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Preliminary hearing begins in Kristin Smart case By ANNELISE HANSHAW
Paul Flores is accused of murdering Cal Poly student Kristin Smart during an attempted rape. Ruben Flores, Paul’s father, allegedly helped conceal the crime.
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
COURTESY PHOTOS
Paul Flores, left, was arrested April 13 for the alleged murder of Kristin Smart. Ruben Flores, right, is facing a charge of accessory to murder.
The preliminary hearing of Paul Flores and Ruben Flores began Monday morning in the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court. Paul Flores is accused of murdering Cal Poly student Kristin Smart during an attempted rape. Ruben Flores, Paul’s father, allegedly helped conceal the crime. The hearing is expected to last three weeks, an unusually long duration for this step in the judiciary process. San Luis Obispo County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle began by calling up Denis Smart, Kristin’s mother. The prosecution established a loving picture of the Smart family prior to Kristin’s disappearance, as Mrs. Smart shared memories of her daughter.
Defense Attorney Robert Sanger (representing Paul Flores) asked Mrs. Smart whether Kristin talked about boyfriends or modeling aspirations, according to “Your Own Backyard” podcast host Chris Lambert. Defense Attorney Harold Mesick (Ruben Flores’ attorney) cross-examined Mrs. Smart about her daughter’s apparent taste for Taco Bell, alleging Kristin was spotted at several Taco Bell restaurants.
Law and order and stories Legal analyst and author Lis Wiehl makes Santa Barbara her home By DAVE MASON NEWS-PRESS MANAGING EDITOR
Lis Wiehl remembers one of her “Perry Mason” moments. It came during a trial in which she was a Seattle federal prosecutor trying a bank robbery case. Before walking into the courtroom, Ms. Wiehl did her homework. She looked carefully at the bank surveillance photos and saw that the robber was missing his trigger finger when he held his gun. “It was amazing. It was one of those ‘Perry Mason’ moments,” Ms. Wiehl told the News-Press. “I lifted his hand in front of the jury, and the trigger finger was missing.” Ms. Wiehl won the conviction and points to it as an example of how good legal work is knowing the facts and knowing how to tell the story about them. Ms. Wiehl, who moved to Santa Barbara last November from New York City, has learned to tell true stories so well that she’s a New York Times bestselling author of 19 books. She also has been a law professor and a legal analyst for several TV networks. Now she’s a News-Press columnist. Her “Wiehl of Justice” column debuted recently in this paper and will explore local cases. Ms. Wiehl’s love for law and order started early in life. Her dad, Richard Wiehl, was an FBI agent. “What I really remember is when we were in Fort Worth, Texas, he took me to the FBI headquarters,” recalled Ms. Wiehl, who lived there but spent most of her youth in Yakima, Wash. “I was just a little kid, and they had the ‘Most Wanted’ pictures. He was showing me that these were the really bad guys and said, ‘That’s what I do; I hunt down the bad guys.’ “He became a federal prosecutor after he left the FBI,” Ms. Wiehl said. “He would tell stories; they were real stories about cops and robbers. I grew up with that.” Ms. Wiehl also grew up with a love for writing. That wasn’t too surprising considering her mother, Inga Wiehl, was a college English teacher who immigrated from Denmark. In fact, Ms. Wiehl’s first career choice wasn’t the law. The graduate of West Valley High School in Yakima wanted to become a journalist and
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESS
Lis Wiehl, a New York Times bestselling author and TV legal analyst, moved last fall to Santa Barbara after falling in love with the area’s mountains and ocean.
