verdict in a first-degree murder case, the prosecutor will have to provide evidence that the defendant either deliberately intended to commit murder, behaved with extreme recklessness or acted without consideration for another person’s safety, and caused the victim’s death.
In California, first-degree murder convictions carry some of the harshest criminal penalties. A defendant convicted on charges of first-degree murder may be sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or, in the most serious cases, capital punishment (the death penalty). State laws require a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or death for murder cases that involve “special circumstances.” Some examples of circumstances that may elevate first-degree murder to capital murder include killing another person for financial gain, using a bomb or explosive device to kill more than one person, killing another person in order to avoid a lawful arrest, or killing a peace officer, firefighter, prosecutor, juror, judge or elected official. These cases are known as “capital murder” cases.
On September 30th of this year, Dana Rivers’ attorney(s) filed a Pitchess Motion, a request made by the defense in a California criminal case, such as a DUI case or a resisting arrest case, to access a law enforcement officer's personnel information when the defendant alleges in an affidavit that the officer used excessive force or lied about the events surrounding the defendant's arrest. The information provided will include prior incidents of use of force, allegations of excessive force, citizen complaints, and information gathered during the officer's pre-employment background investigation. The motion's name comes from the case Pitchess v. Superior Court.
That motion was denied.