UPDATE, MARCH 25, 3:15 P.M.: The maximum penalty Gaylord Tootsie Daney faced for a misdemeanor possession of less than an ounce of marijuana was a $100 fine.
No jail time is given for the pot rap, but the 46-year-old Santa Ana man is being sent to state prison for two years.
That's what happens when you are found guilty of punching and injuring the public defender representing you in the cannabis case.
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The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Daney became so enraged he could not get his female defender removed from his pot case last year that he punched her square in the face, breaking her glasses and causing her to fall back and hit the back of her head on a lobby wall inside the Westminster courthouse.
Daney pleaded guilty today to one
felony count each of assault on a government official, aggravated
assault and battery with serious bodily injury, with sentencing
enhancements for personally inflicting great bodily injury.
By the way, his original public defender asked to be taken off the pot case, and a new lawyer was assigned at no cost to the assaulter.
Of course, you'd have a perpetually shitty attitude and look on your face, too, if someone named you Gaylord Tootsie Daney.
ORIGINAL POST, MARCH 29, 2010, 8:40 A.M.: 45-year-old Gaylord Tootsie Daney–yes, Tootsie–is alleged to have broken two bedrock rules of polite society. That's not a reference to the marijuana possession and, now, felony assault charges against the 45-year-old Santa Ana man. For if the newest accusations against Daney are true, he both hit a girl and someone wearing glasses. Fo' shame!
Daney was in court Wednesday to defend himself against a Dec. 31 citation for possessing marijuana.
Happy New Year!
Having earlier been appointed a female attorney from the Orange County Public Defender's Office, Daney requested she be fired a day before his scheduled trial. The motion was denied.
While standing in a hallway at the West Justice Center in Westminster on Wednesday, Daney is alleged to have punched the lady lawyer square in her face, breaking her glasses, causing her head to hit a wall and inflicting minor injuries.
She fell to the floor and sustained cuts and bruises to her face, according to prosecutors.
So much for marijuana mellowing you out.
Then again, Daney had been charged with possession, not consumption.
Ironically, his ex-lawyer may require medical marijuana. That's right: ex. Daney won: she's out.
But what a heavy price to pay, because beside still being up on holding weed, Daney has been charged with felony assault causing injury. He has entered a not guilty plea.
April 8 is his Daney's next court date. His new court-appointed lawyer ought to consider wearing padded headgear.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.