South Bay mother, Shannon O’Connor, officially retained a new criminal defense attorney in her high profile case that’s been fraught with court delays. O’Connor, from Los Gatos, has been awaiting trial in jail for nearly three years since her arrest in June 2021. She has never spoken publicly.
In an interview outside court Wednesday, private defense attorney Stephen Prekoski spoke with NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. He said this is “day 1” for him, and that a judge granted his request for 90 days to review evidence.
“That material, I estimate to be somewhere between 30 and 50,000 pages of material, and that is exclusive of the grand jury material that was generated last October, which is also going to be voluminous,” he said. “The next 90 days are going to be about me reading the case and getting the landscape.”
O’Connor initially faced 39 counts and potentially 17 years behind bars for allegedly throwing booze-filled parties for her underaged son and his friends in 2020 and 2021. Prosecutors said she also encouraged some of the teens to have sex, at times non-consensually.
After numerous court delays, prosecutors brought the case to a grand jury. In November, O’Connor was indicted on 67 counts and now faces a maximum of 31 years if found guilty.
“The District Attorney has moved this case away from easy potential resolution,” Prekoski said. “If your intent was to resolve the case for something satisfactory to everyone involved, that's probably not what you would do – so my suspicion is that the writing is on the wall and the case is going to have to be tried.”
Deputy District Attorney Rebekah Wise said prosecutors chose to go to grand jury to move the case forward.
“The reason that we chose to go to grand jury was because there were so many unnecessary delays…The grand jury was a way to ensure that our victims were not retraumatized by this process,” Wise said.
Regarding O’Connor’s case and how it’s been handled, Prekoski said he’s surprised his client has been awaiting trial in jail for so long.
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“She's been held without bail since the moment she was arrested. That is typically reserved for most serious offenders. It's capital murder bail, for instance. She's clearly not a murderer. She is, in fact, I think, very, very unlikely to be a repeat offender. And so, as far as the public safety concerns, I guess what I'm saying is, I'm a little bit surprised that that was the ultimate decision,” Prekoski said.
O’Connor appealed the initial no bail determination, and the issue was litigated up to the State Supreme Court where the decision was upheld. Wise said the issue has been settled.
“The defendant has been held in custody on no bail since her arraignment because she is a threat to public safety, and she is a threat to other individuals and members of the community as well as the victims in this case,” Wise told NBC Bay Area.
O’Connor’s next trial setting hearing is scheduled for June 5.
