Saturday's Letters to the Editor

Don’t judge verdict

EDITOR: This letter is in response to the George Zimmerman trial. I have been a juror for two murder trials, one in San Mateo County and one in Sonoma County. Both trials had newspaper coverage. While the coverage was accurate on what was reported, it is impossible to report every single item of evidence, every single word of every single witness, every objection by the lawyers and all instructions from the judge.

Unless you are sitting in the jury box or in the audience for every single moment of a trial, then you are not qualified to determine its outcome. There is an enormous amount of detail. One sentence can make the difference in the outcome. Don’t be so quick to judge the verdict based on only what you read or hear on the news.

It’s easy to criticize the jury or the process based on dated racial issues rather than the facts of the case. The jury came to the conclusion based on the evidence as presented, moment by moment, day by a day. Were you there?


Santa Rosa

Risky, costly power

EDITOR: After considering the Sonoma Clean Power proposal, I am wondering: What are people thinking? In 2001, California enacted a similar scheme with the deregulation of electricity providers, creating chaos and much higher prices.

This was the same scheme. The state would buy the power, and PG&E would distribute it, to reduce prices. We now pay three times the national average. Look carefully at your electric bill; the pricing scheme is confusing. The rate is about 13 cents per kilowatt-hour until you reach the baseline, then it jumps to 35 cents per kilowatt-hour. The baseline is 40 percent of the average usage in your area.

Sonoma Clean Power doesn’t suggest it will charge less; it offers an ethereal plan for greener power, with no specifics. What we will get is another bureaucracy, with its inherent overhead and lack of accountability. In what way is this better? What will be different from what happened in 2001?

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