Judge chides sheriff, turns over more documents in Orange County jailhouse informant case
In March of 2015, California judge Thomas Goethals removed the entire district attorney’s office of Orange County from a high-profile murder case, finding a “chronic failure” to turn over discoverable evidence.
Last Friday, the same judge ordered 250 to 300 more documents to be turned over to the defense, the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times reported. Goethals said the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has repeatedly failed to cooperate with discovery requests over three and a half years, and “it’s time for some compliance.”
The ruling came in the case of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass murderer in Orange County history. Dekraai was convicted of killing eight people, including his ex-wife and multiple strangers, at a salon in Seal Beach because he was angry about a child custody case. Dekraai’s defense attorney, public defender Scott Sanders, later uncovered evidence that jailers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had deliberately placed him next to a jailhouse informant, possibly to strengthen the case for a death sentence. This is a violation of defendants’ rights under a Supreme Court ruling from the 1960s, Massiah v. U.S.
Sanders explained his evidence in a 500-page filing that led to the recusal of the entire DA’s office. (A California appeals court heard an appeal of that ruling earlier this month.) Among other things, he said, there was evidence that DAs knew about the jailers’ misdeeds but refused to turn over evidence, in violation of Brady v. Maryland.
Goethals’s new ruling concerns a new set of records that became part of the case this year, from the “Special Handling” deputies that handled informants. Despite a three-year-old order to turn over records, the Register reported, the sheriff’s department turned over certain records from 2008 to 2013 only this year. Goethals said he’d release 250 to 300 pages of those records, with redactions he made himself to protect the safety of deputies and inmates.
That set of notes, which the sheriff’s department reportedly did not fully redact, also includes a note that the Special Handling log would be discontinued and a new document created for “important information.” That and other evidence suggests that the Special Handling log was replaced in 2013, according to Sanders, though no evidence from the replacement was turned over.
Deputy District Attorney Dan Wagner said in court that his office had looked through thousands of files without finding any new log. Deputy County Counsel Elizabeth Pejeau told the court the sheriff is conducting a diligent search for it. Goethals did not appear to believe this.
“If the Orange County sheriff was sincerely trying to unravel this mystery, I can’t see why we haven’t gotten to the bottom of it,” Goethals said, according to the Register. “It seems as if the sheriff believes that she can have documents and she can decide whether or not she can turn them over. That’s not the sheriff’s place.”
Goethals ordered the sheriff’s department not to destroy any such successor log, and scheduled a Nov. 10 hearing to revisit the issue.
Goethals has been critical of sheriff’s deputies in this case before. His 2015 recusal ruling stopped short of saying the DA’s office had done anything wrong, but said two sheriff’s deputies lied under oath. Those deputies have not been fired, though they and some colleagues have begun taking the Fifth when asked to testify in certain cases that could be related to the use of jailhouse informants. This has led to early release, new trials, new hearings and lax sentences in certain cases.
