Defendant withdraws legal challenge in Ceres death penalty case

Mark Edward Mesiti on Tuesday declined his first opportunity to defend himself in court against allegations of sexually abusing his 14-year-old daughter, Alycia Mesiti, whose body was found buried in the backyard of a Ceres home.

The defendant has chosen to represent himself in court, giving him the ability to make arguments, cross-examine prosecution witnesses and speak directly to a jury. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

Mesiti, 47, withdrew a motion to challenge an indictment charging him with murder and numerous counts of sexual abuse. He decided to drop the motion after Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Thomas Zeff refused to postpone Tuesday’s hearing, telling the defendant there was not sufficient legal grounds to delay the proceeding.

The defendant told the judge that a law clerk had not been able to visit him in jail, because the clerk had to be screened. Mesiti said he was not able to prepare for the hearing, so he would have to withdraw the motion if the hearing wasn’t postponed.

The capital murder case now moves back to Judge Dawna Reeves’ courtroom. She will preside over the case through the trial, which has not been scheduled. A pretrial hearing is scheduled Wednesday.

Authorities on March 25, 2009, discovered the girl’s body buried in the backyard of a home on Alexia Avenue in Ceres, where Mesiti’s family lived when Alycia Mesiti disappeared in August 2006. He had since moved to Southern California.

Mark Mesiti on Tuesday was supposed to challenge evidence the prosecution presented to the grand jury behind closed doors. The August 2013 indictment also charges Mesiti with the sexual abuse of two other girls.

Indictment challenge

Martin Baker, who initially filed the motion on Mesiti’s behalf June 26, appeared in court Tuesday as acting advisory counsel to Mesiti. In Baker’s filed motion, the attorney asked the court to drop the murder charge that claims Mesiti killed his daughter while sexually assaulting her.

Stanislaus County forensic pathologist Sung-Ook Baik told the grand jury that Alycia Mesiti died from mixed-drug intoxication. A toxicology test found morphine and anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs in her system.

The prosecution argues that the girl was drugged, and that images found on computer hard drives show Mesiti photographed himself sexually abusing his daughter while she was unconscious.

Baker argued that toxicologist Bill Posey’s very clear opinion was that none of the drugs were ingested at lethal levels just before death. Baker also argued that hair testing by toxicologist Lee Blum clearly showed that this combination of drugs had been chronically ingested by Alycia Mesiti roughly twenty-five months before her death.

Drug tests

Baker wrote in his motion, “Just because (the) defendant chose to molest Alycia M. on several occasions while she was rendered noncombative by the ingestion of prescription drugs, we cannot ignore the fact that Alycia M. was ingesting those same drugs for at least 12 months when (the) defendant had no access to her.”

In the prosecution’s response filed Aug. 17, Chief Deputy District Attorney Annette Rees argued that Posey testified that this drug combination slows the body’s central nervous system, and that the lack of movement can cause a person to literally drown in their own fluids. The prosecutor also argued that Blum testified that the hair tests cannot determine when the drugs were ingested, only that they were ingested over a period of 18 months to two years.

Rees wrote in her response that Mesiti’s method of drugging girls to commit sexual crimes continued after Alycia Mesiti’s death, when he drugged a 17-year-old girl and videotaped himself sexually assaulting her. The prosecutor also alleges that Mesiti drugged an 8-year-old girl and videotaped himself performing lewd and lascivious acts on her, also after Alycia Mesiti’s death.

This story was originally published November 3, 2015 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Defendant withdraws legal challenge in Ceres death penalty case."