Community Encouraged to Come to Ferrer Sentencing Hearing

From Arnie Klein/April 1, 2014, 12:55 p.m.

All concerned and caring citizens of Humboldt County are invited to come to the sentencing hearing of Juan Ferrer on April 3 to insure fairness in the courtroom.

Ferrer is accused of fatally stabbing Abruzzi chef Douglas Anderson-Jordet on November 25. The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office entered into a plea bargain, reducing the charge against Ferrer to involuntary manslaughter from murder, meaning he will likely only spend two years in prison if this plea is allowed to stand by the court. The family of Douglas Anderson-Jordet has retained attorney Arnie Klein to provide an impact statement. Klein said he will ask Judge Joyce D. Hinrichs to set aside and vacate the plea bargain because “it is a perversion and mockery of what we all know to be justice.”

Family members of Anderson-Jordet were recently quoted in the Mad River Union as saying that the family was “misrepresented and misinformed” by the Deputy DA Elan Firpo, who was representing the DA’s Office when the plea bargain was being arranged. Statements made to the family by the DA’s Office via email and over the phone do not appear consistent with the facts of the case as presented to them by the prosecution.

For concerned citizens who want to attend the hearing, the sentencing is scheduled for April 3 on the 2 p.m. calendar at the Humboldt County Courthouse, 825 5th St, Eureka, in Judge Joyce Hinrichs’s courtroom.