Facing a new trial with an uncertain outcome, a 39-year-old Fairfield man charged in a child sex assault case pleaded last week to a pair of felonies and will be sentenced Thursday in Solano County Superior Court.
Official court records show that on Oct. 5, Djuan Donavyn Hall withdrew his previous not-guilty pleas, waived his rights to a jury trial, and pleaded no contest to two charges: burglary and unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
Hearing the no-contest pleas, Judge Carlos R. Gutierrez immediately found Hall guilty and ordered him to return at 1:30 p.m. Thursday for sentencing in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
By entering no-contest pleas, Hall did not admit guilt but stated, essentially, that he would offer no defense.
Court documents also show that, at sentencing, Hall, who is not in custody, faces a maximum punishment of four years and eight months in state prison, parole supervision for three years, and must register as a sex offender.
With the no-contest pleas, the Solano County District Attorney’s Office dismissed six other charges: four counts of sex acts with a child 10 years old or younger and two counts of lewd or lascivious acts involving children.
Deputy District Kathleen McBride led the prosecution, and Deputy Public Defender Sara Johnson, with co-counsel Lauren Jacob, represented Hall during the change-of-plea hearing. Johnson represented Hall during the first trial, which ended in a mistrial in May 2021.
McBride last year decided to retry the case against Hall but scheduling had been paused and reshuffled several times since.
Court records show that jurors on May 19 split 6-6 on the most serious charges against Hall, multiple sex acts with a child age 10 or younger, and 9-3 on at least one charge of a lewd act on a child. Gutierrez then declared a mistrial.
Earlier, Johnson filed to amend Hall’s bail and a request to release him from jail, where he had been held for more than two years following the Aug. 16, 2018, criminal complaint against him. She noted the alleged crimes occurred between February 2009 and September 2013. The witness, then in her late teens, testified that the sex acts began when she was 6.
But, Johnson said in the filing, the DA did not levy charges against her client until nearly five years after the last alleged assault and a police investigation.
Also in her filing, Johnson mentioned the so-called “Humphrey Decision,” a March 2021 finding in which the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously for pretrial rights for defendants, that the state’s money bail system was unconstitutional and affirmed that detention should only be used if absolutely necessary.
She argued that Hall, a Vallejo native and the married father of two children, could only be held without bail “if the court concludes by clear and convincing evidence” that the witness’ safety and the public’s safety “cannot be reasonably assured or if his appearance in court cannot be reasonably assured if he is released.”
She urged Gutierrez to consider the “Humphrey analysis” and release her client on his own recognizance or with an ankle monitor and reduce his $3 million bail to an amount Hall could actually afford.
It is unclear from court records if and when Gutierrez, who presided over the trial, granted Hall’s release and reduced his bail.
At the first trial, which lasted 19 days, jurors apparently were not entirely convinced by McBride’s closing argument that began May 14, with her telling jurors that “the real question before you” is whether the victim was telling the truth, reminding them that the young woman vividly recalled on the witness stand the sexual incidents involving Hall. McBride asserted that those details could not be contrived based on the evidence.
The victim, she added, remembered core details, among them “Who did it to me? What happened? And where was I?”
McBride told the 12 jurors and four alternates that the victim remembered the first, second and last episode of sexual assaults Hall allegedly committed.
She also reminded jurors that sexual abuse experts believe that most allegations of sexual abuse are true and, under state jury instruction No. 1190, that conviction of a sexual assault crime may be based on the testimony of a single complaining witness.