The supporters of Ajay Dev, who is serving a 378-year sentence that his friends and family believe is unjust, were finally able to provoke a response this week from the powers that be.

On Wednesday, two years after the conviction that his supporters believe to be wrongful, 250 to 300 people hit the streets in protest.  But it was another tactic that appeared to generate the response, in that every time someone filled out an online petition, the petition was set to generate emails to critical politicians and media that had previously ignored the efforts.

Those efforts hit paydirt when they provoked a response from the DA's office, Supervisor Matt Rexroad, and the Woodland Daily Democrat.

On Thursday, Matt Rexroad posted what he described, "This summary was put together for me and others regarding the case of Ajay Dev.  The facts below are exactly why I will not be asking for an investigation into the case."

Clearly, this was a lengthy response put together by the District Attorney's office.  One has to be puzzled by the need for them to respond.  Mr. Dev is incarcerated.  He is going through the appellate process which will be determined in the courts based on rules of law.  Why did the DA's office even bother to generate any type of response?

Second, Matt Rexroad would have been better advised to keep his nose out of this.  His response should have been that this was a matter for the courts and he would allow the legal process to work.  That is really all he had to say.

Instead, he allowed the fact that he received two hundred emails, perhaps half of them by people living in Yolo County and therefore constituents, to get under his skin.

He suggested that the Board of Supervisors will respond, but not as these activists would like.  Frankly, the Board of Supervisors should not respond and if they do, they should simply point out that this is a matter for the courts to decide.

But that is not what happened starting on Thursday.  This became a matter not for the courts to decide, but rather it was thrown into the public arena.

Mr. Rexroad stated, "The facts below are exactly why I will not be asking for an investigation into the case."

With all due respect to Mr. Rexroad, he has no knowledge of the facts other than the fact that Mr. Dev was accused by his adopted daughter of raping her over a five-year period, that he was convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. 

Other than that, he does not know what a fact is or what is the opinion of the DA or what is fiction.  He did not go to the trial.  He likely has never read the court transcripts.  Instead, what he is doing is taking the DA's word for what the facts are in this case, without any type of inquiry.

In fact, what Mr. Rexroad posted on his site contains an appalling number of erroneous statements.

Wrote the DA's office as posted by Mr. Rexroad, "The defendant and his wife brought the victim (a distant relative of the defendant) here from Nepal in January of 1999 when she was barely 15 years old to live with them and be educated in the United States because her family in Nepal was poor.  The Victim testified that within weeks of her arrival in the United States, living with the Dev family in Davis, the defendnat began touching her inappropriately and soon moved to forcing her to have intercourse with him on average three times a week."

However, then it went on to say, "At some point during these assaults the defendant had the victim watch pornography with him some of which included child pornography."

The problem with that statement is that Mr. Dev was actually acquitted of any charges of showing the accuser pornography, and the child pornography that was on his computer was actually determined to have been downloaded by the accuser herself.

The facts surrounding her claims are in doubt, as well.  For instance, the accuser testified that Mr. Dev showed her a pornographic movie in 1999 when she was 15, however, the laptop was not even purchased until 2001.

Investigators discovered, further, that the movie did not even exist until January 2002.

They continued, "The victim alleged that the assaults of the defendant actually impregnated her once in late 2002 and another time in the spring of 2003. "

Actually the victim alleged that the defendant impregnated her at least three times, each of which resulted in an abortion.  The problem is that the medical history tells otherwise.

The medical records indicate a miscarriage in January of 2003 and an abortion in May of 2003.  In November of 2003, she had a negative pregnancy test.

The evidence that it was Mr. Dev who impregnated her is, at best, unclear.  She had claimed, when asked by the prosecutor, Deputy DA Steve Mount, at the preliminary hearing that she had had no sexual relations with anyone other than Mr. Dev.

However, during the court trial she described that her first sexual encounter with someone was in December of 2003 with her third boyfriend.

She would then testify that he was the first boyfriend that she had sex with, except that later it came out she had also had sexual relations that included sexual intercourse with her second boyfriend.

There was never any evidence presented at court that it was Mr. Dev who impregnated her.

The critical evidence that convicted Mr. Dev was a phone conversation, recorded by Detective Mark Hermann.  After the trial, one juror blogged in the Daily Democrat, “Yes, her testimony was difficult to swallow. If for her testimony alone, he would be a free man.”

Other jurors made it clear that it was the pretext phone call that decided his guilt or innocence.

The DA posted this portion of the transcript:

>>>Defendant: I have been telling you from the very beginning that my life will be gone but how about your life, your life will be gone, how can you save your life, just tell me.

Victim: How is my life re . . ruining daddy?

Defendant: Because you have [expletive for sex] me after 18 years of your age.

Victim: Ok, so?

Defendant: That means you have given me consent.

Victim: No, I have not given any consent to you.<<<

The DA went on to explain, "This part of the translation of the phone call was agreed upon as correct by both the victim and the defense hired expert translator."

