SANTA CRUZ, CA — A 54-year old Scott’s Valley, CA, engineer currently faces up to one year in prison for the possession of an unregistered deadly weapon in his vehicle — a tire thumper.
On the night of Oct. 7, Paul Jensen was driving from his home into the city of Scott’s Valley when he noticed a California Highway Patrol car behind him. Becoming self-conscious like many people do in such situations, Jensen did a quick check to make sure that he wasn’t breaking any traffic laws. Realizing that his seatbelt was off, he reached over to put it on, but he stopped short and figured that if he got caught, he would just pay his ticket and learn his lesson the hard way.
As Jensen turned into a gas station, the CHP vehicle’s lights lit up. After Jensen parked his car in the back of the gas station, the CHP officer approached his front passenger window and found a tire thumper laying on the floor of his car. Leaning in to grab the tool, the officer told Jensen that he was in possession of an illegal weapon — a “billy club,” the officer said.
Although Jensen insisted that he only kept it in his car because it was a handy tool for checking tire pressure, the officer handcuffed and arrested Jensen on felony charges under Penal Code 12020 and took him to the Santa Cruz County Jail.
“I never thought of using the tire thumper as a weapon,” Jensen said. “The idea that the government now thinks of me as a criminal embarrasses me, humiliates me and angers me.”
In an effort to fight the felony charges against him, Jensen hired Kate Wells, an attorney who had handled other similar cases concerning Penal Code 12020. The difference, however, between her past clients and Jensen is that they had actually admitted that the objects in question were, in fact, weapons that they kept for self-defense purposes. Jensen flatly denied that the tool he kept in his car was meant to be used as a weapon.
“I’ve been waiting to challenge this law for some time,” Jensen’s attorney said. Regarding Jensen’s fate, she hopes that the case will be thrown out during the pretrial proceedings, but if Jensen does have to go to court, Wells says that she is ready.
To challenge the law, Jensen and Wells will be filing a demurrer due to their belief that the law is overly broad and vague.
“We think the law is unconstitutional as written and applied,” Wells said.
The vagueness, according to Jensen and Wells, has to do with the fact that of the 33 weapons mentioned in Penal Code 12020, about one-third of them have no definition in the code at all. Some of these non-defined weapons include a metal replica hand grenade, a sap, a blackjack, a sandclub and a billy.
Even though the code doesn’t define what a billy is, Jensen’s tire thumper was identified as one. Because of this, the code says that Jensen, if found guilty of illegal possession, must be punished by being imprisoned “in a county jail not exceeding one year or in the state prison.”
Due to the vagueness of the law and the circumstances surrounding the arrest, Wells believes that a clash in personalities between Jensen and the officer may also be partly at fault for the arrest. When Jensen was first pulled over, he had asked the officer to just give him a ticket for the seatbelt violation so that he could move on. This apparently was too much for the officer who immediately found a reason to arrest him.
“Jensen didn’t pass the attitude test with the cop,” said Wells. “I think it’s clear that she was exercising her discretion to be vengeful.”
Wells doesn’t believe that the demur action will win in the Santa Cruz Superior Court, but she is ready to take it to the next level if she has to — the Sixth District Appellate Court. However, she does believe that Jensen will be acquitted by his peers if the case does actually go to trial.
And Jensen needs to be acquitted soon. He has already accrued costs of more than $3,000 due to towing charges, lost work time, and attorney charges, and the case hasn’t been good for his health either. “My sleep’s gone to Hell,” Jensen said. “And I’ve doubled my smoking.”
For now, though, all Jensen can do is wait. However, Wells is confident that this episode in her client’s life will soon become just a bad memory of the past.
