Carl Tice was guilty of gassing an employee of a jail after throwing semen at a Riverside County therapist, the Court of Appeal ruled March 14.
The appellate ruling establishes that county employees are considered employees of a jail when interpreting the meaning of Penal Code Section 243.9.
The law establishes that gassing, which includes throwing human excrement or bodily fluids, at a detention facility employee counts as aggravated battery and is publishable by two to four years.
Tice was charged with three counts of battery and one count of battery on a detention facility employee by gassing under Section 243.9. He challenged the last count, arguing that the therapist he had thrown his semen at was a county employee, not an employee of the Cois Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta.
The Court of Appeal disagreed, finding that all county employees working in a jail are protected by the law.
“(W)e conclude that a person employed by the county to work within that jail is an ’employee of the local detention facility’ within the meaning (the law.) In other words, when a county employee is assigned to work in a local detention facility operated by the county and is paid by the same county government that pays all other employees at that facility, that employee may be fairly classified as an employee of that detention facility,” the ruling said.
The therapist had met Tice for sessions three times a week for about six months.
Tice had claimed the substance was actually milk. Tice, who represented himself in the trial, said he had declined the therapist’s sessions, and that the therapist was harassing him.
He was convicted with a factual finding that the substance thrown was not milk.
In 2018, a West Valley Detention Center inmate had been convicted of the same crime when he threw a milk carton of urine at a sheriff’s deputy.
Case No. RIF1704920/SWF1907319
Appellate Case No. E077504
Riverside Superior Judge Bernard Schwartz presided.
Bruce Kotler represented Tice by appointment.
Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, Associate Justice Richard Fields wrote the opinion, which Justices Carol Codrington and Frank Menetrez joined.
Read the ruling here.