studied at Columbia University in New York, where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She went on to get her master’s in literature at the University of Queensland in Australia. But the law and its stories enticed her, and she enrolled in Harvard Law School, where she earned her juris doctor degree in 1987. “When you go to law school, you get these big case books that you can barely put in your backpack,” Ms. Wiehl said. “These were stories about people, about things that have happened to people, usually things that were bad, and how we as a society try to remediate and make them whole again.” After Harvard, Ms. Wiehl worked for the Seattle private law firm Perkins Coie before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle as a prosecutor. She said she became dedicated to discovering the truth and finding justice for victims. “It was really
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important to me and was part of my family’s values.” She said the courtroom is just 5% of what a prosecutor does. She said the rest involved working with FBI agents and doing all the behind-the-scenes work that jurors never hear about. “It all comes together in the courtroom when you try to tell a story,” Ms. Wiehl said. After working as a federal prosecutor, Ms. Wiehl went on to Washington, D.C., where she served as a counsel for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during the hearings leading up to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. “As you might imagine, it was a very sobering experience, to see these mechanisms of impeachment — which we don’t use very often, thank goodness,” Ms. Wiehl said. “I’m from a legal background,” she said. “It was my first foray into where legal meets political. It was eye opening.” She noted that Democrats and Republicans alike would quickly cast their votes, unless the press and cameras were there. “If the press was there, everybody would be grandstanding and would have to use their five minutes. This was
high politics, rushing out to get on the camera for the 6 o’clock news.” From 1995 to 2001, Ms. Wiehl was back in Seattle as a law professor at the University of Washington, where she ran the Trial Advocacy Program. She went on to become a legal analyst for networks such as CNN, CBS, NPR, NBC and the Fox News Channel. “I love it. It’s fun for me to take a story and break it down into its parts, then communicate how it affects people,” she said. She added that television poses the challenge of summarizing the details quickly but accurately. “You’re coming into somebody’s home, their kitchen, their living room, their bedroom,” she said. “They’re giving you the privilege of hearing what you have to say. You’d better get your facts right. “I don’t mind if people disagree with my opinion,” Ms. Wiehl said. “I don’t want to be wrong with the facts. I have to get those right.” Her first case as a TV legal analyst was the California trial that resulted in Scott Peterson’s 2004 conviction for the murder of his wife, Laci, and their unborn son. She also covered the Santa Maria trial of Michael Jackson, in which the Please see AUTHOR on A4
The Santa Barbara City College Academic Senate will hold a special meeting at 2 p.m. today to discuss a potential vote of no confidence in the Board of Trustees. The Senate has discussed the possible vote in two previous meetings but now returns with a document showing what the Senate considers are historical issues with the board. The document also features the results of a faculty survey. Of the 109 faculty members who responded to the survey, 78.9% voted in favor of a vote of no confidence. Some respondents identified board decisions or board members they disagree with. (The vote of no confidence could apply to the whole board or select trustees.) Many of the survey’s participants mention that they’d like a vaccine mandate. One person even recommended that faculty refuse to teach without such protection. Other participants in the survey worry a vote may make the college look dysfunctional or cause trouble. “I support a vaccine mandate for our campus. However, I feel a vote of no confidence will not help us achieve this goal,” one respondent said. “In a time of emergency and urgency, we need to de-escalate and work together as best we can.” A few comments called a no-confidence vote as “misguided” and “too drastic.” Trustee Veronica Gallardo is a target of four complaints that accuse her of being slanted or unapproachable. She is mentioned in other responses among other board members. Some faculty responses mentioned trustees that should be excluded from the vote, primarily those who voted in favor of a vaccine mandate. Dr. Anna Everett received the most support. During the Academic Senate’s July 14 meeting, it requested an outline of the board’s history of misgovernance. The overview begins in 2012 when SBCC received an accreditation warning by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. Trustees Marsha Croninger and Peter Haslund presided on the board at the time of the warning. “Some find the SBCC Board of Trustees to be engaging in the same behavior that placed us on accreditation warning in 2012, thereby potentially risking our accreditation status,” the Academic Senate’s historical document said. The Academic Senate documented 17 incidents starting in 2017 in which it feels trustees didn’t follow ACCJC standards. Please see SBCC on A4
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No confidence talk continues at SBCC By ANNELISE HANSHAW
Lis Wiehl’s 2020 book, “Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America’s Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist,” and her other books are available for purchase through links at her website. See liswiehlbooks.com.
66833 00050
email: ahanshaw@newspress.com
Academic Senate to discuss vote concerning trustees
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According to media reports, Mr. Mesick asked if she was aware that Kristin briefly went missing while lifeguarding in Hawaii. She said, “no.” Both defense attorneys asked to retain the right to call Mrs. Smart as a witness again. The prosecution must prove there is enough evidence during a preliminary hearing before the case is tried.
Sudoku................. B3 Weather................ A4
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