Los Al Death Penalty Case Gets Third Judge in 3 Days Amid Charges of Prosecutorial Misconduct

Another Orange County Superior Court judge was assigned today to oversee a double-murder suspect’s trial, marking the third jurist switch within a week.

Judge James Stotler recused himself on Tuesday from the case of 30-year- old Daniel Wozniak, concluding he could no longer be impartial. Stotler stepped down amid defense allegations of misconduct in the use of jailhouse informants by sheriff’s officials and prosecutors.

The case was then assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, who has been presiding over the case of convicted mass killer Scott Dekraai, who is making similar allegations of misconduct and is represented by the same attorney as Wozniak.

But prosecutors objected to Goethals handling Wozniak’s case, so it was reassigned today to Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley.

Wozniak’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, wants the Orange County District Attorney’s Office off the case -- a remedy he is also seeking in Dekraai’s case -- and has signaled that he will seek to have every judge in the county disqualified from overseeing Wozniak’s death penalty trial.

Sanders is seeking an evidentiary hearing, much like the one he had in Dekraai’s case, that backs up his allegations that sheriff’s officials illegally used jailhouse snitches to solicit incriminating statements from defendants, including Wozniak.

Sanders contends the snitches are using threats of retaliation by the Mexican Mafia if some inmates don’t confess to the informants. At issue in Wozniak’s case is the contact the defendant had with informant Fernando Perez.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy has argued that Perez was not yet working for the government when he chatted up Wozniak and would not be a witness in the trial anyway.

Also at issue in the Wozniak case is an interview the defendant did for the MSNBC program “Lockup.” Sanders alleges the interview was a set up by the defendant’s jailers to make him look bad, but the producer of the program said she was not directed by sheriff’s officials to interview Wozniak.

Last week, Stotler expressed some anxiety at the length of Sanders’ expected motion to recuse the District Attorney in the case, which could be up to 20,000 pages. He also refused to budge on a Feb. 13 trial date, despite Sanders’ claims that he needed more time to file his motion.

The current Feb. 13 trial date is expected to be rescheduled because Murphy has another trial set for the month.

• City News Service