Defense Endangered Witnesses in Los Al Double Murder Trial, Prosecution Alleges

By PAUL ANDERSON

A hearing will be held today for a judge to consider a demand by Orange County prosecutors for a full redaction of personal identifying information of witnesses, victims and jailhouse informants from a lengthy legal document seeking to dismiss the death penalty as a possible punishment for an accused double murderer.

Prosecutors have raised the issue in the case against Daniel Patrick Wozniak, who is seeking to have prosecutors thrown off the case and to have the death penalty dismissed based on allegations of outrageous governmental misconduct in the use of jailhouse snitches.

Wozniak is accused of shooting a friend, Samuel Herr, after luring him to the Los Alamitos Joint Forces military base in May 2010.

Prosecutors allege he then used the victim’s cell phone to trick another friend, Juri Kibuishi, into going to Herr’s Costa Mesa apartment, where the defendant gunned her down and then made it look like Herr killed her during a sexual assault. Wozniak then allegedly returned to the base to dismember Herr.

He allegedly committed the crimes to steal from the victims to pay for his wedding and honeymoon, prosecutors said.

The motion to be considered today accuses Wozniak’s attorneys of exposing witnesses, victims and informants to danger by having their personal identifying information available in a 754-page motion with 26,000 pages of exhibits.

Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders has defended the way the motion was filed on Aug. 26 in previous hearings, asserting he intended to file it under seal. Sanders, however, did not seek the sealing of the exhibits until Aug. 28, according to court records.

On Aug. 31, the files, which were in multiple binders and boxes, were taken into Orange County Superior Court John Conley’s courtroom from a clerk’s office in the Central Justice Center, where the public could request the documents. A hearing on the request to seal some of the exhibits was held on Sept. 2.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy argued in a brief filed Thursday that the documents include Social Security numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, driver’s licenses numbers, home addresses and other personally identifying information of defendants, witnesses and victims of violent crimes.

Murphy argued “the entirety of this information was unsealed and available to the public for seven full days before the defense took any action.”

Both sides of the case will argue today how much needs to be redacted from the documents.

Sanders told City News Service that the prosecution’s complaints are “the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard... This is a non-story created by the District Attorney’s Office.”

City News Service