Attorneys to Spar Over Alleged Misconduct in Los Al Murder/Dismemberment Trial

A defense attorney and Orange County prosecutor will clash in court Friday over a postponement of a double-murder defendant’s death penalty trial so the defense can pursue evidence of alleged governmental misconduct.

The last time the attorneys met to discuss the trial of Daniel Patrick Wozniak, Orange County Superior Court Judge James Stotler gave the defendant’s attorney until Friday to file a motion to have the Orange County District Attorney’s Office removed from the case and the death penalty taken away as punishment for alleged misconduct claims.

Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who represents Wozniak and Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in Orange County history, filed an abbreviated version of the motion late today and is seeking a delay in the trial.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy filed a response this week slamming Sanders’ tactics, accusing him of filing misconduct claims against nearly every prosecutor he has faced, including two who are now judges.

Those claims from Murphy has prompted Sanders to signal that he will ask every judge in the county to recuse themselves from overseeing Wozniak’s trial.

Sanders wants Stotler to schedule a pretrial hearing for Feb. 27, well past the scheduled Feb. 13 trial date, which has been postponed several times. Sanders wants to file his full motion alleging governmental misconduct on Feb. 27.

In the Dekraai case, Sanders’ motion was more than 500 pages and led to months of evidentiary hearings before another judge, who found misconduct occurred, but that it was due to negligence, not a criminal conspiracy.

However, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals said he limited his analysis to just Dekraai’s case and will soon hold hearings based on newfound evidence that may contradict testimony from sheriff’s officials, who said they had nothing to do with placing Dekraai in a cell next to a government informant to collect damning information from the defendant, which would have violated Dekraai’s constitutional rights because he was by then represented by attorneys.

Informants can listen for incriminating statements but cannot elicit them.

If Stotler refuses Sanders’ request, the attorney said in legal papers he filed this week that he would file a motion to dismiss charges. Sanders said he needs more time to gather evidence regarding Murphy’s claims that the attorney his a serial accuser of prosecutorial misconduct.

Sanders has been pushing prosecutors to provide any correspondence between Murphy and his fellow prosecutors as well as the two judges.

Murphy argued in his response that Sanders’ request is overbroad, that he is not entitled to that information, and that there has been no correspondence anyway.

Murphy also contradicted Sanders’ arguments that his claims all had merit and that the attorney misrepresented what happened in each case.

“Mr. Sanders has accused 16 different prosecutors of misconduct in 13 separate cases,” Murphy said in his motion.

As for Sanders’ complaints that prosecutors have withheld evidence from defense attorneys in violation of the law, Murphy said Sanders has not lived up to a rule that compels him to provide prosecutors with information about expert witnesses in Wozniak’s death penalty trial.

“This case is four and a half years old and we have yet to receive a single meaningful page of discovery from the defense,” Murphy wrote.

“The defense isn’t simply permitted to call opposing counsel, or sitting members of the Orange County bench, because they want to,” Murphy wrote.

“Nor should they be permitted an open-ended hearing where they call an endless procession of sheriff’s deputies from the jail. First, Mr. Sanders must make an offer of proof establishing a relationship between the Sheriff’s Department and the Wozniak prosecution team.”

Sanders has called into question a government informant’s attempts to pump Wozniak for information about his case. At the time the inmate had struck up a friendship with Wozniak he was not working for the government, said Murphy, who has argued that Costa Mesa police are the lead law enforcement agency on the defendant’s case, not the sheriff.

Furthermore, Murphy has no intention of using the statements or putting the informant on as a witness in Wozniak’s trial, he said.

Sanders also cannot establish that an MSNBC producer was acting as a government agent when she decided to interview Wozniak for the network’s “Lockup” series, Murphy argued. The producer has told investigators she picked Wozniak out of a crowd because of his “actor’s grin,” not because she was prodded by sheriff’s officials.

As for Sanders’ intention to seek all of the county’s judges to recuse themselves from the case, Murphy said, “Taken to its logical extreme, Mr. Sanders’ position would mean the Orange County bench would have to recuse itself from any case to which he is assigned.

“The people respectfully submit that if Mr. Sanders believes these proceedings grant him a platform to challenge, intimidate, or embarrass old adversaries, further confuse the record, or force additional delay of this long- overdue trial, he is once again mistaken.”

Sanders countered that Murphy’s claims contain a “desire to denigrate his opponent in the eyes of the court.”

Sanders also alleged that prosecutors have “systematically and over the course of decades denied defendants both constitutionally and statutory-based discovery, while diminishing the significance of their discovery obligations and the impact on criminal defendants.”

Sanders also pointed out that Goethals ruled in the Dekraai motion that many witnesses who testified were “credibility challenged,” including current and former prosecutors as well as law enforcement officers. Goethals chalked up some of the faulty testimony to a “failure of recollection,” but also added “others undoubtedly lied.”

• City News Service