4 months after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta introduced a slew of felony prices towards a prime advisor to the Los Angeles County district lawyer, state prosecutors this week dropped three of the 11 counts however nonetheless pushed ahead towards a trial.
Diana Teran, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division advisor who later oversaw ethics and integrity operations on the D.A.’s workplace, is accused of illegally utilizing confidential personnel data. State prosecutors allege Teran broke the regulation three years in the past when she flagged a number of sheriff’s deputies’ names for doable inclusion on an inner district lawyer’s database of officers accused of misconduct.
In response to state prosecutors, Teran solely knew the deputies’ names and alleged misdeeds in her position on the D.A.’s workplace as a result of she’d accessed their data in 2018 whereas nonetheless working on the Sheriff’s Division.
Final month, Teran pleaded not responsible on all counts. In response to her lawyer, James Spertus, the deputies’ data had been already public in courtroom circumstances and different data.
Although the 2 sides have sparred in dozens of authorized filings over the previous few months, a preliminary listening to will decide whether or not there’s sufficient proof to maneuver forward to trial — the primary actual face-off in courtroom.
The listening to was scheduled to start Wednesday, however prosecutors stated they weren’t prepared and hadn’t requested their witnesses to indicate up. On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom Decide Sam Ohta voiced his skepticism in regards to the state’s theories and questioned the purpose of pursuing the case in any respect.
“I don’t see this type of factual state of affairs repeating all this typically,” he stated. “A part of legal regulation is to discourage legal conduct sooner or later so what are we making an attempt to discourage right here?”
The allegations on the middle of the case date again to 2018 when Teran labored as a constitutional police advisor for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell. A part of her ordinary duties included accessing confidential deputy data and inner affairs investigations.
The division used secret monitoring software program that stored data of the greater than 1,600 personnel recordsdata she looked for and reviewed, in keeping with an affidavit state prosecutors filed in courtroom earlier this yr.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Division in late 2018, Teran joined the district lawyer’s workplace, the place state prosecutors allege in 2021 she despatched a listing of 33 names and supporting paperwork to a different prosecutor for doable inclusion in a so-called Brady database, which accommodates officers with problematic disciplinary histories. The title 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 a number of of the names Teran emailed to fellow prosecutor Pamela Revel had been deputies whose recordsdata she had accessed whereas working on the Sheriff’s Division. After looking information articles and public data requests, a state investigator discovered that 11 of the names hadn’t been talked about in public, which led to the allegation that Teran wouldn’t have been capable of establish them had been it not for her particular entry working on the SheriffDepartment.
For months, the state has resisted releasing the names of the 11 deputies, asking for protecting orders at each step. When Bonta’s workplace agreed to launch data earlier this yr, prosecutors nonetheless left 9 of the names redacted. Solely the names of Liza Gonzalez and Thomas Negron — former deputies who courtroom data present had been fired for dishonesty — had been made public, a transfer the state has not defined.
This week, when Bonta’s workplace filed an up to date model of the legal grievance, the costs had been dropped referring to Gonzalez, Negron and one different deputy, recognized solely as Deputy Doe 11 in courtroom filings. Prosecutors didn’t clarify why they dropped these three prices, and the DOJ didn’t reply to an emailed request for remark.
After courtroom, Spertus instructed The Occasions that Deputy Doe 11 was a civilian worker, not a deputy.
The choose, Ohta, stated in courtroom that state prosecutors had additionally added “aggravating elements” to the grievance, however courtroom employees instructed The Occasions the doc wouldn’t be obtainable in courtroom data till subsequent week. The DOJ didn’t reply to a request for a duplicate of the doc.
A lot of Thursday’s listening to was dedicated to listening to testimony from Deputy Todd Bernstein, who spoke extensively about which recordsdata Teran had accessed throughout her time on the Sheriff’s Division and which of them she’d obtained details about in emails.
He additionally testified that the majority Sheriff’s Division data is confidential below coverage and that public data — together with public courtroom data — can be thought of confidential as soon as despatched to the division, resembling in an e mail attachment.
To Spertus, that testimony revealed how “legally untenable” the state’s place seems.
“Their view of the case is when somebody from exterior the Sheriff’s Division emails a public report to somebody contained in the division it turns into a personal report,” he instructed The Occasions afterward. “It’s uncontroverted that the info allegedly taken was from Los Angeles Superior Courtroom pleadings emailed to somebody at LASD, which then grew to become LASD knowledge.”
These emailed public courtroom data, he stated, are the supplies Teran is accused of flagging for inclusion within the Brady database.
One line of questioning in courtroom Thursday echoed among the allegations raised in an identical case that Bonta’s workplace declined to prosecute earlier this yr. As The Occasions reported final month, after Alex Villanueva was elected L.A. County sheriff in December 2018, his administration launched an investigation into leaked data and allegedly stolen personnel recordsdata.
One a part of that probe included claims that each Teran and officers with the Workplace of Inspector Basic had downloaded numerous deputy personnel data — together with these of Villanueva and several other of his shut associates — within the closing days earlier than Villanueva took workplace. The 306-page Sheriff’s Division case file reviewed by The Occasions didn’t make clear why that may be thought of against the law.
At one level a authorized advisor for the county referred to as the probe “not legally viable” and over the course of a number of years state and federal prosecutors repeatedly turned it down, in keeping with the paperwork reviewed by The Occasions. However in 2021 the division once more floated the matter to state prosecutors, sending them a letter and case file outlining allegations that Teran, her assistant Alan Wang, two oversight officers and a Occasions reporter had participated in a number of felonies. In Could of this yr Bonta’s workplace formally rejected the case and declined to file prices.
On Thursday, although, state prosecutors requested Bernstein a number of questions on data Teran had accessed within the closing days earlier than Villanueva took workplace.
“There have been a lot of circumstances seen and accessed by Ms. Teran that had been for high-level division executives that had not been within the subject for years,” Bernstein stated. “It defies logic as to why one would wish to search for circumstances which can be 20 years previous for somebody that could be a division government or should not even employed by the division.”
When questioned about whether or not he’d ever requested Teran why she’d accessed so many recordsdata, Bernstein stated he had not.
“With out speaking to her,” Spertus stated, “how have you learnt what she must do her job?”
Towards the top of the testimony, Spertus requested Bernstein whether or not he had participated in referring the case to the lawyer basic, and Bernstein stated that he had not.
However a Occasions assessment of the case file confirmed that, as one of many division’s expertise and computing specialists, Bernstein had a key position within the investigation. In response to the case file, he was one of many members of the Villanueva transition crew that found “abnormalities” whereas reviewing personnel data and ultimately sparked the legal investigation despatched to the state Division of Justice.
Bernstein, whose personnel data had been amongst these allegedly accessed by oversight officers, didn’t reply to an emailed request for remark Thursday night.
