SAN JOSE — Sentencing is delayed for a former Santa Clara County sheriff’s captain convicted of bribery because he wants a new trial, claiming he was essentially the fall guy for a pay-to-play scandal with concealed-gun permits that saw co-defendants get plea deals and his boss, the former sheriff, avoid criminal charges altogether.
Instead of sentencing him Monday, Judge Nahal Iravani-Sani gave James Jensen a reprieve so his attorneys can file a motion for a new trial on the premise that Jensen’s legal defense was hamstrung by not being allowed to implicate other figures in the corruption probe.
That included a co-defendant who got his charges dismissed, one who was acquitted, and one who pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor crime, along with three conspirators who avoided indictment by agreeing early on to become prosecution witnesses.
Jensen’s attorneys also wanted to argue to jurors that the presumed beneficiary of his actions, former sheriff Laurie Smith, was never criminally charged, which they contend undercuts the basis of Jensen’s conviction.
“The jury in this case never got a full picture,” defense attorney Harry Stern wrote in a legal memo submitted to the judge prior to the sentencing hearing. “This all improperly prevented James Jensen from his right to fully and fairly confront the evidence.”
In court Monday, Deputy District Attorney John Chase, the lead prosecutor in the case, objected to the delay in sentencing as well as the new trial request. Iravani-Sani set a series of filing deadlines for the next two months that will lead up to a Nov. 25 court hearing in which she plans to rule on the defense motion.
If the motion is not granted, the judge would presumably proceed with sentencing, in which case Jensen faces a punishment ranging from probation to as many as four years in prison.
Jensen was one of four people indicted by a criminal grand jury in August 2020 for bribery and conspiracy crimes, with Jensen being portrayed by prosecutors as a linchpin in a scheme that brokered coveted concealed-carry weapons permits for political donations and in-kind support for Smith, for whom he served as a close confidant and adviser.
The transaction that fueled the indictment involved the executive security firm AS Solution, which boasted of protecting high-profile tech icons including Mark Zuckerberg. The security firm agreed to donate $90,000 to support Smith and her 2018 bid for a sixth term in exchange for falsified CCW permits for the company’s security agents.
Half of that amount made its way to an independent expenditure committee co-managed by attorney Christopher Schumb, who was also indicted but was ultimately dismissed from the case after an appellate court ruled his prosecution was a conflict of interest owing to his past fundraising work for District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
The remainder of the agreed-upon donation never materialized after Martin Nielsen, a manager for the security firm, was intercepted by DA investigators who secured his cooperation. That included surreptitiously recording Jensen instructing Nielsen where to send the outstanding $45,000 and mentioning the term “quid pro quo” when describing the sizeable contribution.
Grand jury testimony portrayed Jensen as a key facilitator in carrying out Smith’s wishes for who got a CCW permit and who didn’t, drawing on the wide discretion state law once gave to sheriffs and police chiefs in doling out the licenses. Incidentally, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling, which outlawed “good cause” tests for firearms permits, has notably diminished that latitude.
Nielsen pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor conspiracy counts and was sentenced last month — four years later — to probation. Two other AS Solution figures, former CEO Christian West and manager Jack Stromgren, also pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and are still awaiting sentencing.
Of the two remaining co-defendants from Jensen’s indictment, local gunmaker Michael Nichols pleaded guilty last year to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to solicit a bribe, and attorney Harpaul Nahal was acquitted of charges. Both men had been accused of helping connect Nielsen to Schumb and Jensen.
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In his memo previewing a new trial motion, Stern repeated a defense he has given ever since his client was first indicted: Jensen never materially benefited from his actions, while Smith did; and if she was never held criminally liable, then he cannot be.
Smith invoked her Fifth Amendment rights in refusing to testify to a criminal grand jury, but the indictments became a road map for a 2022 civil grand jury trial in which she was found guilty of much of the same corruption alleged in the criminal case. The civil outcome formally removed her from office, though she had already announced her retirement and resigned mid-trial in an attempt to nullify a verdict.
Chase, the prosecutor, did not articulate in court Monday his objections to the sentencing delay and the pending defense motion. But in a court filing ahead of the hearing, he stated his opposition to Jensen receiving probation by emphasizing “the gravity of Jensen’s actions and his flagrant abuse of the law.”
“To ensure that public corruption is met with appropriate consequences and to restore faith in our legal system, the court should … impose a sentence that reflects the seriousness of these crimes.”
Jensen remains a defendant in another indictment that sprang from the DA corruption investigation. He and former undersheriff Rick Sung are accused of arranging a large donation of iPads to the sheriff’s office with Apple security executive Thomas Moyer to expedite CCW permits for a group of the company’s security employees.
