One authorized knowledgeable referred to as it “type of bunk.” One other mentioned it merely raises extra questions than it solutions.
However two months after state prosecutors introduced 11 felony prices towards a high advisor to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, a newly unsealed court docket document gives a window into the controversial case.
The premise for the allegations towards Gascón advisor Diana Teran had remained opaque since California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta introduced them in April.
State prosecutors have mentioned solely that Teran improperly accessed confidential police information whereas working because the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division’s constitutional policing advisor in 2018, then improperly used knowledge from these information when she joined the district lawyer’s workplace three years later.
It’s been unclear whose recordsdata she’d allegedly used or how, however after weeks of authorized wrangling, an lawyer for the Los Angeles Public Press satisfied a choose to unseal the affidavit used to justify the arrest warrant.
The 15-page doc, unsealed late Tuesday, exhibits the core allegations are targeted on Teran’s efforts to incorporate extra deputies’ names in district lawyer’s databases used to trace drawback officers, a lot as her lawyer had beforehand speculated.
However the doc additionally exhibits that information of disciplinary towards no less than two of the 11 deputies had been already public when she flagged them for inclusion. This week, The Occasions discovered the information had been simply positioned via a Google search.
The identities of the 9 different deputies had been nonetheless redacted within the public model of the affidavit — although Teran’s lawyer mentioned he was “99% assured” their information had been already public as effectively.
“I can’t imagine a case can be filed on such a proof,” James Spertus instructed The Occasions. “I understated earlier than how unhealthy this case was.”
On Wednesday, a number of authorized specialists who reviewed the affidavit raised questions concerning the case.
“It strikes me as we’ve misplaced the forest for the bushes from a broader prison justice standpoint,” mentioned Hanni Fakhoury, a San Francisco lawyer with a background in pc crimes. “It’s not like she’s placing folks on the database who shouldn’t be there.”
In an emailed assertion, Bonta’s workplace declined to remark, citing the necessity to “defend the integrity” of a pending case.
One legislation enforcement supply aware of the matter — who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to talk on the document — mentioned the state is contemplating dropping two of the fees towards Teran, and late Wednesday, Spertus confirmed that was his expectation as effectively.
With months to go earlier than the final election — wherein Gascón is going through a severe challenger — some have taken the Teran prosecution as a political betrayal, as a result of Bonta endorsed Gascón 4 years in the past. But it surely’s unclear what, if any, impression the controversy may have on the race.
The district lawyer’s workplace and the Sheriff’s Division didn’t instantly supply remark.
The 15-page affidavit signed by Particular Agent Tony Baca of the state Division of Justice traces the investigation into Teran again to a visitors cease involving a unique district lawyer’s official three years in the past.
The affidavit doesn’t establish that official, however the particulars line up with the December 2021 arrest of Gascón’s chief of employees, Joseph Iniguez.
As The Occasions beforehand reported, Azusa police pulled over Iniguez’s fiance after he allegedly made an unlawful U-turn right into a McDonald’s drive-through. Police mentioned Iniguez tried to intervene with the cease, and arrested him on suspicion of public intoxication.
The police union later alleged that Iniguez threatened to have the arresting officer’s identify added to the district lawyer’s so-called Brady Listing, which accommodates officers with problematic disciplinary histories. The identify is a reference to a landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court docket choice that requires prosecutors to show over any proof favorable to a defendant — together with proof of police misconduct.
Given the potential battle of curiosity, the case towards Iniguez was turned over to the California Division of Justice. However state prosecutors by no means pursued prices, and Iniguez finally sued the Azusa Police Division in a case that was settled final 12 months.
In keeping with Baca’s affidavit, the state’s investigation one way or the other led officers to Teran, who had duty for the district lawyer’s Brady database. The Division of Justice has not supplied additional rationalization.
Spertus mentioned beforehand he believed the investigation into his consumer was sparked by a grievance from former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who mentioned in 2019 he alerted the FBI and the state Division of Justice a few “large knowledge breach” involving Teran. On the time, neither company agreed to tackle the case.
When Teran labored on the Sheriff’s Division below Villanueva’s predecessor, a part of her common duties included accessing confidential deputy information and inner affairs investigations. In keeping with Baca’s affidavit, the division’s secret monitoring software program logged all of her searches beginning in 2018.
When she joined the district lawyer’s workplace in 2021, Teran allegedly started suggesting the names of deputies who ought to be added to the Brady listing — a observe two prosecutors instructed Baca was not common. Then in April 2021, the affidavit says, Teran despatched an inventory of 33 names to a different prosecutor for potential inclusion within the databases.
The affidavit says that a number of of these names had been deputies whose recordsdata she’d accessed whereas working on the Sheriff’s Division, and that she “wouldn’t have recognized so many of those deputy sheriffs” in any other case. The affidavit additionally alleges that a few of the paperwork Teran despatched together with the names appeared to have been “scanned, copied, or taken immediately from the LASD knowledge recordsdata.”
The 11 prices, Baca wrote, mirrored the 11 of these 33 deputies whose names did “not seem in both public information request responses or media articles.”
Susan Seager, the lawyer who fought for the document’s launch, questioned that reasoning.
“This can be a ridiculously slim and inaccurate approach of figuring out whether or not their disciplinary recordsdata are confidential,” she wrote in an emailed assertion.
Seager went on to name it “beautiful” that Bonta would describe the 11 deputies’ information as confidential, declaring that two names — Liza Gonzalez and Thomas Negron — weren’t redacted within the launched affidavit.
“Bonta’s workplace doesn’t clarify why it unsealed these two names,” Seager wrote, “however maybe that’s as a result of there are two California court docket of attraction selections dated 2014 and 2015 that debate in nice element the disciplinary recordsdata of deputies Gonzalez and Negron and the way they had been fired for dishonesty in in 2010 and 2011, respectively.”
Different authorized specialists who reviewed the affidavit had been equally essential.
“I feel it raises extra questions than it solutions — partly as a result of there are nonetheless redactions,” mentioned police oversight knowledgeable Michael Gennaco, including it was “attention-grabbing” that the investigator who authored the affidavit didn’t seem to have performed a case of this nature earlier than.
Cristine Soto DeBerry, government director of the Prosecutors Alliance, panned the “absurdity” of the case.
“A prosecutor earnestly attempting to do her job and monitor necessary info ought to be applauded not punished,” she mentioned in an emailed assertion.
Fakhoury, the lawyer with a background in pc crimes, identified that state prosecutors don’t look like claiming that any of the data Teran flagged for inclusion within the Brady database was incorrect or didn’t belong there.
“It additionally seems to me that there’s no allegation that she didn’t have pc entry to the information no less than when she was employed by the Sheriff’s Division,” he mentioned. “So the unauthorized entry is that she took the data she was allowed to have and used it after she left the Sheriff’s Division.”
Fakhoury mentioned federal prosecutors have tried to argue the speculation that “unauthorized entry” would come with circumstances akin to Teran’s, wherein somebody accessed knowledge for a permitted goal and later used it for a unique goal. However the U.S. Supreme Court docket has rejected that concept, he mentioned, and California’s Supreme Court docket has not weighed in on how broadly the state statute ought to be interpreted.
“It’s an odd case,” he mentioned. “I feel it’s type of bunk, frankly.”
Legally, he mentioned, it won’t matter whether or not the information had been already public —although that might elevate bigger questions concerning the choice to prosecute Teran.
He puzzled whether or not it might need a “chilling impact” on different prosecutors targeted on police accountability: “Is that this what we actually need this type of statute and this type of investigation to go after?”
Occasions employees writers James Queally and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
