DELAYED AGAIN

If there’s one thing you can count on in the case of Jerry Cox v. Mariposa County, it’s you can’t count on anything.

Filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California in August 2019, the case has dragged along all of these years.

And will again.

An order filed last week and signed by Judge Lee H. Rosenthal has pushed the case back once again.

Scheduled to go to trial in just a few of weeks, the case will now be delayed until September following the order from the judge.

As it stands, a docket call for the case is scheduled via Zoom for Tuesday, Sept. 1 with the trial scheduled to begin one week later on Sept. 8.

If that happens, which in this case, is anything but a given.

Even where the trial will take place has not been scheduled, according to the document. It says a trial “will be held in a courtroom and at a time to be determined” on Sept. 8.

Other developments

There have also been other developments in the case. For one, the magistrate judge in the case has retired. In federal court, the magistrate judge, in this case Barbara McAuliffe, recently retired and now the court is waiting for another magistrate judge to be appointed.

The magistrate judge handles a lot of the preliminary work and motions in federal court while the senior judge, Rosenthal, will handle the trial.

For now, the court has assigned Judge Sheila K. Oberto of Fresno as the “temporarily reassigned” magistrate “until a new magistrate judge takes over,” according to a document filed Jan. 8.

According to Glenda Hassan, case manager to Judge Rosenthal, it will be Rosenthal who handles the trail.

Which raises another issue.

Rosenthal, who handled a lengthy hearing last September involving all of the parties, is a senior judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston. It remains unclear, but probably likely, if Rosenthal will be traveling to Fresno to conduct the trial or if it will be held in Texas.

If that’s not enough, there’s still more.

In a filing dated Jan. 12, a “joint stipulation” requesting a continuance of the trial was signed by all of the parties involved, including the attorney representing Cox.

In that filing, it was learned that Fred Geonetta of Oakland, who is representing Cox, suffered a stroke on Oct. 21, 2025, which the document states has hindered his ability to work on the case.

“On Oct. 21, 2025, plaintiffs’ lead attorney suffered a stroke that significantly impaired motor control of his dominant arm and hand and substantially limited his ability to engage in professional activities, including preparation for trial, for an extended period thereafter. Counsel’s recovery is ongoing and remains incomplete as of the date of this stipulation,” states one paragraph in the filing.

The order included all of the lawyers in the case. Those are Geonetta, AnnaMarie Van Hoesen for defendant Ashley Harris and Brian T. Chu, the attorney for Mariposa County as well as former Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office deputy William Atkinson and Wesley Smith, a current deputy working for the sheriff’s office.

All of those players, and many more, will be a part of the trial in which Cox is seeking damages for what he says were a bogus rape case against him as well as a receivership action by the county that resulted in Cox losing his 437 acre Bison Creek Ranch located on CYA Road north of the airport in Mt. Bullion.

Background

The federal case involving Cox actually stems from those two Mariposa County Superior Court cases that date back nearly a decade.

It was in 2016 when Cox was arrested by the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office on sex-related felony charges.

The charges were based on interviews with Harris, the woman Cox met on the dating site farmersonly.com. Harris and Cox first met in Fresno and he admits to having consensual sex with the woman.

From there, Harris later came to Cox’s ranch where she stayed for several weeks. It was there she claimed Cox locked her in a room and repeatedly forced her to have sex.

When Harris left the ranch with another woman, they first went to a local bar and drank several beers before going to the local office of the California Highway Patrol where Harris reported she had been raped.

Because it was alleged to happen on Cox’s ranch, the CHP immediately contacted the sheriff’s office, which began an investigation.

That investigation eventually led to the arrest of Cox and the information was given to former Mariposa County District Attorney Thomas Cooke, who died last year.

Not only did Cooke take the case, he added felony counts and, in total, Cox faced 16 such counts and was facing life in prison. He spent several weeks in the local jail before being able to bond out.

For more than a year, Cooke pursued the case against Cox. He also allegedly asked prosecutors in surrounding counties to take the case as his own personnel would not. None of them did.

Also during this time, phone records indicated that Harris had sent and received 166 text messages during the period of time she claimed to be held hostage at Cox’s ranch. Some of those were to Cox, one including a seductive photo of Harris suggesting she was waiting for him to return to the ranch.

Eventually, in a low-key hearing, Cooke dropped all 16 felony counts against Cox. That hearing in Mariposa County Superior Court lasted less than five minutes and former Judge Dana Walton agreed to drop the charges. That was on Aug. 14, 2017.

Cooke would only say he didn’t feel he could prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

It was learned the prior June, Harris testified in another case she had never been a victim of sexual assault or abuse. At a later point when Cooke was running for reelection, he did state on video at Happy Burger Diner that was the reason he dropped the charges against Cox.

