OC Has Violated Inmate Rights For Decades: ACLU Suit

SEAL BEACH, CA — The ACLU Wednesday sued Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens over the county's jailhouse snitch program, a move that could jeopardize decades of high-profile convictions.

If the ACLU and the nonprofit People For Ethical Operation of Prosecutors and Law Enforcement (P.E.O.P.L.E) win the lawsuit, the county would have to cease it's controversial jailhouse informant program and submit to independent monitoring. Most notably, the county would also have to notify affected convicts that their rights were violated, giving them an opportunity to try to overturn their convictions. The scandal, which was unearthed during the Seal Beach mass murder trial, spared the county's worst mass murderer from the death penalty and led to multiple other convictions being overturned.

The suit alleges the OC criminal justice system is "in disrepair and disrepute." (Read the full complaint below).

According to a release from the ACLU Southern California's Staff Attorney, Brendan Hamme, the practice of jailhouse informing has been in place since the 1980s. Informants have undergone threats of violence and murder in order to coerce confessions and other information, Hamme said.

“By running this massive, underground jailhouse informant scheme, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department are cheating Orange County out of justice,” Hamme said.

“They have won countless convictions based on unreliable information— the results of jailhouse informants’ coercion of defendants — that they passed off in court as solid, sound, and legal. Hiding the facts of the coercion from the defense is just one of the many ways they broke the law and endangered justice.”

While the OCDA's office had yet to be served the lawsuit as of this report, spokesperson Michelle Van Der Linden had this to say:

"We all know, the ACLU is against most things the Orange County District Attorney stands for, including enjoining gang members from terrorizing neighborhoods, keeping sexually violent predators civilly committed, and pursuing the death penalty against the worst of the worst murderers," she wrote in a response, adding, "the use of informants has been consistently upheld by the United States Supreme Court, which has pronounced, 'The informer is a vital part of society’s defensive arsenal.'"

According to Van Der Linden, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office will continue to lawfully use all evidence lawfully developed by local law enforcement and continue on our Mission, which is “to enhance public safety and welfare and create a sense of security in the community through the vigorous enforcement of criminal and civil laws in a just, honest, efficient, and ethical manner.”

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has said that she has cooperated fully with the California Attorney General and the Department of Justice investigations into the use of informants in the Orange County Jail, Carrie Braun, spokesperson for the OCSD told Patch.

"Regarding the lawsuit filed today by the ACLU, the OCSD does not comment on pending litigation," Braun said.

The jailhouse informant scheme came to a head four years ago in the Seal Beach mass murder trial of Scott Dekraii, currently serving a life sentence for the infamous killing of eight people. Then, his attorney filed a 500-page motion alleging the use of informants to enable prosecutors to win cases.

Dekraai, the worst mass killer in Orange County history, originally faced the death penalty, but Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals removed capital punishment as an option in response to the prosecutorial misconduct allegations stemming from the snitch scandal.

"It was never about the families, it was about winning...They wanted the death penalty so much that they cheated," Bethany Webb, the sister of Laura Webb Elody, one of Dekraii's victims, stated in a video released by the ACLU. The ACLU claims that an informant was put in place to "snitch" in return for a shorter or more lenient sentence.

Since the Dekraii trial, 18 other cases of jailhouse informants have been identified, showing departments' jailhouse informants were illegally involved in their cases and won sentence reductions or dismissals, according to the ACLU. The ability of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the Orange County District Attorney's office to deliver justice has been called into question by Tina Jackson, a member of P.E.O.P.L.E. who also is a named plaintiff.

“The scope and duration of Orange County’s illegal informant program is breathtaking,” partner with Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Jacob Kreilkamp said. “The defendants’ efforts to deny its existence — and, when forced to confront reality, to minimize and excuse it — make it clear that this lawsuit is necessary to restore integrity to Orange County’s criminal justice system.”

"If the DA is the top cop in charge of protecting laws, he should follow the laws," Webb said.

The district attorney's office and sheriff's department have consistently denied the existence of the jailhouse operation, sometimes under oath.

Patch has reached out to the Orange County District Attorney's Office for comment, which will be added to this report as soon as it is received.

This is a developing story. Refresh this page for updates.

Aclu People Rackauckas 20180404 Complaint by Ashley Ludwig on Scribd

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