Jackson Bell
A Pasadena Superior Court judge postponed a settlement Monday for a
former Crescenta Valley High School teacher accused of secretly
filming female students.
Rogelio Gallardo, 34, was ready to settle his case during a
pretrial conference Monday, but Judge Teri Schwartz pushed his plea
back to Friday because the attorneys failed to provide her a maximum
sentence for Gallardo's alleged crimes.
"I'm not getting the cooperation I need here," Schwartz said to
the attorneys. "I'm not going to have an open plea unless there is
some degree of certainty."
Gallardo faces 15 felony and 20 misdemeanor counts including
possessing of child pornography, disorderly conduct, invasion of
privacy with a camera and annoying or molesting children. Since many
of the counts are for the same alleged crime, Gallardo's penalty
could vary depending on whether he pleads guilty to the felony or
misdemeanor version, his attorney Winston Kevin McKesson said.
"This is a technical problem," McKesson said. "Basically, if you
are charged with two different crimes that have arisen in the same
incident, you can only be charged for one of them."
Gallardo was arrested May 20 on suspicion of surreptitiously
recording the girls in a faculty restroom as they were changing into
smocks for his ceramics class, police said. Officers haven't been
able to confirm if Gallardo posted any of the photos on the Internet.
Gallardo was cited and released several days after the arrest,
police said. Glendale Unified School District placed him on
administrative leave. He was arrested again on June 24 after more
serious allegations were uncovered.
He is free on $300,000 bail, police said. If Gallardo pleads
guilty, an evaluation will be done to recommend whether he should
serve time in state prison and for how long, prosecutors said. His
maximum possible sentence for the felony counts is 13 years in
prison.
Several of Gallardo's former students and their parents attended
the hearing. Doug Ward, the stepfather of one of Gallardo's victims,
described him as a well-liked teacher who used his goodwill to
violate the trust of his students.
"I want to see this guy go to jail for as long as possible," Ward
said. "As an educator myself, what he has done is reprehensible. He's
a wolf in sheep's clothing."
