A Los Angeles prosecutor accused final week of improperly utilizing confidential data about sheriff’s deputies turned herself in to native police Saturday morning and was launched on $50,000 bond.
Diana Teran, one in every of L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s high advisors, was booked on 11 felony prices days after Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta alleged that she downloaded the data of 11 unnamed deputies in 2018 whereas working on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division. Three years later, Bonta alleged, Teran “impermissibly used” these data after becoming a member of Gascón’s workplace.
The legal professional normal’s workplace has not stated whose data Teran allegedly took or how she used them and has launched little details about the underlying info of the case.
When the fees grew to become public Wednesday, Teran’s legal professional James Spertus advised The Occasions the case was “useless on arrival,” saying he believed the deputies’ data had been public paperwork and that he was shocked to see the state “charging her for doing one thing inside the scope of her employment.”
Following his shopper’s launch on bond, Spertus reiterated that sentiment, including that the state’s dealing with of the case — together with the choice to ask for an arrest warrant — had taken him unexpectedly.
“It is a high-ranking D.A.’s workplace official; she’s not a flight danger,” he stated. “There ought to by no means have been an arrest warrant, as a result of usually she would obtain a summons within the mail. In lots of instances, people who find themselves charged with nonviolent offenses like this are summonsed into courtroom.”
The county’s 2024 felony bail schedule reveals that the category of computer-related crimes with which Teran was charged sometimes does not require defendants to pay a bond. Spertus stated it was not instantly clear why bond was set at $50,000 for his shopper.
As of final week, Teran was supervising high-profile and delicate instances involving police misconduct, fraud and public corruption. The district legal professional’s workplace on Thursday advised The Occasions it didn’t touch upon personnel issues, however Teran was not overseeing Ethics and Integrity Operations. The workplace stated she was not engaged on instances involving the Sheriff’s Division, and there was no indication that any instances involving prosecutions of legislation enforcement had been compromised.
Nonetheless, final week, the union representing rank-and-file deputies publicly referred to as for a broader investigation into every little thing Teran has dealt with “throughout her total tenure.” Two days later, the union representing supervisors and higher-ranking officers, the Los Angeles County Skilled Peace Officers Assn., despatched an e mail notifying members that its attorneys deliberate to ask Sheriff Robert Luna to launch an investigation.
“If the allegations are true, PPOA is extraordinarily involved concerning the breaches of confidential info of its members by somebody whose job it was to guard the pursuits of the women and men of the Sheriff’s Division,” the group’s president, Steve Johnson, wrote, in accordance with a duplicate of the e-mail reviewed by The Occasions.
Earlier than changing into a prosecutor, Teran — who has been a lawyer for greater than three many years — served as a constitutional policing advisor to the Sheriff’s Division, then as a advisor to the Workplace of Inspector Normal, which supplies oversight to the division. In 2019, she grew to become a legislation enforcement accountability advisor with the L.A. County public defender’s workplace.
Teran joined Gascón’s administration in early 2021 as a particular advisor and later started working the Justice System Integrity Division, which handles prosecutions of legislation enforcement officers.
In response to Spertus, the investigation into his shopper was sparked by a grievance from former Sheriff Alex Villanueva. In a livestream Wednesday night, Villanueva seemingly confirmed this, saying that in 2019, he alerted the FBI and the legal professional normal to considerations about Teran downloading info he described as a “huge knowledge breach.”
Although the grievance doesn’t spell out what knowledge Teran might have illegally misused, Spertus stated he believed state prosecutors had been erroneously attempting to cost her for importing public paperwork to the district legal professional’s listing of officers and deputies accused or convicted of on-duty misconduct.
Beneath a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court docket resolution in Brady vs. Maryland, prosecutors are required to show over that info to protection legal professionals, and plenty of prosecutors’ places of work maintain databases or lists to trace officer wrongdoing.
Whereas many legislation enforcement personnel data are legally thought-about confidential in California, Spertus stated he believed the paperwork in query had been made public after they had been connected to courtroom filings by deputies who sued to get disciplinary choices towards them overturned.
“I consider each doc shall be situated in an L.A. Superior Court docket case file,” he stated.
For the foreseeable future, specifics concerning the allegations towards Teran — together with whose data could also be concerned — might stay a thriller, as Spertus stated the extra detailed affidavit filed final week alongside the prison grievance has been saved secret.
“It was filed underneath seal,” he advised The Occasions. “So there are prices pending, however the [attorney general’s] workplace is being shockingly secret about what the allegedly used paperwork are.”
As a result of her first courtroom date is “months” away, in accordance with her lawyer, it might be a while earlier than the state is compelled to make particulars public.
“We need to get into courtroom as quickly as potential, and we will’t,” he stated.
