LAKEPORT, Calif. – The jury in the trial of two brothers from San Francisco accused of being involved in a 2013 home invasion robbery returned with its verdicts on Monday, giving each of the men on trial a very different outcome.
The five-man, seven-woman jury found Dion Andre Davis III, 27, guilty of 14 felony counts against him, but deadlocked on two counts of attempted murder in the June 26, 2013, home invasion at the Clearlake Oaks residence of Ronnie and Janeane Bogner, and their adult son, Jacob.
The counts Davis was convicted of were armed robbery, burglary, assault with a firearm on Jacob Bogner, assault with a semiautomatic firearm on Bogner, mayhem on Bogner, grand theft of a firearm, vehicle theft, vandalism, making threats of violence to Clearlake Police Lt. Tim Celli, assault with a semiautomatic firearm on Celli, assault with a deadly weapon on Celli, negligent discharge of a firearm, accessory to a robbery or burglary, and conspiracy to commit a robbery or residential burglary.
The jury also found true 21 special allegations for use of a firearm, inflicting great bodily injury on Bogner and entering an inhabited dwelling in concert with others.
When he's sentenced on May 20, Davis is facing a sentence of an estimated 50 years to life, according to District Attorney Don Anderson. Davis will be held without bail until sentencing.
“I wish we'd prevailed,” Bill Conwell, Davis' attorney, said after court.
Conwell said by the time of sentencing he expects to have prepared a motion for a new trial.
As for Davis' brother, 30-year-old Gregory Pierre Elarms, 30, the jury deadlocked on all 10 of the counts against him, a verdict welcomed by his attorney, Doug Ferguson.
Elarms had been charged with robbery, burglary, two firearms assaults on Bogner, two firearm assaults on Celli, grand theft, vehicle theft, vandalism and conspiracy.
“I'm pleased that he got a hung jury,” Ferguson said afterward.
Ferguson had raised doubt about Elarms – who was not arrested until a year after the crime occurred – even being in the county at the time.
However, Ferguson said the case against his client is still up in the air, as the District Attorney's Office is considering retrying Elarms, who is remaining in custody at the Lake County Jail.
Elarms' new trial was set tentatively by retired visiting Judge James Garbolino – on his first trial in Lake County – for April 29, with a status conference set for March 17.
Anderson said he's still contemplating exactly what course to take with Elarms, noting that the margin of not guilty to guilty votes in the deadlocked jury – 7 to 5 – was a “pretty large split.”
In an interview with Lake County News on Monday afternoon, when asked if he was surprised by the verdict, Anderson replied, “No, not at all,” noting that intent is very difficult to prove in attempted murder cases – even harder than in actual murders.
Janeane Bogner said she and her son were unhappy about the deadlock on the attempted murder charges, and with the mistrial for Elarms.
“We're really happy with everything else,” she said, thanking the jury for its work.
Regarding Elarms, “It kinda makes you have a knot in your stomach that either you have to do this again or he’s going to be out there doing this to someone else,” she said.
Davis and Elarms are among five individuals – along with Sean Foss, Tyler Gallon and Jenaya Jelinek, Davis' girlfriend who drove the getaway car – who police said carried out the home invasion robbery.
They were alleged to have arrived at the Bogners' home that morning, forcing their way into the house past Janeane Bogner, whose young grandchildren were in the house at the time.
Jacob Bogner identified Davis as the man who shot him in the left leg and then pistol-whipped him as the others searched the house for money and guns that Foss – a former employee of the Bogners' business Weed Tech – claimed the family had. Foss also is facing trial in the case.
The four men and one woman would take $121 in cash, two old handguns and a pellet gun, and Janeane Bogner's 2002 Cadillac Escalade and flee, later pushing the Escalade down an embankment along Sulphur Bank Drive between Clearlake Oaks and Clearlake.
While they were driving through Clearlake in a Chevy Malibu Jelinek said Davis had bought her, they were spotted by Clearlake Police Lt. Tim Celli, who pursued them to the area of 16th Avenue.
There, the men fled the car, with Davis shooting four rounds at Celli from the .40 caliber Glock pistol he used to shoot Jacob Bogner. The prosecution said the bullets – traveling at chest height – missed Celli by a matter of 5 feet.
Police took Jelinek into custody first, pulling her from the car, while the men – with the exception of Elarms – were arrested following a standoff with a SWAT team at the home of a relative of Davis. Elarms would be arrested the following July.
Testimony in Davis' and Elarms' trial began at the end of January, with closing arguments wrapping up on Thursday and the jurors being given the case to begin deliberations that afternoon.