On top of all of this, during this same period of time, the county was pursuing a code violation case against Cox.

It was March 13, 2017, when the county brought a motion to the Mariposa County Superior Court to place the property in receivership based on 101 code violations at the ranch.

That county has claimed since the outset the rape case and the code violation case were unrelated.

But former federal Judge Anthony Ishii, who first handled the federal case but has since retired, wrote a lengthy statement and said, in his opinion, there was little doubt the county was co-mingling cases.

During a hearing last year, Judge Rosenthal made a point to bring up Ishii’s opinion when the county continued to claim there was no connection between the cases. It is highly likely that will be a central focus for Cox’s attorney when the case does go to trial.

Another aspect

That hearing in September also produced another aspect to this case. At the conclusion of the hearing, Rosenthal told the lawyers she expected to narrow down the issues in the case and make that part of her written ruling.

That hearing was, in some ways, standard procedure when the parties request “summary judgment” from the court. That means they are asking the judge, based on their arguments, to come to a decision before a trial.

Because it is standard procedure, in many cases full summary judgments are not granted, though many times a judge may narrow the scope of the case, which is where it seemed Rosenthal was heading.

But before that can happen, or any type of order, the judge has requested the legal teams write briefs in order for her to “aid in its resolution of the issues presented in them” during the hearing.

She based her order on a case that was referenced by Harris’s lawyers in that September hearing

That case is Heck v. Humphrey, a 1994 case that involved an involuntary manslaughter conviction in Indiana.

Judge Rosenthal requested the lawyers, by Jan. 23, submit a brief of no more than 12 pages addressing several issues related to Heck.

One issue is whether Heck “applies to civil suits,” she wrote.

Second, whether Cox’s claims “necessarily imply the validity” of the state-court orders that led to Cox’s eviction and sale of the property.

Third, “if some part of the plaintiffs’ claims do not imply the invalidity of the state court orders in the receivership proceedings, whether the statute of limitations bars those part of their claims.”

Lastly, if some parts of the plaintiffs’ claims to not imply the invalidity of the state court orders in the receivership proceedings, whether the plaintiff suffered damages.

The judge asked Cox’s attorneys to file a 12-page brief answering those issues and requested the county’s attorney and Harris’s attorney, “to the extent possible,” file a single brief of no more than 12 pages.

It appears likely the timeline for those filings will be pushed back given the fact the court has allowed for an extension until September for the trial to begin based on the medical condition of Geonetta.

In the joint filing by all of the attorneys requesting an extension, they did address the request by the judge.

“Resolution of the summary judgment motions is likely to materially affect the scope, issues and length of the trial,” the order states.

Moving forward

What’s at stake in this case appears to be large when it comes to the county. Cox’s attorneys have not stated in any document how much in damages they are seeking, but most speculate in could be in the millions of dollars.

For several years now, county officials have refused to release information about how much of the taxpayers’ money it has spent on this case. Although state law does allow for government entities to withhold that information until a case is resolved, it does not prevent county supervisors from releasing the information.

With lawyers fees and many other expenses, it is likely the county has already spent a huge sum of money on the case. The court docket related to this case is lengthy and involves reams of documents. There have also been depositions taken in the case by the county.

Cox’s lawyers, too, have taken many depositions, including those of Cooke, former Mariposa County Planning Department Director Sarah Williams, former Mariposa County Building Department Director Mike Kinslow, Atkins, Smith and many others.

Some of those depositions have been made public when they were released to the court to be presented as evidence at trial.

Probably the most damming, for the county, came from Williams and Kinslow.

In the case of Williams, she admitted she followed the advice of the county’s lawyers when claiming that Cox had become aggressive and appeared to be a threat to local officials. She testified under oath that though Cox had grown frustrated with the code compliance process, she did not believe he was a physical threat.

She also told the lawyers, while under oath, she did not personally inspect all 101 of the alleged code violations and relied on other experts for that information.

Kinslow went so far as to say the county had to install stiffer security measures because of Cox. A public records request by this newspaper produced extensive information about security upgrades and there were no references to Cox.

Another major point brought forth by Cox’s lawyers concerned a bridge at the ranch. County officials had included that bridge as part of the 101 code violations. However, it was later revealed the bridge is actually owned and maintained by CAL FIRE.

The local superior court did allow the receivership to go through and the property was taken and sold at a value considerably under its assessed valuation. That property was sold again last year to someone in Southern California for just under $1million.

The advertisement for the property indicated the cabin and other buildings on the property were not habitable. It appears since it was first taken from Cox, the property has basically sat empty and deteriorated from the elements.