Judge Rules County's Worst Mass Murderer's Rights Violated, Boots OCDA from Case

By Paul Anderson

City News Service

A judge today recused the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the case of a man who potentially faces the death penalty for committing the worst mass killing in the county’s history, on grounds that his rights were violated by the use of jailhouse snitches.

But Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals stayed his ruling -- under which the state Attorney General’s Office would take over the penalty phase of the case -- until March 20 to give the D.A.’s office a chance to appeal.

Goethals laid much of the blame for the violation of Scott Evans Dekraai’s due process rights at the feet of Orange County sheriff’s investigators in the Special Handling Unit, but said he does not believe prosecutors can be trusted to police their actions in this case.

The judge accused some of the investigators of lying in their testimony.

“As the chief law enforcement officer in this county, the district attorney is responsible for the actions of his agents,” Goethals wrote in his ruling. “In this case the evidence demonstrates that some of those agents have habitually ignored the law over and extended period of time to the detriment of this defendant ... The district attorney has a conflict of interest in this case, which has actually deprived this defendant of due process in the past.”

The judge went on to say that Dekraai, 42, cannot get a fair penalty phase trial as a result, if the district attorney is handling it.

“This court does not order the district attorney’s recusal as a punitive measure,” Goethals said, but to ensure Dekraai’s right to a fair judicial process.

“Certain aspects of the district attorney’s performance in this case might be described as a comedy of errors, but for the fact that it has been so sadly deficient,” Goethals said. “There is nothing funny about that. In fact, what makes the situation here especially disconcerting is that this performance has deprived this defendant, the people of Orange County, and especially the community of Seal Beach, of the timely resolution of this case which all parties deserved. And which should have, could have, and likely would have been achieved but for this performance. Justice delayed has resulted in the denial of justice to all concerned here.”

Goethals further ordered that prosecutors, during the penalty phase, will be restricted to telling jurors about the crime, statements the defendant made prior to his booking and how the killings affected the victims.

Goethals denied taking the death penalty off the table. Dekraai’s only other potential sentence is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Goethals previously ruled last August that prosecutors cannot use damning statements Dekraai made to a jailhouse informant during the penalty phase.

Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner said it hasn’t been decided whether to appeal the ruling. He said prosecutors would “absolutely” consider the feelings of some victims’ family members who prefer that the Attorney General take over the case.

Deputy Attorney General Theodore Cropley said his office needed time to consider whether to appeal.

Dekraai will return to court March 20 for a hearing to discuss the status of his case and whether any appeals of the judge’s latest ruling have been filed by that date.

Dekraai’s attorney, Scott Sanders of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, alleged his client cannot get a fair penalty hearing. Prosecutors countered that even if the defense allegations were true, the remedies being sought are not allowed.

At issue is whether some investigators lied about how government informant Fernando Perez was placed in a cell next to Dekraai, where Perez befriended him and heard him “brag” about the Oct. 12, 2011, massacre of his ex-wife and seven others in and around Salon Meritage in Seal Beach.

Last August, Goethals ruled that serious misconduct occurred in the handling of jailhouse informants in the case, but he chalked it up more to negligence than a conspiracy.

After that ruling, however, Sanders became aware of jail records -- known as TRED records -- that he argues contradicts evidence in the first round of evidentiary hearings that indicated a nurse put Perez next to Dekraai’s cell, not sheriff’s officials seeking to gather more damning evidence against the defendant. That could have been a violation of his constitutional rights since he was represented by an attorney.

Sanders also alleges that sheriff’s officials would place some informants into disciplinary isolation -- even though they had done nothing to merit any punishment -- so they could be with other inmates and seek more evidence against them. He also alleged that some informants spur their targets to confess or face the wrath of the Mexican Mafia.

Deputy Seth Tunstall hired a prominent defense attorney to be with him as he testified in the hearings, consulting him once as Sanders pressed him on a seeming contradiction between a statement he made regarding his involvement in a program for jailhouse snitches during a civil suit and his testimony in the Dekraai case.

• City News Service

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