Judge Refuses to Remove Attorneys in Priest’s Case

A Sonoma County Superior Court judge decided against a motion Friday to remove prosecutors in the case of inactive priest Don Kimball, who is charged with assaulting a news photographer.

Deputy Public Defender Michael Perry filed the motion in June to have the Sonoma County prosecutors replaced with attorneys from another county because two people who work in prosecutor’s office testified at the preliminary hearing.

Kimball, 58, faces a felony assault charge for allegedly shoving a camera in a San Francisco Chronicle photographer’s face in April at Kimball’s sexual assault trial. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old girl in 1981.