By: Jim Rosenberg The lawyer for the Rev. Donald W. Kimball, the inactive Roman Catholic priest who recently pleaded not guilty to assaulting
San Francisco Chronicle photographer Penni Gladstone outside a Sonoma County courtroom in April (
E&P, April 15), has asked that the district attorney's office withdraw from the case.
Public defender Michael Perry said he filed a motion for recusal on Wednesday because two witnesses are employees of the district attorney's office. Though it would not necessarily mean a change of venue, Perry said a recusal would require that the district attorney of another county or the state attorney general's office take over prosecution of the case.
The motion will be heard next month. No trial date has been set.
Kimball is to be tried on charges of felony assault and battery for allegedly pushing Gladstone's camera into her face, then grabbing and tossing the camera, which was said to have struck a
Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reporter. Asked if his client pled not guilty to having committed an assault or to the charge of felony assault, Perry said Kimball "pled not guilty ... to all charges."
"There's ... a dispute as to what actually happened," said Perry, adding that a jury will hear witnesses offer conflicting versions of the incident.
Kimball, who once had a youth ministry, was convicted in April of two counts of felony lewd conduct involving a 13-year-old girl in 1981 and acquitted of raping a 14-year-old girl a few years earlier.
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