Taxpayers Should Cry

Thank you, Judge Herbert Curtis, for bringing the sad saga of the People vs. Randy Valli to an end at last. Perhaps big girls don’t cry, as Valli’s husband Frankie so famously sang, but Ventura County taxpayers should shed a tear over this long-winded, expensive case.

Judge Curtis last week said no way to Valli’s request for a new trial on the misdemeanor battery charge of which she was found guilty in April.

“This case is really tragic for all of us,” the judge said when presented with the motion for retrial. “I’ve spent more hours researching issues in this case than [in] officer-involved attempted murders. It’s time to wrap it up.”

The new-trial motion argued that one of the jurors had expressed bias against Valli’s defense attorney, who was involved in a high-profile controversy in an unrelated case. The judge ruled that the juror’s statements weren’t strong enough to invalidate the unanimous verdict.

This strange case began last October with a dinner outing by the Vallis, who live in Calabasas, and their friends Frankie and Kay Avalon to the Secret Garden restaurant in Moorpark. According to trial testimony, Randy Valli slapped restaurant owner Sandra “Alex” Sofsky after she asked the diners to leave because they were being loud and rude and had criticized the menu prices. Both Vallis and both Avalons testified that it was Sofsky who was being rude and loud.

Avalon said Sofsky twice tried to push Randy Valli from her chair and at one point picked up Valli’s purse to try to strike Frankie Valli. Frightened by Sofsky’s actions, Frankie Avalon said, the group ran from the restaurant without paying the bill. He later sent $200 and a letter apologizing for not paying.

Randy Valli testified that she never slapped Sofsky but pushed her accidentally while trying to catch her balance after the owner allegedly grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to make her leave the building.

What should have been settled with an apology or, at most, a civil complaint instead mushroomed into a criminal case that eventually involved three prosecutors and an investigator, culminating in a two-week trial with more than a dozen witnesses.

Rather than sending her to prison, Judge Curtis sentenced Valli to one year of probation plus 40 hours of community service.

We suggest an additional sentence of community service in a neighborhood soup kitchen for whoever decided that pursuing this case was a wise use of the scarce time and resources of our overburdened criminal justice system.