In a steady rhythm and loud voice, the court clerk in Department 25 of Solano County Superior Court said, “Not guilty,” to 16 of 17 counts against former Vacaville attorney James Glenn Haskell.
The most serious charges included several felony sexual assaults on a child and lewd and lascivious acts on a child, but the jury of six men and six women, after a nine-week trial and nearly four days of deliberations, ruled on Thursday afternoon that the 42-year-old lawyer and former Mormon bishop did not do what the prosecutor said he did.
However, jurors deadlocked on Count 10, felony injury upon a child, and Judge Janice M. Williams, who presided over the case since mid-April, ordered Haskell, Deputy District Attorney Shelly Moore and Haskell’s attorney, Thomas Maas, to return for a hearing on the matter at 8:30 a.m. July 15 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
Maas, a well-known criminal defense attorney in Fairfield, was not present for the jury verdict. Daniel Russo, a Vallejo-based criminal defense attorney, represented Haskell during the 30-minute hearing. Throughout the verdict-reading, Russo, seated at the defense table, could be seen texting while Haskell stared straight ahead.
As the jury verdicts were read, Haskell dressed in a light-blue shirt and tie over dark, rumpled slacks, began to tear up. When the proceeding ended, he stood up and began to weep audibly and embraced a member of his defense team. He also was greeted by a sister, who attended some of the trial days.
Russo asked the judge if Haskell, a former employee of Reynolds Law who now lives in San Marcos, could be released from wearing an ankle monitor and for the return of his passport. Williams ruled the ankle monitor could come off but did not agree to the return of Haskell’s passport.
With the jury verdict, Haskell — who was charged with crimes for between October 2018 and up until early February 2022, when his four adopted children were removed from the Vacaville home he shared with wife Emily — avoided the possibility of receiving two life sentences had the verdicts gone against him.
Haskell, who now lives in San Marcos, remained out of custody on bail during the trial. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges and spent more than four days on the witness stand, widely regarded in most legal circles as a risky move by a defense counsel.
The verdicts clearly surprised many in the public gallery and those watching via Zoom. They included relatives and at least one of Haskell’s former children, a victim, the oldest of three daughters who was in the courtroom. She could be seen crying in the hallway outside the courtroom following the hearing. At least two others close to the case or who knew the Haskell family could be heard cursing the verdict as they stood in the hallway.
After Haskell’s arrest in early 2022, Moore filed additional allegations in September 2022 based on Solano County Sheriff investigators’ findings. They included four felony counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object while the victim, the oldest of three daughters, was unaware.
Among the other counts listed in the charging documents were two felony charges for inflicting injury on a child and misdemeanor charges of willful cruelty to a child, including severe beatings with a leather belt that left bruises and forcing two of the children to sleep on a bathroom floor as punishment, including bed-wetting by Haskell’s son. (The Reporter typically does not identify victims of sexual abuse or sexual assault.)
During his closing argument on June 3 and continuing the next day, Maas repeatedly noted the differences between what the three children, the boy and the two older daughters, told investigators and their courtroom testimony.
He advised the jurors to adhere to jury instructions about the credibility, or believability, of the witnesses in deciding whether their testimony was true and accurate, whether they admitted to being untruthful, and to use common sense.
In her rebuttal to defense attorney Thomas Maas’ closing argument, Moore asserted Haskell “dehumanized” the three minor children, and played a secretly recorded call for jurors, a major piece of evidence for the prosecution.
Haskell, she said, “never denied” in the phone call committing sex assaults on oldest daughter, crimes that allegedly lasted almost nightly on the family couch for two years.
In the call, a so-called “pretext call,” made by family friend Desire Dominique for Solano County Sheriff investigators, jurors could hear her say, “You touched her private area,” the words displayed on a large monitor directly across from the jury box.
Jurors also heard Haskell saying, “There’s absolutely no touching going forward” and “The message is received. Her wishes will be respected,” referring to the oldest daughter. At a meeting in a Fairfield restaurant in March 2022, she told Dominique about the alleged frequent sexual contact with her adopted father that began when she was 16 and continued after she turned 17 and nearly 18, when she left Haskell’s home.
In those moments, Haskell could be heard on the recording catching his breath periodically and pausing for several seconds between statements.
Of “characters letters” written on behalf of Haskell after he was arrested some weeks after the children were removed from the home, Moore noted that, in one, Haskell was described as “a pillar of the community.”
“He’s not father of the year,” Moore said later in her rebuttal.
Haskell’s acquittal on the 16 counts comes as his brother, Ronald Lee Haskell Jr., 43, remains on Death Row in Texas for fatally shooting, execution-style, six members of his ex-wife’s family on July 9, 2014, in an area outside of Houston.
After a trial, which made national news, Ronald Haskell was found guilty of capital murder on Sept. 26, 2019, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection on Oct. 11.
James Haskell’s acquittal also comes as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, Phillip A. Talbert, said in a press statement issued Thursday that child sexual exploitation and abuse was “a growing epidemic.”