A prime advisor to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón pleaded not responsible on Thursday after state prosecutors stated she illegally used confidential personnel information three years in the past when she flagged a number of sheriff’s deputies’ names for attainable inclusion on a listing of downside officers.
The lawyer representing Diana Teran argued in court docket that the costs towards her didn’t represent against the law as a result of sustaining a listing of deputies accused of misconduct was a part of her job overseeing the district lawyer’s ethics and integrity operations.
“That is simply speaking about primary frequent sense,” James Spertus, Teran’s lawyer, stated in court docket. “Is it against the law to do your job internally on the D.A.’s workplace for the county when you might have data in your head?”
Prosecutors with the California Division of Justice stated it was too early within the authorized course of to grapple with these particulars. For now, the state stated, the 2 sides may argue solely over the contents of the prison grievance filed towards her, and never the opposite paperwork used to justify it.
After listening to a number of hours of authorized wrangling, L.A. County Superior Courtroom Decide Charlaine Olmedo sided with the state and moved ahead with Teran’s arraignment.
On Thursday, the decide additionally rejected requests — from an lawyer for the information website Los Angeles Public Press — to unseal paperwork that would present the deputies’ information had been already public. Unsealing these paperwork, Olmedo stated, may violate an current protecting order.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed the prison grievance towards Teran in April, and the allegations on the heart of the politically charged case date to 2018, when she labored on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division as a constitutional police advisor. A part of her duties there included accessing confidential deputy information and inner affairs investigations.
The division’s secret monitoring software program saved information of the greater than 1,600 personnel information she looked for and reviewed, in line with an affidavit state prosecutors filed in court docket this 12 months.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Division, Teran joined the district lawyer’s workplace. It’s not clear what her present standing is, however a spokesperson for the workplace beforehand stated she was now not overseeing ethics and integrity operations.
Whereas on the district lawyer’s workplace in 2021, state prosecutors allege, Teran despatched a listing of 33 names and supporting paperwork to a fellow deputy district lawyer for attainable inclusion in a so-called Brady database, which accommodates officers with problematic disciplinary histories. The identify is a reference to a landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Courtroom resolution that requires prosecutors to show over any proof favorable to a defendant, together with proof of police misconduct.
The affidavit says that a number of of the names Teran emailed to fellow prosecutor Pamela Revel had been deputies whose information she’d accessed whereas working on the Sheriff’s Division. Eleven of them hadn’t been talked about within the information or in public information — so she allegedly wouldn’t have been capable of determine them in any other case, state prosecutors stated.
After combating for greater than two months to get the affidavit revealing the names of all 11 deputies, earlier this month Spertus filed a whole bunch of pages of paperwork that he stated confirmed their disciplinary information had been already public in court docket information and information articles.
“From the second this case was filed, I used to be suspicious of what the motive [for filing it] was as a result of there’s no crime and launch of the affidavit confirms that,” Spertus stated on the time. “The underlying concept is that she stole public data.”
On Thursday, Susan Seager — the lawyer representing LA Public Press — argued that a whole bunch of pages of paperwork Spertus filed must be made public. The decide disagreed, saying that the one motive Spertus knew to search for the names of sure deputies and discover these information was as a result of he had entry to protected data.
“It’s disappointing that the Superior Courtroom didn’t acknowledge that these are public court docket information and they need to be unsealed and proven to the general public,” Seager instructed The Instances after court docket Thursday. “If the DOJ is criminally prosecuting a prosecutor for utilizing public information, that appears to counsel that anybody utilizing public information to analysis dangerous sheriff’s deputies is topic to prison prosecution.”
Olmedo determined that at this stage the court docket may solely depend on data throughout the “4 corners” of the prison grievance. After taking Teran’s plea, Olmedo set a preliminary listening to for Aug. 7.