The verdicts
Court convened at about 11 a.m. Monday in order to render the verdicts. At that point, Garbolino had been informed that the jurors had deadlocked on all charges relating to Elarms.
However, before Garbolino would take the verdicts for Davis, he and the prosecution and defense had to discuss a matter out of the jury's presence relating to verdict forms.
“It appears that the jury was not given a proper form to fill out for the charges that have been alleged,” he said, explaining that the wrong wording was on the forms for nine of the charges.
He was concerned that had the forms been worded differently, it might have changed the jury's deliberations.
Anderson told Lake County News that it was essentially a clerical error, from cutting and pasting into different documents, that had slipped by everyone – his staff, defense attorneys and the judge.
It was agreed upon by the prosecution – Anderson and Deputy District Attorney Daniel Flesch – as well as Conwell that new forms be given to the jury.
When the jury was brought in, Garbolino informed them of the wrong language on the forms – including, in the case of the burglary verdict, the use of language relating to the attempted murder charge.
“That makes a difference,” said one male juror.
Garbolino then apologized, dismissed them for lunch and asked them to return at 1 p.m., at which time they finished filling out and reviewing the forms and were back in court for the verdict reading within 15 to 20 minutes.
When court reconvened in the afternoon, only Conwell and Davis were sitting at the defense table.
Jury foreman Steve Merchen, questioned by Garbolino, confirmed the jury had deadlocked on the two counts alleging the attempted murders of Jacob Bogner and Tim Celli. Jurors indicated that the deadlock was five voting guilty, seven voting not guilty.
Garbolino declared mistrials on those two counts, which Anderson later asked to have dismissed.
The judge then went over each of the 14 main charges and 21 special allegations to confirm the jury's verdicts.
Garbolino also raised the issue of a male juror who had been replaced by an alternate during deliberations. Before the original juror was dismissed, the jury had reached guilty pleas on Davis for the vehicle theft and vandalism charges. When the alternate was subbed in on Friday morning, the jury had to begin deliberations again.
During the verdict hearing, the court attempted – but failed – to reach the former juror by phone, and Garbolino said he would prepare an order for the man to come to court on April 1 for the purpose of speaking to him about the case.
At that point in the proceedings, Anderson asked that the attempted murder charges against Davis be dismissed, which Garbolino did.
The judge then thanked the jurors for their service in a trial that he acknowledged had absorbed a few months of their time. “It has not been easy,” he said.
The jury backstory
Juror Jack Cowan told Lake County News following the verdict reading that once the jury began deliberations, it started by listening to the 911 call that Janeane and Jacob Bogner made.
They also had the court reporter read back to them Gallon's testimony at trial, which Anderson said his investigators had been able to verify. Cowan said he had issues with the credibility of Gallon, who himself still faces trial in the case.
Regarding the deadlocks on the attempted murder charges, Cowan said he had questioned what Davis' actual intent was, and if he had meant to kill Jacob Bogner and Tim Celli. That issue, he said, was key to the inability for the jury to reach verdicts on those charges.
And while Cowan said he believes in his heart that Elarms was part of the home invasion, he said the evidence wasn't there to convince all 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.
He said Janeane Bogner's misidentification of another man – San Franciscan Dexter Currington – in an early photo lineup didn't come into play in the jury's decisions related to Elarms.
Also not a factor in the Elarms case, according to Cowan, was the testimony of sheriff's Det. Doug Dahmen, who the defense asserted – and the prosecution acknowledged – made several key mistakes in the investigation, including not following up on the alibi evidence given to him by Currington, who was arrested in September 2013.
Currington would remain in the Lake County Jail until March 2014, when he and his lawyer David Markham directly approached the District Attorney's Office with the evidence of his innocence. The charges were then dropped.
Outside of the courtroom, Cowan – who said that overall serving as a juror had been “a very good experience” – found out from Anderson that Davis had a previous prison term for robbery. That was information that the prosecution hadn't been able to disclose to the jury during trial.
Cowan said the jurors all had gotten along well during the weeks of testimony. It wasn't until deliberations started that the juror who later left began to have issues getting along with the others.
On Friday morning, after the man didn't appear, Cowan said they knew he wasn't going to come back. The alternate was then subbed in.
A case management conference for Foss and Gallon is set for April 1, said Anderson. He said he has made an offer to Foss' attorney, with Foss expected to go on trial next.
Anderson said he has not yet made an offer to Gallon.
On Monday night, Janeane Bogner said it amazed her to think that an incident that took only 15 minutes could have affected so many people, and all of it based on someone's stupid idea.
“I just hope it doesn't happen to somebody else,” she said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