According to the family, in a response to Mr. Rexroad's post, "As for the "you fu...d me..." exchange from the pretext call - Ajay was not speaking English.  He was speaking Nepali.  The prosecutor and the defense attorney did agree that the word "Fu…d" was used.  However, and most importantly, they did not agree on the meaning or context in which that word was spoken."

It has been the contention of the family that that segment has been mistranslated and also taken out of context.  It was actually a hypothetical posed by Mr. Dev.

Writes the family, "This very controversial issue was the primary issue the DDA rested his case on, claiming Ajay 'admitted' to the sexual assault and rape by this sentence and was able to obtain a conviction and a 378 year sentence based on this so called 'admission.' "

They continue, "Although the DA argued to the jury that this telephone call was the most 'honest' communication between the parties, the detective testified that he scripted the accuser's part of the conversation and that he threw away his notes before trial." 

"The DDA completely ignored the 52 times Ajay directly and indirectly denied the accusations in English and Nepali," they write.  "The accuser herself during the call acknowledges that Ajay is not admitting anything."

Without ourselves listening to and being provided an independent translation of this conversation it is impossible to evaluate.  But this is the central point in dispute - whether this portion of the conversation means what the DA says it means and that will be decided in the appellate courts, not in the court of public opinion.

The protest, and more specifically the emails, also got the attention of Woodland Daily Democrat Editor Jim Smith.

Mr. Smith wrote, "Immediately after the conviction, a network of people began protesting the sentence, claiming among a great many things, that the victim lied, there was insufficient DNA evidence, the right questions were not asked, and there was no enough evidence."

"A lot of allegations have been heaped on the rape victim herself, including that she 'was convicted of passport fraud' by the government of Nepal. Some people have claimed Ajay was treated unfairly because of his race, or because the DA's Office was trying to boost its conviction rate to continue receiving federal grant money," he continues.

"For the past two years, there have been two protests of Ajay's sentence. The most recent protest was held Wednesday night at Freeman Park in downtown Woodland," Mr. Smith reported.  "It reportedly drew about 250 people."

What got his attention was what he called "more than 100 identical letters to the editor protesting Ajay's conviction and sentencing. Most of the letters were from people who live in Chico, some were from Florida, one was from Maine, another from Hawaii and still others from Las Vegas. I didn't see any from people in Davis or Woodland, but I'll be honest and admit I didn't look at every single letter."

I was shown the petition list, and about 90 people were from Woodland or Davis.

"Imagine going to your home mailbox, for example, and seeing it overflowing. It helps to visualize the first movie of 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,' when all those owls are outside Harry's house and the letters from Hogwarts suddenly come pouring through the fireplace," he continued.

"I love letters to the editor. We never get enough of them at The Democrat. But sometimes people go too far in trying to make their point. Identical letters are never treated very kindly by editors. We wonder, for instance, that if the issue is so important, why people don't think for themselves and express their own thoughts?" he writes.

"I'm also skeptical that people in Hawaii or Florida, would really have sufficient, independent knowledge about the case to author a letter," he adds.  "So, let this serve as kind of an object lesson. If you want to promote a cause, or make a statement on a public matter, send on your letters. But actually expend the brain power and write one yourself. It's not all that hard to do and it will go a lot father than passing on something someone else told you to write."

The problem is that Mr. Smith misconstrues what he actually received, which was not letters to the editor, but rather a petition that people signed agreeing with the said statement, which Mr. Smith thought was in fact a letter to the editor.

Mr. Smith cannot help but write, " I have no sympathy for child molesters. In my book, Ajay was found guilty by a jury after a trial. That decision which is being appealed. That's how our justice system works. Until that appeal is heard and the jury's decision is overturned, Ajay is guilty and must do the time as ordered by the judge."

Indeed, although as Mr. Smith knows, there are people who have been convicted and served twenty years and had their sentences overturned.  That is how our system works. 

I suppose Mr. Smith's feeling is, too bad for Mr. Dev if he has to serve twenty years for a crime he did not commit, that's how our system works and we all know it is not perfect.

I started covering this case two years ago.  I was invited by the family of Mr. Dev to look into the matter.  I was skeptical.  I mean, who wants to defend a child rapist?  I agree completely with Mr. Smith, I have no sympathy for anyone who harms a child.

But I also believe that not only are people innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but that sometimes the court of law makes grave mistakes and puts innocent people in prison.  That is why we have organizations cropping up all over the country looking into wrongful convictions, with the Innocence Project simply being the most prominent.

The more I look into this case and the more I see about how Yolo County operates, the more I am convinced that a grave error was made in this case.  I have not seen the full transcript or seen a proper translation of the Nepali from that phone conversation.

That is something that I deeply want to see before I say I am convinced of Mr. Dev's innocence.  But I can say, having met critical members of the family who have seen this evidence, I do not believe they would be defending a man that raped a young girl.

And that fact, along with so many others, has me very strongly leaning towards the firm belief that Mr. Dev did not do this and that there has been a terrible injustice in this case, one among many in this county, unfortunately..

---David M. Greenwald reporting