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Defense attorney behind Orange County ‘snitch scandal’ launches new misconduct charges

by in News

The same defense lawyer who triggered Orange County’s “snitch scandal” and persuaded a judge to remove the District Attorney’s Office from handling the deadliest mass killing in local history is on a new mission.

Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders on Friday asked that Orange County prosecutors again be banned, this time from a low-level methamphetamine case. The reason: jail deputies who misused informants and withheld evidence went on to participate in 146 new cases without disclosing their past misdeeds to defense attorneys.

The allegedly tainted cases include 85 high-profile arrests of Mexican Mafia members in the so-called Operation Scarecrow, according to the motion filed by Sanders.

“This behavior would devastate any reasonable faith that the OCDA in its current iteration can be trusted to fairly prosecute this case (or any case in which the credibility of an OCSD deputy is an issue),” Sanders wrote.

The Sheriff’s Department declined comment Friday. The District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Sanders alleged that details of the deputies’ misdeeds were recorded in secret logs eventually made public during testimony in the murder case against Scott Dekraai, who killed eight people in a Seal Beach shooting spree in 2011. Dekraai pleaded guilty but his sentencing was held up for five years because of Sanders’ allegations that prosecutors and deputies routinely misused jail informants to shore up cases.

Former Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, now an appellate justice, became so frustrated with the misconduct that he booted the District Attorney’s Office from the case and sentenced Dekraai to eight terms of life in prison instead of imposing the death penalty.

In his latest motion, Sanders said Orange County prosecutors and sheriff’s officials still haven’t learned their lesson.

“The failure to turn over discovery in any of the 146 cases — and on repeated occasion for the vast majority of the cases — brings home the true depth of this malignancy,” he wrote.

In theory, prosecutors — who present to the court facts that bolster the deputies’ credibility — should also have presented facts surrounding their implication in the snitch scandal. That evidence could have been used by the defense. Attorneys in all of the affected cases, now armed with Sanders’ information, potentially could seek new trials or overturn plea deals.

Sanders wrote that jail deputies who violated laws pertaining to the use of informants took their bad habits to the streets, where they had been reassigned.

He alleges that former jail Deputy Jonathan Larson was appointed lead investigator in the Mexican Mafia-targeted Operation Scarecrow.  Sanders wrote that Larson at the time was under investigation by the state for his role in the “snitch scandal” and had perjured himself in court.

Larson wrote the key legal document that was used to obtain multiple wiretaps. Affidavits based on Larson’s document noted his past experience cultivating informants. But none of the judges who approved the wiretaps — or the grand jury that issued indictments — were informed of Larson’s troubled past, Sanders wrote.

Friday’s motion was filed on behalf of Oscar Galeno Garcia. Larson obtained a warrant to search Garcia’s house based on information from a “source” who said Garcia was selling methamphetamine. Deputies found 22 grams of meth in Garcia’s bedroom. Garcia denied using or selling the drug.

Sanders wrote that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department cannot be trusted to turn over evidence that could benefit Garcia. The case is before Judge Thomas A. Glazier.