Evidence allowed, but preliminary hearing for Charles Handley
delayed a 6th time at defense’s request
Superior Court Judge Hector Ramon extended Charles Richard Handley’s preliminary hearing another month at the defense’s request after the latter lost a bid to block incriminating evidence, which Ramon ruled had been obtained legally.
Deputy District Attorney Amir Alem said he thought the preliminary hearing was done after he called his last witness to the stand, Gilroy Police Robbery and Homicide Detective Stanley Devlin. But Victor Vertner, the defense attorney, claimed he did not have a copy of Devlin’s one-and-a-half page follow-up with victims that Devlin conducted last January. For that reason, Vertner said he could not conduct his cross examination and, therefore, needed a continuance, Alem said. Ramon allowed the delay and scheduled the next preliminary hearing for 3 p.m. March 27, according to Alem.
This was the sixth continuation in the case against Handley, 79, who was arrested April 26 at 971 Festa Aglio Court after firing at his former daughter-in-law, Lynda Handley, and her boyfriend, Lynn Ryle. Handley only wounded Lynda Handley, police said, after he apparently rented a car and drove to Gilroy from his San Jose home, toting a .357 magnum handgun. He then confronted the couple just before 6 a.m. in the garage of Ryle’s home.
He shot twice at Lynda Handley, missing both times; the woman grabbed the gun and tried to wrestle it away from Charles Handley, and was shot in the thigh as the two struggled, she told police. Lynn Ryle dove to the ground and threw a coffee mug at him; later, he was able to knock the elderly man down and pull the gun from him, according to a police report. Ryle then pinned Charles Handley down until police arrived.
Vertner’s concern with evidence centered around letters and e-mails seized by police from the Handley home in San Jose. The missives show Charles Handley was infatuated with Lynda Handley, who was in the middle of divorce proceedings from Charles Handley’s son, Clifford Handley, after about 20 years of marriage.
Vertner wanted to exclude a packet of papers and the contents of a computer that Gilroy police collected from Handley’s room at his son’s house in San Jose. These papers include $1,500 in $100 bills and a suicide note that read, “By the time you read this you will know what has taken place. This will solve some of your problems.”
Police seized the evidence after Charles Handley signed a consent form; however, he signed it after he invoked his right to an attorney but before he was assigned an attorney. Based on the argument that this process violated his Miranda rights, Vertner is also looking to exclude the letters because their seizure was not specifically mentioned in the consent form.
“Even if the court ruled the search wasn’t against (Charles Handley’s) Miranda rights, did officers go beyond scope of consent?” Ramon asked rhetorically last January. “That’s what I’ll continue to focus on.”
Earlier testimony from Devlin and Clifford Handley painted conflicting pictures of the scene at the Handley house after the incident. Devlin claimed he seized the father’s possessions, while Clifford Handley, who choked up several times during his testimony, was certain he was the one who took them out of his father’s room.
